The Ninth Inning (The Boys of Baseball #1) - J. Sterling Page 0,34
or want to be a part of. I would never understand the fascination with looking as plastic as possible at such a young age. And honestly, what were all those people influencing anyway? Nothing. I hated the fakeness of it all and the way it perpetuated girls to feel like they weren’t enough if they didn’t look exactly like these three girls did.
“You have a theory about me and Cole? Two people who have nothing to do with you?” I tried to make her feel as stupid as she sounded, but it obviously wasn’t working.
“Yes.” She sounded pleased with herself, and I wondered for a second if this was all some sort of joke that I was about to be the butt of. Hair-Flipper sat there, grinning at us, her too-white teeth practically blinding me.
“Care to share the theory with the rest of the class?” Lauren interjected, and I shot her a questionable glance, unsure of what was about to be said.
“Oh, right.” Hair-Flipper clasped her hands together before looking at her cohorts for permission. She cleared her throat like she was about to give a presentation she’d practiced for months. “We think that Cole won’t commit to you because you’re not marriage material,” she started, and I practically choked on my laughter.
“What?” I shook my head like she was insane as the stadium erupted in cheers around us.
I glanced toward the field to see the guys jogging back toward the dugout. I hadn’t even noticed them take the field in the first place because I’d been so distracted.
“You see, there’s no point in settling down with you if you’re not the one.” She sounded so convinced in her assumption and so impressed with herself that she continued without prompting, “Cole’s going places, and he obviously doesn’t see you there with him. If he thought you were cut out to be a baseball player’s wife, you’d be a baseball player’s girlfriend first. But you’re not. And you never have been. So, it’s clear he sees no future with you, and that’s why he won’t commit.”
She wrapped up the first part of her argument with a wide smile while her doppelgängers all nodded their collective heads in response. I was actually a little stunned, a part of me wondering how much truth existed in her analysis. I’d never even gotten to marriage in my own head when it came to me and Cole, so it seemed a little far-fetched that he would be thinking that far ahead. But what if she was right? What if Cole couldn’t see a future with me, and that was why he never let me get too close?
Hair-Flipper cleared her throat to get my attention. I’d zoned out for too long, lost in my own thoughts, and I hated that I’d probably given her some sort of satisfaction about it.
“And—” she started up again.
“There’s more of this?” Lauren interrupted, and I knew she was only trying to help me. There was no way that she had missed the way I’d gone all internal and quiet.
“Well, there were two points, and I only addressed the first one,” she said, looking almost wounded.
“Oh. Well then, by all means”—Lauren waved a hand in their direction—“please continue.”
Hair-Flipper clearly wasn’t fluent in the language of sarcasm because she grew giddy. “We also think that Cole can’t let you go because he met you first. If he had met any other girl before he met you, he would be doing this with her. But he didn’t. It could have been someone else, but it just happened to be you. And now, he’s stuck on you by default.”
That exact idea was something I had considered multiple times before, but hearing it from a complete stranger stung more than when it had been born from my own thoughts. It was one thing to think it for myself on the nights I stayed up way too late, overanalyzing everything ever said between us. But it was embarrassing to learn that other people had come to the same conclusion.
It made me feel stupid.
“Anything else?” I asked, trying my best to sound bored, but I was coming unglued inside. I needed to get the hell out of this stadium and away from these Barbie lookalikes who had clearly struck a nerve. I refused to let them see how much they had gotten under my skin. Girls like them had been saying things to me for years, but this felt different somehow.