The Ninth Inning (The Boys of Baseball #1) - J. Sterling Page 0,5
asked for. Silence speaks volumes. And it hurts a hell of a lot more than any words ever could. Hurt him back the same way he hurt you—by pretending he doesn’t exist. You’ll thank me tomorrow.
I was pathetic.
At least, I felt like it each time I had to read that stupid note.
Why was it so hard to get over someone who was never truly mine to begin with? I was tired of being that girl—the one who waited around for a guy who’d never asked her to wait in the first place. I’d been there for Cole the last three years, taking the scraps he had given me like a starved animal and begging for more. I’d allowed it all to happen. I recognized that, and I accepted responsibility and acknowledged my role.
Each time we had been together, I had hoped for a different outcome. And yes, early on, I realized that was the definition of insanity, but while I was living in it, it didn’t feel so insane. It felt more like a part of life, growing up, figuring out who you were and who you wanted to be. My mom had always said that relationships were hard work, and I’d assumed this was a part of what she meant.
You see, I was the one Cole had texted whenever he was sad or down. It was me he called when he had a bad day. It was me he reached out to when he needed a friend, an ear, or someone to talk to. I considered the fact that maybe I wasn’t the only girl he reached out to in his time of need, but I wasn’t convinced that was true. The talks we shared were not things you simply told anyone who was willing to listen. And Cole wasn’t the type to spill his guts to random girls even if he was the type to screw them.
Cole’s conversations with me were personal.
Private.
Intimate.
And ours.
He gave them to me. And I cherished them. Like a silly schoolgirl with a crush, thinking I was getting insight into a man that no one else had gotten to see. I’d thought it made me special. In the end, it’d only made me stupid.
I found myself replaying our moments together, my finger hovering over the Delete button on the single selfie I had of the two of us in my phone. It was the first night we’d met, when we sat on top of the parking structure until dawn. He said we should remember the moment as he fished out his phone and pulled me tight against him before asking for my phone number so he could send it to me. We looked so sweet, so innocent, and so … hopeful.
I remembered thinking that it was the beginning of something bigger. That we would look back at that night as the one that had started it all for us. I’d stupidly thought we had something more. And over the years, I’d tried to convince myself that I wasn’t just a casual hook-up. But what followed after was always a stab to the heart. I knew he hooked up with other girls; I heard all about it whenever I walked across campus or sat down in class. It sucked, having Cole’s sex life thrown in my face, but he wasn’t the only one screwing other people.
I went out with other guys, but nothing lasted, nothing stuck. Not the way that Cole seemed to. I definitely hadn’t been an angel during my college years so far, but I wasn’t sleeping with a new guy every week either. And Cole was the only one who seemed to be a constant presence, blowing in and out of my life like the wind, always coming back, no matter how far away he had gone.
When my roommate and best friend, Lauren, had suggested we come to the baseball party in the first place, I’d wanted to ask her if she’d lost her damn mind. She was the one person who knew all of Cole’s and my history and had been there to witness most of it. Just last month, she’d offered to cut off his nuts for me if it would make me happy again. I hadn’t realized that I wasn’t—happy, that was—but she had been right. That night in August had taken something from me.
Lauren and I’d met in the dorms our first year even though we had been assigned to other suitemates.