The Ninth Inning (The Boys of Baseball #1) - J. Sterling Page 0,58

in her mind, still upsetting.

“Because she remembered everything up until that point. And when she woke up, all her clothes were on, she wasn’t sore anywhere, and she was alone.”

“Let me guess.” I assumed what was coming next. “No one believed her that nothing happened.”

“I did.” She nodded her head. “But I was the only one. The pictures were eventually taken down, but by then, it was too late. Everyone had already seen them. And they had copies or screenshots. It was the ultimate example of how bad social media could be. How it could ruin someone’s life.”

I felt like a lightbulb had switched on inside my head. “And that’s when you discovered your passion for it?”

“That’s definitely where it started, yeah. I wanted people to be accountable for the things they posted online. To realize that everything wasn’t a joke. That sometimes, real people were affected and got hurt. I wanted my fellow students to think about the messages their posts were sending. You have any idea how hard it is to get a teenager to think before they act?” she said with a slight laugh.

“I think most people don’t think before they act. Especially online. It gives them some kind of power trip to be anonymous.”

“I totally agree.”

“So, is that where your rule came in?” I asked, still wanting to know.

“Well, yeah. The shots got me pretty drunk. It felt like all the logical and rational parts of my brain shut off. I didn’t care about anything. They could have told me to jump off the roof and into the pool, and I would have done it without question. If I had stayed, it would have been both of us in those pictures instead of just her.”

“ ‘Alcohol makes you stupid,’ ” I said with a nod of understanding, repeating the words she’d once told me.

“Exactly.”

“Then, why’d you take the shots from Logan?” I found myself getting upset, but I wasn’t sure why exactly.

“I’m older now. I think I can handle my liquor better than when I was in high school,” she said. “But mostly, I did it to get back at you. To show you that you weren’t the boss of me. To be rebellious,” she rattled off the list like it was right there on the tip of her tongue the whole time, just waiting to be set free.

“Took shots with my enemy just to spite me,” I started before she interrupted.

“I didn’t know he was your enemy,” she said seriously, as if trying to convince me of something I’d already known.

“But you do now, right? You know he isn’t a good person. Tell me you see that,” I pressed because I needed to hear her say that she saw through Logan’s false front.

“I do see that. But it doesn’t matter. I’m with you now. Logan’s irrelevant.”

I wanted to agree with her, but I knew Logan better than that. If he wanted to fuck with me more, I’d just given him the ammunition he needed to do it. He was only guessing before that Christina was my weakness, but all I’d done by pursuing her and making her mine was prove him right. This thing with him wasn’t over, and I knew it.

Girlfriend

Christina

We stayed in the parking structure—or “our parking structure,” as Cole had called it—holding each other and talking until the sun started to set. Hours always seemed to fly by whenever we were together, and today had been no different. How had a single day felt more like twenty?

When he walked me to my apartment door, he shocked me for what felt like the hundredth time. “I don’t know if people do this anymore, but I don’t care. Will you be my girlfriend?” he asked, and I forced myself to hesitate instead of blurting out a resounding yes.

I thought I’d waited a little too long because he started shifting on his feet and dug his hands into his pockets.

“Look, I know that one day doesn’t change the past three years. But it’s just the beginning. We don’t have to call each other boyfriend and girlfriend even though I want to,” he said in a tone that left little room for questioning how he felt on the matter, “but I really, really, really don’t want you to date other people.”

“What about you?” I asked because it felt foolish to assume anything without at least asking. We’d been through too much.

“I don’t want to be with anyone else. Only you. But I get that I might