The Ninth Inning (The Boys of Baseball #1) - J. Sterling Page 0,85

fist and pounded knuckles with my left hand.

“Oh, Logan’s gonna be pissed,” Chance added as we all turned around in unison to Coach yelling Logan’s name.

Logan had a literal bounce in his step, like he didn’t have a care in the world, aside from his busted-up face. He had no idea that he was about to get benched right along with me.

“You going to be okay?” Chance genuinely looked concerned.

“Yeah. You aren’t going to spiral into a depression, right? Like, we’re not going to have to pick you up from a pile of your own puke or anything?” Mac added with a little too much creative detail.

I tapped the side of his face. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, asshole.”

“I’m only asking because, first, you lose your girl, and then you lose three games in your senior year. It’s a reasonable question.” He sounded flustered, like there was no way on earth that he’d be able to tolerate what I was going through.

I surprised myself at how calm I felt. “I’ll be fine. It’s only three games. And to be honest, I’m going to need them anyway,” I said, holding up my right hand, which was now soaking wet from the melted ice pack.

“No regrets?” Chance asked, and I knew he meant about it all—hitting Logan and the suspension.

“Fuck no.”

“Wouldn’t it be something if you came back from this suspension even better than when you left?” he asked with a smile that made girls all over campus swoon. Trust me, I’d seen it in action.

“That does sound like something,” I said in agreement, suddenly filled with a determination to make this a comeback of epic proportions.

I knew deep down that everyone expected me to come back from this and head straight back down into another hitting slump. They would all assume that I was too rattled to focus because of what Logan had done to my personal life. But I planned to prove them all wrong. Every emotion would get released at the plate. I planned on taking my embarrassment, frustration, and anger out on the ball, and God help any pitcher who tried to get in my way.

The Girl with the Red Hair

Two Weeks Later

Christina

Two weeks had passed. It didn’t happen in a blur but more of a sluggish haze. It felt like time couldn’t even bear to pass itself. That was how slowly it moved, like even it knew that each day simply marked another where we didn’t speak. Two agonizing weeks of silence, where I drove myself mad, wondering if Cole missed me or not. Was he hurting the same way I was? I had no idea because not a single text had been sent or received by either one of us. No phone calls or missed calls either.

Did you know that two weeks was more than enough time for the entire campus to hear about what had happened and label me as the villain in this story? Of course you knew that. Anyone with half a brain would know that I’d be called a whore or a slut whenever I walked by a group of girls.

Fourteen days of not seeing Cole but hearing about him every single time I was on campus was a different kind of pain than it used to be. It felt like all the girls made sure I heard what he had been up to, where he had been, and how happy he seemed without me. Their words were like daggers; they hurt, and I bled. If I didn’t have to go to class in order to graduate, I probably wouldn’t have left my apartment. At least not until the dust had settled a little more … or something else had taken my place on the gossip circuit.

Worse than all that though were the questions that random guys hurled at me like they had some sort of right to. They always seemed to do it when they were in packs though, so if I noticed one coming in my direction, I tried to change course. It didn’t always work.

“Do you only fuck baseball players? What about the basketball team? You shouldn’t discriminate against other athletes,” this guy said to me one time as five of his friends looked on and laughed.

“Why don’t you guys go fuck each other?” I fired back before walking away and willing myself not to cry.

Even though it looked like I had myself pulled together on the outside, mostly because I had actually started brushing my hair before