Safe at First (The Boys of Baseball #3) - J. Sterling Page 0,1
more. Which always pushed me away. The problem was, I would have actually considered changing my ways for Sunny, but I knew that she deserved way better than someone as damaged as me. So, I kept her at arm’s length, and she let me do it.
I clicked on the message and read it out loud, “I’m sorry you didn’t get drafted this year. I’m here if you want to talk.”
She included her phone number, and in a moment of clear weakness and vulnerability, I found myself dialing it. We talked for hours that night. Longer than I’d ever talked to any girl before in my life, including my ex. It was easy. Comfortable. And I felt like Sunny understood me when it seemed like no one else had ever even tried to.
She gave me stellar advice, listened quietly when I wouldn’t stop talking, and reminded me that everything I felt was totally normal and justified. Sunny made me feel less crazy when I felt like I was completely unraveling. She calmed me in every way.
I wasn’t sure what I would have done without her, but I was pretty positive I would have self-destructed and sabotaged it all if left to my own devices. She saved me that night.
So, what did I do after we hung up?
Never fucking called her again, of course. And I left her on Read anytime she messaged me after that, which stopped pretty quickly because, apparently, Sunny had self-control. I knew that I was doing the wrong thing when it came to her, but I couldn’t seem to stop it. I hid behind a million excuses and reasons, convincing myself that she was better off without me. Which was most likely the God’s honest truth.
What the hell did I have to offer a sweet, perfect girl like her?
Nothing.
And I damn well knew it.
Senior Year
Mac
M
y dad pulled over to the curb in the departing flights section of the Phoenix airport. He wasn’t even parking in the short-term lot and walking me inside to say good-bye. Nope. Just a quick drop off for his only son. Richard Davies—or Dick, as I mostly called him in my head and not to his face—would never waste his time coming inside an airport he wasn’t leaving out of. Did I mention that we had driven in my car? My stunning two-door charcoal-gray 3 Series BMW that Dick Davies—aka DD for short—had bought me for my high school graduation. It’d had one of those big, fucking obnoxious red bows on it and everything. It would have been completely embarrassing if it wasn’t so fucking cool.
I’d driven this car all of about three months total since the moment I got her because in true Dick Davies fashion, he’d bought that beautiful piece of machinery more for himself than he ever did for me. DD wanted other people to see how successful he was, how prominent, how rich. Everything DD did was for show. If things appeared perfect on the outside, no one would dare question what went on behind closed doors. And what went on behind the doors of our house was anything but perfection.
“It’s my senior year. Just let me take my car to school,” I’d begged my parents.
But they’d both said no. It was the one thing they seemed to agree on. The only thing really.
My mom firmly believed that me not having a car in California kept me safer somehow. Like car accidents couldn’t happen if someone else was driving and I was in the passenger seat. I’d actually stopped myself from looking up statistics to prove her wrong, knowing that it would only backfire on me somehow. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck here for any longer than necessary. My mom would most likely read those stats and demand I never leave Arizona—or the house—again. Not that she could stop me. It was hard stopping your only kid when you were too drunk to walk in a straight line anymore.
She hadn’t always been like that, and I wasn’t sure when it’d even started in the first place, but she had seemed to be drunk more than she was sober lately. Clearly, my mom hated her life, and I couldn’t even blame her for it. My dad really was a miserable, selfish prick. It fucking killed me, seeing her that way, but I knew that I couldn’t be the one to save her.