“No,” Luca says. “If Cooper wrote books, he would’ve told me. He would’ve told Henri. No one can resist telling Henri everything. Not evenhim.” Luca’s girlfriend writes romance novels for her day job, but this is only his second year on the team, and I really have had writer’s block on my fantasy novel for like three years.
Also?
I don’t like not being good at things. And I am reallynotgood at writing this novel. Started it because I fell in love with a fantasy cartoon about a pickle while I was killing time on the road a few years ago, got the bug, realized it was harder than I thought it would be, and it’s simmered on the back burner since.
Mostly.
I might’ve dabbled in another project or two over the years after chatting with the Thrusters’ goaltender, who’s also a Copper Valley local, and who’s self-published some stuff, but I refuse to admit to anything.
Luca’s giving me the suspicious eyeball that reminds me of his Nonna and her love-curse eyeball. “This is another of Cooper’s pranks, right?”
“Tillie Jean’s read the first half,” Max says. “He calls itPunkball in Space. It’s about half-human, half-alien baseball players who have to save the universe with the game.”
“That’s why I can jump so high,” I call back down the aisle. “I’m pretending there’s no gravity as research.”
“Maybe we spend more time pretending you don’t have writer’s block so you can play baseball,” Dusty says.
Brooks Elliott climbs aboard the bus, and the doors shut.
Finally.
We can get back to the hotel, I can take a nap, and then I can wake up around two AM to call Waverly, since that’s about the time she’ll be heading to bed out on the West Coast, which is where I think she’ll be at the end of the day today.
Wait.
Was she filming the late shows in New York or in LA?
Shit.
I can’t remember.
Brooks pauses instead of taking a seat, which means the bus isn’t moving, and I can’t find out yet.
“Everybody has off days, Coach,” he says to Dusty. “I’ll take Cooper’s off days if they mean he gets base hits and doesn’t let anything through the infield.”
My knee bounces.
Coach Addie looks at it and raises a brow.
I force it to stop.
“Did you prank the wrong person?” she asks me.
“Yes.” That’s actually true.
I think I pranked myself.
I mean, if falling this hard for a woman who has so little time for me that I’d have to trade in my baseball glove to be with her counts as pranking myself, then yes, I have most definitely pranked myself.
And this bus could run on the power of all the coaches’ sighs.
I practically sit on my hands the entire ride back to the hotel. Can’t check my phone without risking someone overseeing who’s in my text message history. I’m not dumb enough to put Waverly in my phone asWaverly, but my new code name for her might be too easy for some of these guys to figure out.
I had to change outBaseball Cheaterfor fear someone would think I was hanging with someone who’d get me into Pete Rose-level trouble, butHot Troubleis basically transparent.
Isn’t it?
Or is it?
