I catch myself before I join everyone else at my table in laughing.
Half the room is laughing, actually.
Including Levi’s brother—her boss—at that back table with Cooper and Waverly.
“Eleven thousand,” someone yells.
Addie leans into Levi’s microphone. “That’s a figure of speech. Ass-kissing doesn’t come in this package. Literal or figurative.”
“How long have you been the Fireballs’ batting coach?” Levi asks her.
“This is my sixth season.”
“And that’s how many championship rings?”
“Three.”
Levi smiles at her.
I know the wide smile she beams back.
But again, not because it’s one you usually see on her in public.
She should smile though.
Three rings is something to be proud of.
Almost as good as my four.
“Fifteen thousand dollars,” the douche-muffin next to me says.
“He looks like the kind of person who’d follow a woman home,” Paisley whispers to me.
My fingers clench around my paddle.
“Is it true you fixed Cooper Rock’s swing?” Levi asks Addie.
She nods. “Crowning achievement. He’s notoriously difficult to coach.”
“Accurate,” Cooper calls from the back of the room.
“Any chance you’re offering batting tips while you’re playingCroaking Creaturesand sipping tea?” Levi asks.
“Not until I quit wrestling bears,” she quips as she uses her good hand to gesture to her bad arm.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” someone from Waverly and Cooper’s table yells.
“Bro, your wife is sitting right next to you,” Levi says. “And you can’t bid on your own batting coach.”
“My wife and I both object to how the Thrusters’ owner’s looking at her,” Tripp replies, prompting all of us to crane our necks to get a better view of my team’s owner, who’s also sitting near the back of the room. “If she can teach Cooper to hit a ball better, she can teach a bunch of puckheads to score better too. I don’t want him stealing her from us.”
“Accurate again,” Cooper yells. “Twenty-five thousand one hundred.”
Addie flips him off while color rises in her cheeks, which I know is from the compliment she just got from her boss.
The crowd roars with laughter.
“Thirty thousand dollars,” the fucknugget at the next table drawls.
