Nora charged ahead. She sat right in front, and Daisy followed, then Soraya sat beside Daisy. Nora glanced behind them, but Soraya didn’t because she didn’t want to see people whispering or any of their speculative glances. She couldn’t bear it.
She looked through the fence and saw David standing on the third-base line, chewing sunflower seeds, spitting them into a paper cup he was holding and clapping against his wrist, doing his coachGo Team!routine.
Then their eyes caught, and she wanted to crawl underneath the bleachers and hide from him. Up until she’d gotten the job at the apothecary, grown a spine, and gotten some good friends, she’d been going to church with him. But just a week and a half without seeing him made this feel weird.
He lifted his chin, like a weird, hostile greeting.
She frowned and did not wave or lift her chin.
She looked over at Nora, and Nora sputtered a laugh.
“What?” Soraya asked.
“Your face. You look like you just saw a mouse.”
“Mice are cute,” Soraya muttered. “I feel more like I saw a cockroach.”
When the teams filed into the dugout, she turned her focus to the kids.
“All right, ladies,” David shouted. “Let’s see some hustle!”
“Ladies,” Nora scoffed. “God, is he the coach in a ’90s sports movie?”
“For the villains,” Daisy said.
“Close,” Soraya said.
When he turned away from the boys, one straggler came careening out of the dugout and ran smack into David and into the spittle/sunflower seed cup, which crushed against his chest.
A dark streak leaked from the bottom of the cup onto his white shirt.
His expression was furious as he scowled at the kid he clearly wanted to yell at but couldn’t because his parents were sitting in the stands.
“Oh noooo,” Soraya whispered, putting her hand over her mouth so she didn’t laugh.
“Deserved,” Nora said, and Daisy nodded in agreement.
There were a few uncomfortable giggles around them, so she wasn’t the only one who found it funny.
David recovered, then moved back into position on the third-base line as their first batter went up and stood in the box. She looked down at his shirt stain again and then looked down farther and noticed his shoelace was untied.
“Strike!” The umpire’s call was loud and decisive.
David didn’t like it. “Are you blind!? That ball was so high, it practically hit a seagull!”
He stepped forward like he was about to go and argue with the ump toe to toe, when his cleat caught that loose shoelace and he tripped, the whole crowd gasping as he fell into the side of the dugout, clinging to the chain fence to keep himself from sprawling onto the dirt.
He straightened up, his face red. He was not a clumsy man. He was proud of his athleticism—and all the high school baseball that never translated into anything more but was a whole box bursting full of potential that he liked to talk about endlessly, even though the potential was long since squandered.
But hecould’ve been someone.
She could feel all that and more coming off him in waves, anger a shimmering aura around him.
His anger wasn’t her problem.
That thought almost made her smile.
The next pitch was wild, but the batter swung anyway and tipped the ball right off the end of the bat, sending it flying. It went right toward David, and to avoid it, he had to duck and dive, this time tripping and falling into the dust as he did.
