EJ came in a few minutes later. I had done such a thorough job of overthinking the non-kiss last night that I wasn't even sure if he would show up. It felt like such a relief to see him. I went up to him as soon as I saw him, giving him a hug.
"How was your day?" I asked.
"It was great," he said. "I worked out at the hotel, and then I went to the mall." He pointed at his clothes, and I nodded and looked him over.
"Nice," I said, trying to act cool even though I could hardly look at him when he was dressed like this. He had been somewhere nice—to some department store. He had on black jeans with a black and white button-down shirt. The jeans were fitted to perfection, and he had on those same spotless tennis shoes. He was manly and he knew how to dress. I had a few male clients who dressed well, but none of them… honestly, none of them even came close to the handsome, polished appearance of EJ. He had his face in the media quite a bit, and he had developed a good style. It made me proud to have cut his hair because he wore it so well.
"You bought all this stuff today at the mall?"
"Right down to the socks," he said with a bright smile.
"Your hair looks good," I said. I reached up to touch it and mess with it some because that's what I would normally do. I had to remind myself that I couldn't be afraid to touch him just because I noticed him differently now.
"Is it okay?" he asked, turning a little, letting me work.
"Yes. You did amazing. I'm just playing with it since I'm in hair mode."
The truth was that I was aching to be near him. Continuing to touch his hair was a shameless attempt to break some sort of invisible physical wall that seemed to have formed between us last night. I only did it for a few seconds before focusing on getting my things.
"What should we do?" I asked. We both knew we would make simple spur-of-the-moment plans today based on how we both felt.
"I've already got something set up," he said. "I hope that's okay."
"Oh, yeah, of course," I said. "Do I need to change? I was thinking we'd run upstairs anyway… so I can pay attention to my face for a second."
"What's wrong with your face?" he asked, scanning it seriously.
I grinned. He was so handsome that it was difficult to be close to him without getting distracted and having crushing butterflies.
"Nothing's wrong with it. I hope. I'm just talking about powdering it or whatever if we're going somewhere. What did you have in mind?"
"A baseball game," he said.
"A baseball game?"
"Yes."
"Professional?"
"Yes," he said with a smile. "The Pirates. They have a game at five today, and I got us tickets."
"Oh, that'd be fun. I'd love to see a game of baseball. Thank you. What time do we need to leave here?"
He shrugged. "Thirty minutes. Forty-five, maybe. We don't have to be on time."
"Did you tell anyone we'd be there?"
"Well, I told a few people. But they're busy playing, so we don't have to be in a hurry. They're not going to be looking up in the stands watching out for us."
"I'm excited about this," I said, smiling at him. "This is going to be fun."
***
During the next few hours, I experienced things that not many people got to experience. I sat next to a former MLB player and had the game commentated to me by a pro. We ate a hot dog,peanuts, and crackerjacks, like the song said. Then we sang the actual song.
The only thing that failed was that we did not end up on the kiss cam. I knew there was such a thing at professional sports games. I also knew it would be a convenient way for things to happen between us. Some part of me thought that, since he had connections, he might pull some strings and have the kiss cam come to us. There was no such luck. They did a kiss cam, and they spotlighted five or six couples, but none of them were EJ and me. He didn't even look at me during that time or notice that the kiss cam was happening. That was the only thing that could have used some improvement. Otherwise, it was an amazingly good experience.
I had never been to a major league baseball game before. In fact, I had never been to a baseball game at all. My older brother had never played sports, and Christian wasn't into any sports when we were together. EJ had to explain things to me, and it was fun and interesting. He laughed at my questions, and he said more than once that he was impressed at how quickly I caught on.
