I abandoned the bleachers to meet up with Brooks. Hunter brushed past me, and Claire laughed her flirty little giggle, which she always reserved for him.
“Hey, Bri!” Hunter called to me.
I turned, wrapping my arms around myself. I should’ve worn a sweatshirt. It was spring-ish out, but not short-sleeve weather. I rubbed the skin on my arms with my hands as Hunter teased, “I hope you believe in me, too.”
“Hunter!” Clairethwackedhis arm.
He laughed good-naturedly, and I joined him, even though I sort of wanted to crawl under the bleachers and hide. I was never going to live that down.
With Hunter and Claire headed off toward Hunter’s car—we were all going to meet up at Claire’s house for pizza and a movie—I looked up just in time to see Brooks coming up beside me.
Something tickled in my stomach. His hair was damp from sweat, and his blue eyes were twinkling as if someone had just gifted him a million dollars. “That was awesome!” He breathed.
I eyed him.
“I know. We lost.” His grin was infectious, and I found myself matching it. “But playing? Man. I can’t wait for the season to start.”
The breeze picked up, and a gust swept over my arms. I shivered, rubbing at the bumps that rose on my skin.
“Are you cold?” Brooks dropped his gear bag and bent over it. Rummaging around, he tugged out his sweatshirt. It was navy blue with the name of his old high school on the front. Before I could say, “no” or “thank you” or “yes, please,” he had scrunched it up in his hands and tugged the hoodie down over my head. My baseball cap got stuck at the neck opening, and then it flipped off my head and onto the ground as he tugged. The sweatshirt settled on my shoulders, and he finally let go of it. “Put your arms in. You’ll get warm.”
It was so off-handed, so nonchalant, like it wasn’t anything any normal, decent human being wouldn’t have also done. But as Brooks bent to retrieve my cap that lay on the ground, I slid my arms into the sleeves and inhaled the smell of laundry detergent and . . . Brooks Mason. It smelled like what I imagined palm trees and ocean spray might smell like. To die for.
He straightened and positioned the ball cap back on my head. Yep. I was drowning. His blue eyes were like the ocean in Hawaii, and he looked at me in this moment as though I were his muse. His reason for playing baseball. His—
Oh my. Brooks’s hands were doing the swift up-and-down rub on my upper arms. Didn’t he know that the idea of another human being touching me was like rubbing a cat’s fur backward? Only this wasn’t. This was . . . nice. I could feel the warmth coming back into my arms. His sweatshirt fit perfectly. That cozy, snug sort of perfect. His motion was super polite and super nice and super—oh, hello!—Brooks pulled me in for a quick hug, and I swear I felt him drop a kiss on my head.
Say what?
He pulled back and, without pausing, reached down for his bag. “Ready to head out?”
I stuttered and stammered, and any noise that may have escaped from my mouth was completely unintelligible. He draped his arm over my shoulder, and we started walking toward his car.
Boyfriend.
Girlfriend.
It felt . . . real. Not fake. This feltreal.
Until he leaned over to my ear as we walked and mumbled, “Think they all believe we’re dating?”
Reality hit me like a baseball to the face.
“Oh. Yeah.” I needed to learn to say more than one-word sentences in Brooks’s presence.
“Perfect.” He nodded. Then he added with a smirk, “Still believe in me?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because yes, I still believed in him. So much so that the whole sweatshirt scene had me thinking this was real. That we were really dating.
Only we weren’t.
I didn’t even know how I felt about that.
Forty-nine text messages.
That’s how many notifications were on my phone just in the messaging app when I woke up. It was Saturday after the baseball game. Reece and I had come home late—I was still wearing Brooks’s sweatshirt—and I didn’t wake up until noon.
I rolled over in bed, taking my phone with me. It had to be Lia, and something had to be dreadfully wrong. Who else would send me that many texts? Only when I opened my messages, they were literally a long line of unique texts from random people at school and a few from Aunt Elle, one from Aunt Tracy, and the Aunt Twins had even sent a few. Of course, my cousins left me voice messages—it was too early in the day to listen to Jake’s comedic take on life and whatever Jadon said had to be . . .
