“Can I give you a piggy-back ride for a little bit of the way?”
“You want my legs wrapped around you.”
“How dare you. I’m being chivalrous and gentlemanly.”
“Lies. All lies.” I smirked and he winked at me. “Let’s do this. If we’re going to get photographed, we might as well give them something to talk about.”
“That’s my girl.”
He’d called mehis girl. I loved it.
Chapter Eighteen
Zade
“Remind me to tell Callie I love her, okay?” Jeff clapped my back as we left the field a couple of days later. Callie and I had opted out of running for a few days due to her sore muscle and instead got breakfast. We kissed. A lot. And I finally understood what it meant to be a lovestruck teenager. Aaron have given me so much shit that I’d nut punched him the day before. Jeff, on the other hand, had said my mood had changed for the better and something along the lines that he didn’t hate being my catcher anymore. “Your shit is on fire.”
“I’mthattalented.” There had been no tightness since the first day. The Pilates workouts had begun earlier in the week and I felt loose and amped at the same time. Coach hadn’t sneered at me with disappointment in over three weeks and Nicole had given me a half-smile. September was looking good.
“My bad, king Zwillow. I forgot who I was talking to for a second. Dick.” He punched my arm—not my throwing arm—and scoffed. “You say talent, Nicole says Pilates, I say it’s Callie.”
“She knows her shit.” I said, pride filling my chest. She didn’t act like she knew baseball—she did. It was hot as fuck.
“I know, man. She and I got into a heated debate about the best closer in baseball and when she started dropping stats from the guy’s collegiate years, I kind of put my head down and surrendered.” He laughed and whistled at two girls running by us. They waved, which Jeff ate up. I waved, too, because I was polite, but I was more concerned about when him and Callie had hung out.
“When did you see her?” I tried to play it off, but he knew. He smirked at me, making me have to fight the urge to smack him.
“I ran into her and Greta at the Bean. Calm down, psycho.” I hated how his face mocked me, but I remain helpless. I wanted to help—hell, I wanted toprotecther.
Instead of responding to his comment, I brought up the bonding our coach wanted us to do. He insisted we take a team trip to one of those team-building campsites. We were expected to head out for four days during our fall break the first week in October. Only a month away and we were already dreading it. Coach had a reputation for being the opposite of anything…enjoyable. The year before, someone had snuck in booze and he’d made us run laps around the lake for every ounce in the bottle. We’d never known who’d brought it, but our bets had been on the punk-ass freshman who’d made it because of his daddy’s money.Fucking Carl.
“Maybe it’ll be different this year. I don’t know…campfires and shit.” He sounded skeptical. He should.
“Yeah, my idea of a good time is not campfires and shit. You don’t have classes tomorrow, do you?”
“Hell no. I got lucky as damn. I’m free for three days, and with that, I’m going to go decide who I’m inviting over later.”
“What happened with the girls?” I asked, amused.
“Oh, well…” He grinned like the bastard he was. “They weren’t too pleased about me not picking between them.”
“You’re a dog.”
“Just because you got spayed doesn’t mean that you weren’t like this, too. Remember that, bro.” A wash of anger filled his eyes and I became irritated. I wasn’t judging him but seeing it from the outside gave me a bad taste.
I held up my hands and shrugged. “I know, man.”
The awkward silence lasted until we got to our house a short time later. He hadn’t changed and yet, he annoyed me, maybe because I used to be like that. He hit the back of my head, a stupid grin on his face.
“Sorry, I got defensive. Let’s hash it out with Madden?” He pointed to the controllers on the table and I nodded fervently. I was itching for competition or something. I knew I needed to take my time with Callie, but to say I was tense was just the beginning of it.
“You got it.”
Three hours later, we got up and stretched. We were tied and that was unacceptable. “Fuck, Jeff, you got better at the game.”
“You started sucking less. That’s it.” He clapped my back and we roamed the fridge for food. It went so fast in the house that we weren’t surprised to see none there. “Shit. Nothing but eggs.”
“I take it you don’t want eggs?”
