Matty answered for me. "I don't believe it. That girl loves you more than cornbread on Sunday."
I stuffed hands into my pockets. "She told me she loves me. That's not the problem. She said she didn't want to be 'somebody else's girlfriend.'"
"Dude, you don't get it." Pink shook his head, eyeing me like I was the village idiot. "Put yourself in her shoes. Imagine every person you meet, date, fuck, knows youonlyby your father's name. Or your fiancé's."
I swallowed. I could already see where this was going and I didn't like the view.
"She's probably never had anything of her own. Her entire identity has always been tied to some other fucker. Can you blame her for being a little scared that it would happen again?"
Five minutes ago, if someone were to ask me about my lowest point, I would have told them my second at bat in the majors. I'd fucked up a bunt, and in the process, broken two of my fingers. To make matters worse, my mom and grandmother had beenthere just behind home plate, first-row witnesses to my poor performance—and the pity party that followed.
That was the only time my grandmother got to see me play in the big leagues before she passed.
All of that was still miles above how I felt now, fifty feet below six-feet-under. Literally lower than worm food.
"Fuck." I scrubbed a hand down my face. "Fuck!"
It all made sense now. Clarke's hesitation to discuss our relationship label, her adversity to being known as my girlfriend. It wasn't me—or us—she had the issue with. It was the label, the way people might perceive us together. The fear that she might lose her own identity and take on mine. Because it had happened to her before . . . more than once.
I'm a fucking asshole.
Her words ran through my brain, like a record stuck on a loop. "I can't just be Soren Sinclair's girlfriend." For fuck's sake, she couldn't have said it any plainer, and still, it hadn't clicked for me until now.
Clarke wasn'tjustanything. To use the two in a sentence was blasphemy.
I needed to show her that she was so much more than any label, with or without me. So she didn't want to be my girlfriend? Fine. Then I'd be her boyfriend. I would shout it from every rooftop between Portland and Manhattan if that was what it took to get her back. For her to take me back.
"You're realizing how badly you fucked up, aren't you?" Pink's question wasn't so much a question, as it was stating the obvious.
I nodded from behind my hands.
"Are you going to fight for her, asshole?"
I nodded again.
"What are you gonna do?" Matty asked.
When I removed my hands, I was both embarrassed and honored to see the entire team staring back at me, eager smiles on their faces. They might not be smiling after they heard my plan.
"I have an idea," I told them. "But I'm going to need your help."
They voiced their agreement. All but one. The young man who had just given me the emotional ass-handing I deserved.
"I'm not going to pretend like I have it all figured out," I told him, "because I don't. But please, let me show you that I'm not that guy."
Pink's jaw clenched while his eyes looked me up and down, from the tips of my bruised toes to the unkempt beard that was in desperate need of a trim. Silence fell over the locker room as the rest of the team waited in earnest.
"What do you have in mind?" he finally asked, eliciting a series of smiles and back pats.
This was going to work. Thishadto work. And even if it it didn't, I was prepared to try again. To grovel at her feet until she forgave me for refusing to see things from her point of view. For letting my past cloud my judgment, so much so that it might affect our future.
No more. For Clarke Myers, I was going all in.
"Well?" Tuck prodded.
"Does anybody know how to sew?"
Clarke
