“I don’t know,” Dani answered. “He’s so quiet. I feel like she would dominate him at every turn.” She turned toward me. “Unless you’re into that kind of thing,” she added with a wink.
Before I could even answer—because silly me, I thought I should have some say in who my friends wantedmeto date—Clarke spoke again.
“Matty is sweet and—don’t tell Soren—very hot.”
“Oh, yeah!” June snapped her fingers. “He’s the redhead, right? The one who plays . . . middle base?”
“It’s shortstop,” Dani shot back. “But yes.”
“Personally,” Jo said. Jo was the keeper of all town gossip, mostly because he sat back and listened. Like a fly on a wall. “I would love me a slice of Jared Pink. Assuming that Matthew would let us bring in a third.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Anybody but him.”
Shit. I didn’t realize I’d said that aloud until June’s lips kicked up. “Woah, got a problem with Jared, Ness?” Her eyes gleamed with mischief.
She knew exactly what my problem was—one too many X-rated dreams about his A+ ass.
It’s not him. It’s the baseball pants.
At least, that was the lie I’d been telling myself for months now.
Dani cocked her head to one side. “Yeah, got a problem with my roommate?”
That was reason #29140 not to talk to, think about, or speak of Pink. He and Dani lived together. Their relationship was—and from what I had gathered, had always been—purely platonic, but that didn’t complicate things any less.
“If you must know, yes. He annoys the shit out of me.”
She shrugged. “Well, yeah. Annoying is his default setting. Besides that, I mean?”
How the two of them—a thirty-year-old goth princess and a barely legal “golden retriever puppy” of a man who made dick jokes and rode a scooter—got on so well was beyond me.
I twirled the stem of my now empty wineglass. According to Rae from the repair shop, it would take at least a week before Terry was back to her usual self, and that was only if the parts came in in time. Since I’d be hoofing it for the foreseeable future, I guessed it wouldn’t hurt to get a third glass of cab. Not after the day I’d had.
“Look,” I said, dodging Dani’s question entirely. “You all are so thoughtful for caring about me and my lack of sex. Truly, I appreciate it. But for the time being, I just want to focus on the store, the festival, and the plant I just bought for the store. I can barely keep a succulent alive; the last thing I need is another human being to care for.”
The game resumed after that, but even as our coven infiltrated the secret cellar in the church to rescue Brogan’s captive princess, my mind couldn’t help but wander to visions of a certain man with certain . . . doglike qualities.
Only this time, he was clad in heavy armor instead of athletic joggers and wielding a sword that made his biceps bulge.
That was going to make for one hell of a dream tonight.
Pink
Roasters 90–57
That’s strike three, fucker.
I knew it before the ball hit Bennett’s glove, before it had even left my hand. It was my superpower.
The friction of the laces rubbing against the already formed calluses on my fingers combined with my lengthy stride off the mound made for the perfect curveball.
“Strike three.”
The batter shook his head as he trudged off toward the dugout. I couldn’t blame the guy; he hadn’t had a hit all game.
I resisted the urge to smirk while I jogged off the field, toward the crowd’s deafening cheers. Since the early days of tee ball, every one of my coaches had drilled into me that there was a fine line between cocky and confident—one that I tiptoed almost daily. And why not? I was a fucking fantastic ballplayer.
