“I don’t blame you, cap,” I told him, even if he wasn’t listening. “Kate and Anthony are bae.”
“I’m a Colin and Penelope man, myself,” Bennett said.
“I can’t believe you kept this to yourself for so long, man.”
“It’s not like it was a secret.” He waited until Roman came back into the room to claim his chair before adding, “Not like Roman taking ballroom dance classes.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Roman roared. “Is nothing sacred anymore?”
Nessa
Roasters 95–61
Baseball was boring.
There, I said the thing that was on all forty-two thousand fans’ minds. And it had to be true, mostly because I refused to believe that many people were enjoying this.
What was enjoyable about loud, obnoxious crowds, plastic seating that had clearly not been designed for a size twenty-two body, and subpar snack foods? My hazelnut latte from the on-site coffee roastery was the one exception. It had the precise nut-to-milk ratio that Jo had never been able to perfect, not that I would ever tell him so.
Pink hurled another ball toward home plate. According to the scoreboard, he had already thrown close to seventy pitches, and we were only five innings deep. The ball landed in Bennett’s mitt, making the batter wince and the fans go wild.
“What happened?” I asked when the roars died down.
“Strike three,” June explained. “You know, if you’re going to date a baseball player—”
“Pretend to date a baseball player.”
“—you might want to learn the basic rules of the game.”
She wasn’t wrong. What was worse was I had already spent nearly two hours this afternoon researching rules, teams, and individual players’ statistics. A few things had stuck, but not enough to understand the umpire’s incoherent hand gestures.
June knocked the bill of my new Roasters cap, the one that she had insisted I buy even though it cost more than a week’s worth of lattes. And even though copper-haired queens weren’t supposed to wear red, I couldn’t deny that it looked cute as fuck on me.
“Believe me, I’m trying.”
Here was what I had learned so far. Baseball pitchers didn’t pitch every day, which was news to me. Not only that, but there were several types of pitchers. Starters, relievers, closers—or were they finishers?
I guess they don’t have the . . . stamina of starters.
From what little information I had absorbed, I knew one thing for sure—Jared was a star. Like, a once in a generation, history in the making, three hundred dollar jerseys kind of star.
“Not arrogant, angel. Confident.”
The Roasters were good, but Jared was great, and that really burned my britches, as Granny Gibbs used to say. All this time, I had assumed he was writing checks that that big ass mouth of his couldn’t cash. As it turned out, that wasn’t the case. The man was incredible at what he did.
He made the game look effortless, like anybody could do it, even though I knew that wasn’t the case. What surprised me most was his unwavering concentration. Nothing fazed him. If anything, the crowd’s energy fueled his fire.
He also didn’t look awful in pinstripes. Okay, that was a gross understatement. The truth was, it should have been illegal to look that good in baseball pants.
“Who wants a churro bite?”
I looked up from Jared’s ass in time to see Kaylani and Ryan slide back into their seats, each of them carrying an overflowing tray of carbs. Thankfully, June was ready for the bag of churro bites that Kaylani tossed in our direction; I sure wasn’t. There was a reason I had never taken a liking to baseball—my hand-eye coordination was severely lacking.
“Dang, Ness.” Kaylani kicked her feet up on the cement median, the only thing separating us from the field. “When Jared said he would hook us up with good seats, he wasn’t exaggerating. I can practically taste the pine tar.”
Note to self: Google pine tar later.
“No kidding,” I said around a smile.
