I kissed her slow and deep, savoring the faint honey taste on both our lips. “Then we don’t let it be a long time. We talk every day. FaceTime, texting, whatever. I’ll send you stupid selfies from the dugout and you send me updates about school and the bees. We’ll make it work.”
She searched my face for a long second then nodded, the tension easing from her shoulders. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds an awful lot like you want to be my boyfriend.”
“More than anything.”
She nestled back into my chest, fingers lacing with mine. “Okay.”
Relief and happiness rushed through me. “Okay? As in—”
“Okay, you can be my boyfriend.”
She laughed, curling back into me. “Boyfriend,” she murmured, testing the word like it was something precious.
“Girlfriend,” I echoed, holding her tighter.
And just like that, five weeks apart suddenly felt bearable.
Bella
Spring Training: Week One
“Come on, girl, hit that high note with me,” Parker shouted, cranking up the volume on the iconic Whitney Houston ballad until the car’s speakers rattled.
I laughed, covering my face. “Believe me, you donotwant me to sing.”
“I do,” she teased. “I want it. Sing it loud and proud, Bella Pink.”
I dropped my hands and rolled my eyes, but the smile tugging at my mouth betrayed me. “Okay, but if I shatter the windshield, that’s on you.”
I took a breath, went for it, and . . . yikes.Poor Whitney.This was disrespectful to her legacy.
Parker sang with her whole chest, hair whipping around her face like she was starring in her own music video. At least she could carry a tune.
The road stretched out ahead of us, flanked by bare trees and open fields dusted with frost. March still clung to winter in the mornings, but by midday, the sun had burned off the chill. Parker had the windows cracked just enough to let in the fresh, pine-scented air.
We had been driving for hours, and according to the GPS, we were still about an hour outside of Awful. That left plenty of time for our diva pop ballads playlist. We had already cycled through two different Broadway original soundtracks, plus Parker’s lengthy explanation for why the 2022 movie album ofChicagowas ten times better than the original stage production. Apparently, she had a thing for Catherine Zeta-Jones, who, in her own words, could “step on her and she would thank her.”
“It feels good to get away for a few days” I told her, resting my head back against the seat as the song faded out. “I needed a distraction.”
Parker nodded, her voice softening a little. “From missing your baseball boy?”
“From everything. Between classes and work and our budding honey empire, it feels like my brain has been moving a million miles a minute lately.”
She patted the hand resting in my lap. “I get it. Sometimes we gotta get away from the people and places we love to breathe. I find that makes coming home feel so much sweeter.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
“Maybe.” She gave a small, complicated smile, the kind that didn't quite reach her eyes. “Awful is small.Reallysmall. Most of my friends ended up married to whatever jerkoff they dated in high school, and that just . . . isn’t in my plans. Few of us get out.”
I turned toward her. “But you did.”
That was the other thing we had talked a lot about during our drive. From waiting tables in a Parisian café to teaching English off the coast of Vietnam and running the radio station—as in, theonlyradio station—in Antarctica for a summer, Parker had spent the better part of a decade traveling the world.
“For a long time, I thought I’d never come back,” she admitted. Her finger tightened slightly on the wheel.
“And now?”
Parker shrugged. “It feels good to be home. Don’t get me wrong, moving out from under my mom’s and sister’s thumbs is at the top of my list. But the wide-open spaces, the way the sky feels endless—yeah, I missed that. I tried the world and it was amazing. But it didn’t feel likeminethe way this does.”
