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Good as it’ll ever get is more like it.

“You wanna get out of here?” I asked. My hand itched to hold a baseball.

Dad always said I had the imprints of baseball laces in my fingers the same way most kids had grooves on theirs from climbing monkey bars. I was born to pitch.

Or at least I thought I was, before last summer.

“Nah. This party is just now getting interesting.” He smirked and pulled his mask back onto his face. “I think I’ll go dance with Eliza’s bunny friend again. Or cat…Whatever.”

“Hey, now.” I grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t forget our pact. All baseball—”

“No girls, yeah, I know.” He scratched his jaw. A long pink scar with faint stitch marks rested just above it. “I was the one to come up with it, remember?”

“I remember.” When Ben’s long-term girlfriend dumped him for a college guy days before our junior prom, he hit rock bottom and stayed there for a while. Lots of drinking. Lots of fighting. I hadn’t seen him down that bad since his dad left a couple of years ago.

“But just one dance. What could go wrong?” Ben winked and grabbed a slice of pizza before walking away.

About a million and two things, actually. Not that me listing them would’ve stopped him.

I wove in and out of the crowd, making my way toward the back deck, and a few of my teammates gave me high fives with slurred comments.

“Fulton!”

“Ace, ace, baby!”

“It’s your year, man!”

My year.

God, I hoped so.

I slid open the door to the deck and quickly closed it shut, falling against it hard enough to knock my crown to the fancy Trex flooring.

“Prince loses his crown a second time in one night,” Eliza called from the railing across from me. She let out a low whistle. “Some prince you are, Fulton.”

“Goth Bird comes to a party but sneaks away to play on her phone.” I scooped up my crown and shoved it back on my head. “Pretty pathetic, Crowley.”

“Bite me.”

“No, thanks.” I crossed the deck and leaned in toward her. “I don’t wanna get fleas.”

“God, you’re annoying.”

“You’ve missed it.”

“Ha. ’Bout as much as I’d miss an ETC console.” She bumped my arm as she walked down the steps and into the yard.

An ETC console?

When the hell did Eliza become a techie?

“Hey.” A guy dressed in a cop uniform three sizes too small called to me from the opposite side of the deck near a bunch of people smoking pot. “Is it true your granddad made his own team this summer?”

“Yeah. It’s true.” I texted Ben to ask if we could head home yet.

“How the hell did a Fulton get the money to start up a team?” The guy snickered as he took a hit.

“Sponsors.” And favors. Lots of favors I wasn’t supposed to know about, but old farmhouses had thin walls. “What’s it matter to you?”