Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 60219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Walking back to the mound, I felt an extreme sense of focus descend on me. Suddenly, the nationwide TV audience didn’t mean anything anymore. Neither did impending free agency or anything else. All that mattered was Mallory was there, and that meant I was going to pitch the game of my life. I almost felt sorry for the guys in pinstripes. It was going to be a long evening for them.
I finished my warmup pitches and waited for the first batter to come up to the plate. He was well known for being a high contact hitter, excelling at taking walks and fouling off close pitches. Working around guys like that never seemed to work. It was best to go straight through them like a buzzsaw.
Ricky put one finger down. Fastball. I nodded and wound up.
Ninety-six miles per hour, down and in. He took it for a strike. A shockingly large number of people cheered.
I looked up to see the girl who looked an awful lot like Mallory clapping. The people on either side of her I didn’t recognize, but they seemed to be looking at her rather often. I tore my eyes away. I had a job to do.
Two more outs, a lazy pop fly to right center, and a hard grounder to first and the inning was over. I started walking off the field and glanced up to where the girl was. It had to be Mallory. And she was looking directly at me.
I jogged down the steps of the dugout while the boys around me grabbed helmets and talked strategy. The opposing pitcher was working high and tight. They needed to be ready if he went headhunting. That sort of thing would not only be dangerous to them, but it would cause repercussions. Ones that I would be charged with dealing out.
The dugout had a step before the railings, letting the boys stand up a bit as they leaned over the rails to watch the game. Normally, as a pitcher, I would keep my eyes on the field but would sit at the far end of the bench, sometimes keeping a warm compress on my shoulder. Not yet though. Right now, I only wanted to keep an eye on Mallory. I stepped up on to the step and leaned over the railing, craning my neck to get a look at her.
Ricky came up on one side of me, and a newer player, a kid up from the minors who played short, came up on the other. He looked over my shoulder to see what I was looking at and let out a whistle.
“Damn, she’s beautiful,” he said. “You know that girl?”
“Which one?” I asked, pretending not to know who he was talking about.
“The redhead,” he said. “Come on man, don’t tell me you can’t see her. She has a sign with your name on it, bro.”
“I see her,” I said. “She’s a girl from back home. We went to high school together.”
All I knew was that if the kid, whose name I hadn’t fully committed to memory yet, said something lascivious, he was going to catch a bit of time in the doghouse. I might not be one of the old vets, but I had some pull. If he didn’t want to ride the pine for a few weeks, he’d be careful about what he said.
Thankfully, he kept his mouth shut, going quiet for a few minutes before making a comment on one of our batters’ stances. I ignored him. I was busy watching Mallory laughing and talking with a guy sitting beside her. A twinge of jealousy that I had absolutely no right to went up my spine and made me grit my teeth. I forced myself to pop gum into my mouth and start to chew so I didn’t grind them into dust.
It was irrational. I shouldn’t be feeling jealous over a girl I had seen twice in ten years. Yet there I was, wanting very much for our own offense to be done so I could go fire fastballs as hard as my arm would allow me and work off some of the frustration. The kid had been right about one thing: Mallory was beautiful. She had been beautiful before, but now she was downright incredible.
I couldn’t help but feel jealous. I wanted to get her attention, but from this direction I wasn’t even sure if she could clearly see me. Then she glanced over, and our eyes locked. She smiled, and I thought maybe she could. It gave me an idea.
7
MALLORY
“So this is good,” Tamara said. “He’s doing really well, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s doing great.”
“They have a zero score,” Steven said, gesturing toward the scoreboard. “Isn’t he like, almost entirely responsible for them not having any points?”
“Runs,” I said, “and not entirely, but a lot of it, for sure.”