The Game Can’t Love You Back

by Karole Cozzo

  “You got this, Marshall.”

  “One more to go.”

  “Make them eat their words.”

  That last one’s from Scott.

  I think it’s the first time that the sense of us versus them is stronger than the feeling of us versus us in our dugout.

  My muscles feel invigorated as I trot toward the mound, and with my team behind me, I close out the game, shutting the door on our 8–5 win.

  Thank God this game didn’t slip away, I think as I line up with my teammates to slap hands.

  We line up on the first baseline, walking toward the plate and the line of red-and-blue uniforms. The pitcher who decided to get cute has apparently been forced to join his teammates, but when he reaches me, it’s abundantly clear that he hasn’t learned his lesson. Evidently, he has his father’s blessing to be an asshole, because when he walks past me, he withdraws his hand at the last second, refusing to touch mine.

  Chris Jamison, in line behind me, calls him out immediately. “Slap her hand, dude.”

  He shrugs. “No.”

  “Slap her hand.”

  I’m done being riled. I pull Chris forward. “Not worth forcing the issue. I’m not interested in slapping his hand, either.”

  Jackson’s in line behind Chris, so he witnesses the snub, too. And so after we gather our equipment, lining up to make our way back to the bus, he nudges one of the cocaptains. “She closed this game out after all that,” he says. “Let’s show a little support.” He puts his right arm in the air, extending his index finger. “One team.”

  Scott, being Scott, is quick to pick up on the gesture. He puts his hand in the air. “One team.”

  And down the line it goes, as more and more guys pick up on it, putting their right arms in the air as they walk, repeating the words. “One team.”

  Irritated as I am, my heart warms at their show of support, started by a Pirate and everything. And for whatever reason, I can’t help myself. I scan my teammates, looking for Jamie, curious if he’s playing along. But he’s hanging back, talking to Coach about something, and so I head for the bus unsure if he’s buying into the sentiment or not.

  As soon as I collapse into a seat in the middle of the aisle, exhaustion settles over me like a parachute that’s lost its wind. I didn’t let it show on the field, but now the stress and tension of it all gets to me, leaving me depleted, devoid of the energy that fills the bus after an away win.

  When Scott drops into the seat beside me, I ask if I can borrow his phone to listen to music, because when I open my bag, I realize I’ve forgotten mine back at school. He finds my favorite playlist and hands over the headphones, and I promptly check out, closing my eyes to the chatter and chaos around me.

  When we get back to the school, we shuffle off the bus, me heading toward my locker room, the rest of them heading toward theirs. I peel off my uniform, unwrap the disgustingly sweaty Ace bandage … and only then realize I’ve forgotten my towel. I stand there for a second, wondering what else I’ve managed to forget today.

  Screw it, I think. I’ll shower at home.

  With a long, tired sigh, I pull on a pair of sweats and an old Bulldogs T-shirt, jamming my Pirates hat back on over my braids because my hair is a laughable disaster. I’m eager to get home, but when I glance down at the bench one last time, I see Scott’s phone sitting there.

  I sigh a second time. Scott takes longer than any girl getting changed, because he spends so damn long socializing and joking around before bothering to shower. And I’m simply too tired and too spent to wait around outside for him. His energy supply may be bottomless, but today, mine is not.

  I swing my duffel bag onto my shoulder, pick up his phone, and make my way across the hallway from the girls’ locker room to the boys’. I knock once and get no response. I hear the showers running inside, loud comments being tossed back and forth over the din of locker doors slamming.

  I can hardly storm in there. Rolling my eyes, I raise my fist a second time and start pounding. I pound for a solid thirty seconds and am still pounding away when the door finally opens, sending me off balance.

  When I realize it’s Jamie Abrams standing behind the door, when I realize the state he’s in, I almost lose my footing entirely.

  He appears entirely unfazed. He leans against the doorjamb, tilting his face to assess me, realizing I haven’t really gotten cleaned up yet.

  Then he raises one eyebrow. “You’re really taking this ‘one team’ thing to heart, huh?”

  I glare at him, forcing my eyes to stay locked on to his.

  Which is hard, damn it.

  He’s still got his cleats on, still got his stirrups on. He’s still got his white uniform pants on, too, except they’re now sitting low on his hips. He’d gotten as far as taking his jersey off, so he’s standing inches away, bare-chested, the slight sheen from sweat highlighting some rather defined muscles. Look him in the eye. Do not look down. Do not even think about looking at his half-naked torso!

  I swallow hard, keenly aware of that strangely intoxicating postgame guy scent coming off him, and close my hand around Scott’s phone. “Shut up. I just have something I need to give to Scott.”

  He extends his hand, and I retreat, thwarting the possibility of his body coming any closer to mine.

  Don’t look down!

  “I can give it to him,” he offers.

  I fold my arms across my chest, keeping the phone from his grasp. “Thanks, but I’ll wait.”

  Jamie makes no move to leave. He’s still leaning against the doorjamb, narrowing his eyes as he studies me, but I refuse to look at him anymore. I stare into the safe space beyond his left shoulder.

  “Have I done something to piss you off?” he asks. “I mean, something new?”

  I chance a quick glance at his face. “Your locker room joke wasn’t funny. And…” I hesitate for a second. “Didn’t exactly hear any words of support coming from my pitching squad out there, and I didn’t see your hand in the air, so…” I shrug.

  Jamie shakes his head. “You confuse me, Marshall.” He looks me in the eye, raising an eyebrow in challenge. “Thought you didn’t do the whole knight-in-shining-armor thing.”

  “I don’t, but…”

  “Then don’t give a guy shit if he thinks there are things you can handle on your own, without needing some over-the-top show of support.” He pauses, voice softening some. “I knew you had it under control.”

  I stumble to formulate a response, but he’s caught me off guard, and before I can come up with anything, he rolls off the door frame, the heavy locker room door closing slowly behind him.

  And accidentally, I do it, damn it. I give in to the temptation. I stare at his naked back and admire his sculpted shoulders as he disappears from sight, feeling the flush—which I’m pretty sure has nothing to do with my temper flare-up or the steam escaping the locker room—creep over my chest.

  Chapter 13

  March 31

  Jamie

  Every spring, apparently, the administration subjects the junior and senior class to some boring and uptight PowerPoint presentation about prom fashion guidelines. It’s for the girls more than the guys—tuxes are tuxes—but everyone has to go so their lecture doesn’t seem sexist, I guess.

  This year, though, with Marcella leading the charge, the newly combined student council for our class managed to talk the principal and PTO president into getting rid of the PowerPoint. She talked them into replacing it with a live version of the rule book, a fashion show where kids would actually model what exactly you could get away with at prom and what you couldn’t.

  When Naomi asked me about being in the show a few weeks ago, I said, “Prom stuff? Already?”

  She gave me a look of disbelief. “Prom is less than two months away, Jamie.”

  “Yeah. That’s a long time.”

  Then she got really exasperated, throwing her hands in the air. “Sure. Okay.”

  “What is this thing again?”

&nb
sp; “It’s like a fashion show.”

  “No thanks,” I answered quickly, turning back to shove something in my locker.

  Naomi wrapped both hands around my biceps until I twisted back around. “Come on,” she groaned. “We need guys to do it, too. It’s stupid if there are just girls up there. Guys will make it funny.” Then she smirked at me. “Don’t play hard to get with this. We all know there’s nothing you’d enjoy more than strutting across the stage with a few hundred people staring at you. And you get to miss fourth block that Friday to get ready.”

  I made her wait a minute. “Guess if you’re going to make someone put on a tux and get up there, you might as well do it right.…”

  Naomi smiled knowingly. “Knew you’d give in. It’ll be fun.”

  She was right, for a while there anyway. I happily handed Jabrowski the pass to miss her class and got ready backstage with a bunch of guys I knew, some of my boys from the team. When some of the girls came out, gushing all over us, I didn’t mind checking them out, especially some of the girls in the “no” dresses that were particularly short or low-cut. And I didn’t mind walking across the stage, two senior girls on my arm, while “24K Magic” played, the crowd cheering and hooting, all eyes on me.

  Naomi does know me pretty well.

  But then, during the short intermission when the girls were changing their dresses, I stopped having a good time with it.

  Nate was nearby, reading from one of the prom flyers he’d grabbed. “Seventy-five dollars per ticket, that’s ridiculous. I heard the food’s always terrible anyway, and it’s just some lousy DJ. And Kayla thinks that I should buy both tickets because girls spend so much more on their dresses.”

  “Tell her to buy a cheaper dress, then,” another senior named Mark advised him.

  “It doesn’t even add up like she says,” Nate continued, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Kayla, one of the models, wasn’t anywhere nearby. “So maybe their dresses cost more, but we have to rent the tux, buy the flowers, find someone to get beer and pay them for it, and usually pay for the limo, too.”

  A buddy of ours named Sean stepped over and chimed in. “Yeah, and did you hear Billy’s parents just decided we can’t use their shore house for the weekend? The girls still want to go, so now we have to pay for some crappy hotel that’s going to jack their rates up because they know we’re in high school. My brother told me that he ended up spending almost seven hundred dollars that weekend between prom itself and the weekend after.”

  Suddenly my mouth felt desert dry and I was struggling to swallow. Seven hundred dollars? Seriously?

  “Such bullshit,” Nate muttered. Then he grinned and slapped my chest. “But we’ll pay it, because we’re suckers, right?”

  I managed to laugh, but my mind was elsewhere. Naomi probably assumed we were going together, and if we did, she would definitely have high expectations and plan on going to the beach weekend. With her date.

  Not that she was the girl I was concerned with letting down. Instantly, I thought of my mom.

  We could scrape together the money; I could pick up some extra shifts. My mom would do what she had to do, convinced she had to find a way to sacrifice so I didn’t go without. But just talking about prom had already left me with a sick feeling in my stomach; I highly doubted it would go away the night of prom, knowing what a waste it is, knowing that we actually had the lights turned off while I sailed out the door, where a fucking limo was waiting, wearing a tux.

  I started feeling trapped backstage, the feeling only increasing as I tried to make my way through the thick, dark curtains to escape the room for a minute and get some air. I kept pushing the fabric aside, only finding more of it, feeling like I was never going to get out of there. When I finally made my way through, the hallway didn’t seem good enough.

  I kept going. I pushed on through the double doors leading to the courtyard and made my way down to the grass, not looking back.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, I’m still sitting on top of a picnic table, head in my hands. I’ve loosened the tie that came with the stupid tux and unbuttoned the top buttons on my shirt. I can’t seem to make myself go back in there. And F it, I don’t want to. The girls have plenty of guys to walk them across the stage. I’m done for today.

  I’m staring down at my knees, but my head jerks up when I hear the doors open, assuming it’s Naomi, on a mission to find me and drag my ass back inside.

  I do a double take when I realize it’s Eve.

  She doesn’t see me at first, either. Her brows are drawn, and she’s staring at the ground as she walks away from the building, feet stomping against the ground. It’s only when she’s about twenty yards away from me that she realizes she’s not alone in the courtyard. She comes to an abrupt stop, and I can tell her instinct is to turn around and pretend she didn’t see me there.

  Except she’s a few seconds too late to ignore me entirely. She stares at me, questions me like I’m the one who interrupted her. “What are you doing?”

  I look past her, staring toward the road that runs in front of the school. “Too hot backstage,” I mumble. “I needed some air.”

  “You looked like you were having a good time up there.”

  Sure. It had been a nice ego boost, until the conversation backstage had knocked me right back down. I just shrug, too distracted to get into anything with Eve Marshall.

  She stands there another few seconds, then pivots abruptly. “Well, sorry to interrupt your solitude.”

  She makes her way back to the door, even opens it. I can hear the pulsing beat from the sound system, make out strains of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Eve drops the bar on the door like she’s just scalded her hands and steps back and away. She just stands there, staring at the door.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shakes her head slowly, not turning to look at me. “I really don’t want to go back in there. I wanted some air, too.”

  “So don’t go back in.” I draw a wide circle in the air around me with my hand. “Air. It’s sort of in abundance out here.”

  “Smart-ass.”

  “Takes one to know one,” I respond coolly.

  But she doesn’t fire off another quip, and she doesn’t make another attempt to go back inside. Instead, she walks toward my table. Climbs up the bench and sits down next to me. Well, I don’t really know if you could call it next to me. She’s so far away I’m pretty sure she’s on the verge of falling off the other end.

  Then it’s quiet, for a really long time. Which is good, because I really didn’t want to talk to anyone anyway. I fiddle with the borrowed cuff links, eventually pulling them out of the sleeves and shoving them in a pocket. Eve sits with her elbows resting on her knees. One braid is covering her cheek, making it hard for me to see her face.

  Then we both start talking at the exact same time.

  “Are you—”

  “Did you—”

  I gesture in her direction. “Go ahead.”

  “You a Phillies fan?”

  She doesn’t look at me when she asks the question, so I don’t look at her when I answer.

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  Half a minute passes.

  “Opening day next week. What do you think?”

  “About their chances?”

  “Yeah.”

  I shrug. “I dunno. Everyone’s always said 2015 and 2016 were the rebuilding years, and this year we could actually be contenders again. I’m not sold yet.”

  “Me neither,” she agrees. “It’s great that Mackanin has that much faith in the farm teams, but”—Eve shakes her head—“that can’t be the be-all and end-all. And there just wasn’t that much elite talent up for grabs in the off-season. Not with it being so entirely unappealing to come to Philly right now.”

  “Bullpen’s decent, though. Pitching staff can start off strong. If Nola stays healthy.”

  “That’s a pretty big if. It’s just been a lousy couple of years. My family make
s it to about half as many games as we used to.”

  “How many games did you go to before?”

  “A lot. Well, because we’ve had season tickets forever.”

  I feel that muscle in my jaw twitch. Of course they have season tickets. Of course she does.

  “Anyway, I don’t miss it so much; I don’t get all that into Citizens Bank Park.” Eve finally flips the braid over her shoulder and I can see her profile again. “I like watching games up at Reading better.”

  “Me too.”

  The surprise in my voice is evident. But I’ve never heard someone acknowledge this opinion, which I happen to share. I’d been downtown—only a few times because of the astronomical ticket, parking, and food costs—and I still prefer my family’s trips to Reading.

  “The hot dogs, right? Way better.”

  I feel a smile pushing at my lips. “For sure. And”—I pause for a second, feeling sort of dumb—“the smell of the park. It smells like a game in some way the city can’t match. I don’t know.”

  “I do.” She nods. “I know exactly what you mean. It’s just less commercial. More authentic. You want to be a Phillies fan, go to Citizens Park. You want to watch a baseball game, Reading’s where it’s at.”

  I’m nodding right along with her. “Word.”

  “My parents have always let me miss school for opening day, but … I don’t think I’m going to go this year. I have a math test on Wednesday, first mock trial meeting, and we have practice.”

  “It’s just practice. You could miss it.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She studies me, a sarcastic smirk appearing on her face. “So the start the next day is automatically yours?”

  “Do you only talk about baseball?”

  She bristles. “No.”

  I hadn’t meant the question to come out as an insult; I was actually kinda curious. But since she’d opened her mouth till now … only baseball had come out.

  Eve snorts. “Just seemed like the safest topic of conversation,” she tells me. “Best way to avoid an argument.”

  “We don’t argue about baseball?”