Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 80953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Typically. But tonight I was squashed against my door, a book in hand, waiting for Chase to come home. We’d passed him in the hall earlier, Dad and I coming back from Moe’s, takeout containers in hand. Chase had stepped aside to let us pass, he and Dad exchanging a curt greeting. I’d looked away, but I’d noticed everything.
The smell of him. Different than before—cologne.
He’d been dressed up, a stiff button-down tucked into slacks.
His phone stuffed into one pocket as he’d moved past, toward the elevators.
He had been going to see her—a possibility I’d stewed over since we’d left the field. It’d been an afternoon game, putting us out early—early enough to allow for a date, should one asshole of a player feel up to it.
Dad and I had eaten our dinner in his room, watching the Devil Rays play, little said until the fifth inning, when he’d turned his chair toward me.
“Stern ever hit on you?”
“What?” I coughed, his timing right during a sip of soda, the liquid confused when I jerked, catching in the wrong pipe. Dad just sat there as I struggled between life and death, my eyes watering by the time my esophagus figured out the issue.
“Has he?” He muted the TV, and it was suddenly a serious conversation, the telltale signs beginning to emerge. Awkward silences. A stare you couldn’t avoid. The chasing of a subject until it died a slow and painful death. The Sex Talk, executed one year earlier, had been just like this. I didn’t know who Dad thought I was going to have sex with, but he’d seen some TV special about teenage pregnancies and had stumbled through a forty-five-minute lecture about STDs and pregnancy and condoms. I’d interrupted him around the time he got to death via labor with a clear proclamation that I was a virgin and had no plans to change that so could he please, thank you very much, turn on ESPN.
“No, Dad. He hasn’t hit on me.” I managed the words, unsure if they were true. He had kissed me. But since then, he’d gotten that girl’s number. Was on a date with her right now.
“Anything I need to know?”
“About Chase Stern?” I shook my head. “He’s just another player.” A laughable statement. He would never be just another anything. It wasn’t in his DNA to be normal. He was a superstar, the best in a sea of greats, and that was what my soul struggled with the most. Because as much as he may be a slut or an ass, all it took was him swinging that bat against a fastball, or his impossible leap into the air after a line drive, and I was lost. Watching him play poured steroids into the bloodstream of my want. It wasn’t fair to give one man so much, to put him in pinstripes, and on the greatest stage on Earth, and then ask me not to notice.
“He’s a good looking guy,” Dad pointed out awkwardly. “He—”
I laughed, grabbing a pillow off his bed and throwing it at him, my accuracy deadly, his duck slow. “Stop, Dad. Just stop worrying. Please.”
He tossed the pillow aside. “Go out with Tobey. For me. Just a movie or ice cream, something to get the Grant family off my back.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t know.”
He stood and held a hand out for my trash. “Go. I’m forcing the issue. He’s a nice guy. If you aren’t in love with him, that only puts my mind more at ease.”
I passed him my burrito wrapper, taking a final sip of soda before handing over the cup. “Fine,” I grumbled. “I’ll call him.”
“Be back by eleven,” he added, his interest in matchmaking apparently limited in scope.
“That won’t be a problem.” I glanced at my watch, the time just after seven, and headed back to my room with every intention to call Tobey.
Only I didn’t. I went back to my room, took a shower, and pulled on a jersey and some underwear. Redid my pedicure. Read an entire Cosmopolitan and was left with the mental task of committing ‘85 Ways to Make Him Moan!’ to memory. I stared at Tobey’s number. Went back and reread Chase’s texts. Went back to Tobey’s number. Decided I had no interest in being set up by my father. I’d been there, tried Tobey. If we were meant to be, I wouldn’t be trying to talk myself into calling him. So I hadn’t. I’d raided the minibar of snacks and grabbed my book.
And now I was here. Squashed against the door, pretending that it was the most comfortable place in the room to read. It was, really. I liked a cramped back and sore shoulder.
Just after nine, there was a sound, the elevator landing, and I dropped the paperback, shooting to my feet, my hands flat on the door, my eye glued to the peephole.