Page 18 of Foul Line

Petrie pushes his glasses up his nose. “Excuse me?”

Lake scoffs. “Yeah, I’m not pairing up with her. Sorry. Not sorry?”

I glare at him as his brother laughs aloud. Like I want to be paired with him.

“Oh.” Petrie switches his gaze to me, but I refuse to make a sound. I won’t back down. If I have to work with Lake, I will, even if it is to prove a point.

“I’ll work with Tessa,” Alec offers.

Lake sneers. “How chivalrous of you.”

When Petrie turns to make the adjustments, Alec gives Lake the bird. Only, it’s not as forceful as I would have done. He smirks as he gives it until he catches my eye. Then, he turns away, accepting the packet of papers from the mindset expert.

I just know this day is going to be absolute torture.

Everyone files out of the room ahead of us. I don’t even move from my seat until Alec does. “You didn’t have to do that, you know,” I tell him.

He gives me a look. “Yes, I did. Lake would’ve eaten you alive.”

“Lake can kiss my fucking ass.”

Alec ignores me, looking through the papers. I read over his shoulder. Petrie explained a little bit of what was going on. Mindset is so important, especially when someone is trying to play sports at a high level or be a CEO of a business. High stress, high stakes. It looks like the packet is a cross between learning to rely on others, a.k.a teamwork, and learning about other mindsets. I have a feeling this kind of class is going to help only those who take it seriously. My father attributes a lot of his success to mindset. He’s read enough self-help books and has even been to a few Tony Robbins and the like seminars.

“Alright, let’s find a place to go over this thing,” he says. I’m about to suggest the beach, but he heads down that way anyway. The screen door slams behind us and we walk across the grass until he plops his ass in the sand facing the water. “This should be good, right?”

No one else is around. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them blow this exercise off. Alec brings the worksheets in front of us, and I lean over to read. The first question is a biggie. It wants us to tell our partner our individual goals. A goal for the next year, five years, ten, and beyond. It goes on to say that admitting one’s goals is super important, blah, blah, blah, but all I can think is thank God I’m not partners with Lake right now. I don’t give a shit about his goals. His one-year goal is to probably keep me off the damn basketball team.

“You go first?” Alec asks. “One-year goal.”

“Easy,” I tell him. “My one-year goal is to once again make the Rock basketball team, except this time, I’m actually going to play.” Alec opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “I’m not done. I want to play a significant number of minutes in the championship game. I want to make a difference in whether we win or lose. I want to help my team. I want to win,” I say, my voice hardening with each promise I make to myself. It isn’t as if what I’ve just said is any different than what I normally say to myself, but it seems so much bigger now that I’ve said it in front of Alec.

When I’m finished, his emerald eyes move to mine. His throat works. “You could’ve done all that,” he says.

“I could have,” I say back, reinforcing it. “I should have.”

We just stare at one another, his eyes searching mine. I hope mine don’t betray any of my inner thoughts. Right now, I’m thinking about how good looking he is. I’m thinking back to how he was the first Baller to be sweet to me. How he held me outside the baseball locker room, his fingers working inside me. I swear my face flushes, but I don’t look away. He knows what we did, and he’s the only one who should feel ashamed of it.

“You go,” I say finally.

He tears his gaze away. “Next year, I want to continue to focus on my athletic abilities.”

He looks down at the paper like he’s going to move on. I put my hand over it. “That’s it? Alec, that’s hardly anything. You’re not promising yourself anything with that kind of talk. What do you want out of this next year?”

Maybe this kind of talk is unfamiliar to Alec, but I’m used to it. Dad constantly asks me what my goals are—broad and specific. “I don’t know,” he says.

“You don’t know? That’s not an answer. Don’t bullshit your way through this. It’s important.”

“Fine. I wish I could get my sister to stop fucking talking about you. How’s that?”

“Okay,” I grind out. “Don’t use words like ‘wish’, you should be saying, ‘I’ll get my sister to stop talking about Tessa Dale.’”

I swear I can hear his teeth grinding. “I’ll get my sister to stop talking about Tessa Dale.”

“Great,” I deadpan. “What else?”

“I want to start being a better person.”

I scoff. I can’t help it. “Good luck with that.”

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