Page 15 of The Perfect Play

What was with everyone trying to get me to college lately?

I drove home, took a quick shower, and headed into the diner. Lou was at his usual spot behind the grill, and he waved to me and actually smiled. I’d worked several days since the incident with the window, and he’d mostly ignored me. At least I was making progress with someone.

“How’s your friend doing? The one who went through the window?” Lou asked.

“He’s doing better. He got a lot of stitches, but he played in our home opener yesterday. The doctor said he just had to wear a face mask to protect them and he’d be fine. I don’t think we’ll get far without him.”

Lou nodded and flipped two burgers on the grill. “I’m just glad it wasn’t lasting damage. It would be a shame for a talent like that to get ruined.”

I agreed. “Yeah, Nate is a speed demon, and we depend on him out in centerfield.”

“No punishment from your coach, then?” Lou didn’t look in my direction, but the words held more curiosity than accusation.

“I had to sit out yesterday’s game,” I said, focusing on tying the apron strings around my waist. It had been tough to take, but I understood where Coach Maddox was coming from. He couldn’t have a rule against violence if he didn’t issue some kind of punishment, even with how many of the guys tried to appeal his decision.

“Better get going on the tables. Claudia’s in a mood because she’s had to do it several times already, and we know how that goes.” He gave me a small smile, and I moved to my station, retrieving a gray bucket and wash rag.

The last time I’d worked, Claudia got so overwhelmed that she ended up throwing a dish against the kitchen wall, shattering it into a billion little pieces. It was a wonder Lou kept the woman around considering how much drama she created. Lou and Penny had worked to get the food remade so it could go out to the customers while I’d been tasked with cleaning up the pieces.

Penny. She was the only girl on my mind these days. Not that I didn’t have the opportunity to flirt with dozens of girls at school every day, but for some reason, that had lost its appeal. Penny’s comment about me always having a girl was like driving a dagger into my chest.

My father’s alcohol problem started when he’d taken his current job two months before Penny’s mother had taken off, and that wasn’t the only bad habit he acquired. I’d caught him texting women or calling them at random times, and I knew he was cheating on my mom. I hadn’t realized how much I was turning into him, with the constant flare-ups of anger and only sticking with a girl for about a week before moving on.

No wonder Penny found me despicable. Her father was like the king of morality, although he didn’t flaunt it like most. He was a stand-up guy who got his heart broken by his wife walking out on him and his two kids for her boss. In Penny’s eyes, I wouldn’t measure up to her father. She’d called me a waste of space at one time back when she was trying to piece together her life, when I’d avoided her for at least two weeks before she finally caught me sneaking out of my house and through the backyard that led to Dax’s place.

But people could change, right? I was young and had plenty of time to make things right with the people around me. I just needed to find a way to convince them, or even just her, that I was willing to change. Because turning into my father wasn’t something I wanted to do.

Driving home after my shift, I made a mental list of things I was going to change, and the first was actually getting my homework done. I wasn’t completely sure why I suddenly cared about what Penny thought after so long, but she was the most real thing in my life, the one who’d call me on my bull and put me in my place. And I needed that.

Chapter 13

Penny

The next week sped by with another two wins for us, while the baseball team won one and lost one. That had given me plenty of ammunition to fire at Jake during our one shift together, and while I could tell he was still sore about the loss, his temper didn’t flare up like I’d expected it to.

Saturday came around, and I was bored. I’d already tried contacting Kate, Serena, Brynn, and Hazel, but they couldn’t get together until the evening. I’d cleaned the house while my dad and Derrick worked on a yard nearby and then finished the readings for all my classes on Monday.

I grabbed my glove and cleats from my bat bag and walked outside, sitting down on the crumbling cement porch that led from the back door to the backyard. After tying up the cleats good and tight, I whipped my arm around a few times, trying to loosen up the muscles from the long week of workouts, practices, and games.

We stored several buckets to the side of our small deck, one of which was full of old yellow softballs. I pulled the bucket over to what had become my “mound,” basically just a small piece of wood my father had nailed into the ground, and took a ball from the bucket. The feel of the leather under my fingers was slick from overuse, not like the soft newness of the balls we used for practices or games, but it was a ball nonetheless, and I didn’t have the money to buy new ones. All my diner money had gone toward fixing my car the week before, and I was back at square one.

I lifted my eyes to the large rubber mat my father had constructed a few years before. We’d started out with a tire I had to pitch through when I’d just begun to learn the skills around eleven or twelve, but this newer model had four small holes cut out at the heights for the strike zone.

Bringing the ball into my glove, I wound up and threw the ball underhand, sighing when it went wide of the mat. I just needed to warm up. I was never as good as I was on game days, but that competitive streak ran through me, and I wanted to be as perfect as I could on each pitch, even in practice.

I went through the bucket in a few minutes and carried it with me to pick up all the balls. My mind was wrapped up in how hard it would be to create a machine that would retrieve the balls for me, when I heard footsteps behind me, causing me to jump.

“What are you doing?” I called out as I saw Jake walking toward me dressed in long basketball shorts and a short-sleeved t-shirt, his glove in hand. The shirt seemed to hug his chest and stomach, causing my eyes to linger there longer than they should have.

He shrugged, giving me that half-grin. Even though I thought I’d built up an immunity to it, the oddness of our encounters over the recent weeks left me without words.

“I heard the typical smacking of a ball on a mat and figured I’d come out and see what you’re up to.” He stopped a few feet away, studying his glove, and when he looked up at me, the piercing gaze of his chocolate-brown eyes made me sway a bit. I steadied myself on the bucket before picking it up and walking toward the mound again, avoiding his gaze.

“What? No video games or girls to hang out with at this time on a Saturday?” I adjusted my feet on the wooden slat, wound up, and used a newfound energy to thrust the ball toward the mat, the smack coming in even louder than before.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

With a loud chuckle, I caught him off guard. “I haven’t played video games since you beat me atMario Kartall those years ago. And as far as my friends, they’re going to do something later tonight, probably to celebrate Brynn’s basketball victory in the semi-finals.”

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