Page 40 of The Perfect Hit

He grinned. “The question is, are you ready for it?”

I feigned a cry. “I don’t know. I mean, it still feels all disjointed, and at this point, we should be getting it down. I mean, we only have three more weeks until the performance.”

His eyes went wide. “What do you mean? Is it really in three weeks?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, watching as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and started swiping at something.

“We have the away game against San Marcos that Thursday night.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“That’s an hour away, plus the time it takes to get all the warmups done. How am I going to work that out?” His lips tightened into a thin line, and the muscle along his jaw tensed.

Anxiety pooled into my stomach, and I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I need you there. If you can’t make it, we’ll need to assign an understudy, like, yesterday.”

Raising his hands, he nodded. “I’ll figure something out.”

“You better. I don’t know if I want to do this without you. With all the time you helped me write this, there are so many lines that make me think of you.”

Whoa, that was more than I’d meant to share. I had to keep remembering that I was on a dating fast for the next decade and he was already going on a date with Marcy.I’d been too chicken to ask him about the poster yet.

“Well, you did a fantastic job writing it while I sat next to you eating Cheetos.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, I still have some orange-coated notes to prove that.”

I got into my car, and he shut the door behind me, waving. But before I drove off, I rolled the window down, needing to know the answer to my question now that I had the guts to ask.

“I saw you got asked to the dance.” My voice was warbly even though I was trying to keep things casual.

Colt leaned down on the windowsill, his face inches from mine. “Yeah, Marcy asked me.”

Why wasn’t he just spilling all the details? Was I going to have to drag it from him? “And?”

“And what?”

“Are you going with her?”

He nodded and glanced away. “She’s the only one who asked.” His voice was low with a sad tone to it. When his eyes turned back, they locked onto mine, and something zipped through me, like he was asking me to do something. “It’s kind of a Buttars rule. We go when we get asked. Are you, uh, planning on going to it?”

“No, I’ll just be prepping for the play, as always.” That sounded like I had no life at all.

He nodded, and I tried to smile, the tears building up. Even blinking was making it hard to keep at bay. “I’ve got to go. I’ll chat later.”

My chest hurt as I drove away, making it difficult to breathe. What was this feeling?

25

Hazel

It was the weekend, more than a week after Colt was asked to the dance, and I’d permitted myself to take a mental break from the play. It had been nonstop since I’d been assigned to write it, and I just needed some downtime.

Rehearsals had been going well for the most part, but there was still a long way to go before everything was polished. And things between me and Colt had been awkward, mostly because I kept picturing him crushing on Marcy, turning my stomach into a twisted pretzel.

Colt had baseball practice, an unofficial one that meant the guys were heading to the local batting cages and spending a few hours to get their skills ready for the last few games of the regular season.

Things had been kind of off for us lately. It was probably my fault, my self-preservation kicking in. But I didn’t need to lose my best friend over my issues.

“Hey, girl,” Brynn said, bouncing up and down on my bed. “What are you up to?”

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