Page 20 of Pitcher Perfect
“Okay, are we done here? I need to eat two lasagnas.”
“No, we’re not done.” Burgess stepped closer, poking Robbie in the collarbone with a finger that could have passed for a sandwich roll from Subway. “Next week is a light week, the lull before playoffs, but we’ve still got practice.”
“I’m going to drive in for practice!”
“Fine. But you think you’ll be worth a damn in playoffs if you’re moping because the girl you like is with someone else?” Sir Savage shook his head. “This is bad.”
“I concur, Captain.” Sig sighed.
“I’m not backing out. She needs the help.” Robbie begged himself to leave it at that, but obviously that line drive to the shoulder had knocked loose his sense of self-preservation. “I can’t have her writing me off as some womanizing asshole. I don’t think I realized that’s who I’m becoming until she wouldn’t even give me a chance. The worst part is, Grandpa Nick used to talk about this all the time. He said I’d meet a girl one day and she’d read me like a book, including the chapters that came before her. I didn’t listen. So... yeah. This is kind of my way of making it up to my grandfather, too.”
The other three men stayed quiet for way too long.
Sig and Burgess had twin expressions of grudging sympathy.
Mailer continued to look horrified.
“If you insist on doing this, you need to go in with the right mindset,” Sig said, quieter now. “The last thing you want is to love someone if they don’t return the feeling, you know?” Sig dipped his chin. “It’s fake. You have to remember that.”
Hope was beginning to transform Mailer’s features. As though he was realizing he might not lose his nightly wingman after all. “Once you’re done shaking off this psychosis, I’ll be right here waiting with a variety of women to console you.”
Wow. That didn’t sound all that appealing, suddenly.Should I be scared right now?“So, just to recap, Mailer. You’re not hot for the new GM anymore?”
Flinch.“Again, I don’t want to talk about it.”
Robbie rolled his eyes. “All right, look. I’m not suffering from some delusion that she’ll change her mind and want me instead. You should see her talk about him.” He laughed, but the sound verged on deflated. “She’ll never talk about me like that. I’ve managed my expectations. I will come out of this unscathed. And more importantly, single.”
Mailer bashed his fist against the locker and cheered.
Sig and Burgess looked dubious.
Robbie managed to keep his smile intact through two lasagnas and three episodes ofReacher, but when he got into bed that night and stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing but challenging brown eyes, the smile was long gone.
Chapter Seven
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
Skylar idled outside of a luxury high-rise in East Cambridge, her fingers clutched tightly around the steering wheel. Those digits only stiffened when Robbie Corrigan emerged through the double glass doors with a bag thrown over his shoulder, the picture of casual in loose, navy-blue sweatpants, slides, and a hoodie. A black ballcap was pulled low over his forehead, his red hair fanned out around the sides. He scanned the circular driveway in front of the building where plenty of other drivers waited to ferry residents to work on the other side of the Longfellow Bridge.
When he spotted her, he took off his hat and executed a quick bow, before slapping the ballcap back down over his messy bed head.
Skylar shook her head at him, but at the same time, she was noticing how the wind blew the material of his sweatpants up against his thickly muscled thighs. How the strap of his duffel bag journeyed between two hefty pecs, needlessly making them more prominent. She’d been pondering those pecs, more than she should have, because her breasts had made the unfortunate mistake of grazing them when she kissed him in a fit of temporary madness. They were hard as iron.
And all that pec pondering had led to mouth reminiscing.
It was a very nice mouth.
A very smoothly confident mouth that obviously got a lot of exercise.
Instead of stopping at the passenger door, Robbie swaggered past the window of her white 2017 Honda Accord, knocked on the trunk, and waited.
Waited for what?
A... hug, maybe? Should she get out and give him one?
Don’t you dare acknowledge that ticklish strain in your nipples.
“Are you going to open the trunk or does our journey end here, Rocket?” Robbie shouted through the rear windshield.
