Page 16 of No Rhyme or Roughing
I liked that she felt safe with me. We hardly knew each other anymore, and yet, I’d told her things I hadn’t shared with anyone—not even Sam.
Or Teddy.
Maybe it was the Valentine effect. Maybe they just felt like family.
She climbed off the bed and approached me, stopping when her bare toes bumped mine. Our chests were only inches apart, and my pulse thundered in my ears. How could this woman have such an effect on me? Teddy would do something drastic if he knew.
This was Sydy.
Except, the pigtails were gone, as was her little-kid body. Now, she was all curves.
Her lips pulled into a hesitant smile as she tipped her face up to look at me. “I like surprising you. Making you smile. You don’t do it enough.”
“I smile.”
“Sure, when you’re hitting on a stranger whose car you just hit. Or when you’re talking to fans or leading the team on the ice. But this is different, softer. Real.”
I wanted to reach out and touch her lips, to dive into her and figure out what made this fearlessness possible. All I was made of was fear.
She stepped back with a quiet laugh. “You came to hear my idea, didn’t you?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, she clapped her hands and launched herself onto the bed. Landing on her knees, she pulled her laptop toward her. “Sit.”
I lowered myself to the edge of her bed, well, mybed, and leaned over to see what she was doing. She pulled up a social media site, scrolling through a list of saved videos.
“Before you say anything,” she started, “watch a few of the videos. Don’t decide until you really think about it. Your first instinct will be to say no and never speak to me again, but I’ve done something like this before.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“I do nothing to draw attention to myself, Ryder. For me, it’s shadows or nothing. But I’ve worked with people who can walk down a street doing nothing special and still have all eyes on them. It’s a gift. I think you have it.”
“No… I…”
“It’s why your team loves you, and why I think this could work. You were born to go viral.”
“Viral?” I swallowed. That didn’t sound good.
Sydney shielded the screen from me and turned, meeting my gaze. “Promise not to judge too quickly.”
“I’m terrified. But fine.”
“Pinky swear?” She held up her pinky, and a memory hit me. Every time she’d wanted a promise as a kid, it was with that little finger.
I wrapped mine around hers, and we both froze, staring at each other for a long moment before she pulled away, as if she’d let the match burn too far down the stick. “Okay, just watch.”
She turned the screen toward me and hit play.
The video showed a baseball team in bright yellow uniforms playing a normal game.
“I don’t?—”
“Watch.”
Music started in the background, and the pitcherfroze before shooting his arms into the air and bouncing his hips to the beat. Then, he jumped as two teammates caught him, swinging him like a jump rope while a fourth did a somersault over him.
The rest of the team joined in with simple dance steps.
The next video panned to the crowd, showing fans going wild, waving yellow shirts in the air. In another, a player sat on the ground before suddenly standing and lip-syncing to a song.
It was mesmerizing the way they intertwined performance with baseball.
