Page 21 of How to Get Revenge on a Cheating Ex
Thwack.
I sit up in bed and reach for a T-shirt. The sound is steady, but irritatingly inconsistent. And it’s coming from outside.
It’s coming fromherhouse.
I walk out to the back screen door, careful not to wake my mom. She’s been working twelve-hour shifts all week and she looked wrecked when she got home tonight.
The screen door creaks open, but then I’m outside and there’s that perfect early summer breeze welcoming me.
The neighborhood is deathly silent.
Thwack.
Except for that.
I didn’t put on shoes, so I pad barefoot over the cool, damp, overgrown lawn in my backyard. It’s obvious the moment it changes from my backyard to hers because the Tuckers take crap likelawn careway too seriously.
Maybe my mom and I would too if we weren’t so busy trying to make ends meet.
I can make out Bailey’s silhouette in the moonlight. Little more than a dark shape and an arm swinging and?—
Thwack.
I laugh under my breath when I realize what she’s doing. “I didn’t know you guys still have that back here.”
Bailey’s squeak of surprise is muffled, and she recovers with a way more familiar huff of annoyance. “Why are you sneaking up on me?”
Her voice is low and hushed, but the breeze seems to carry it my way and I hear her perfectly as I walk toward her, trying my best to avoid sharp stones and twigs. “I wasn’t sneaking up on anyone. Just trying not to wake the neighborhood.”
She doesn’t respond. I’d half expected one of her complaints about how loudly I play my music when I’m working in the garage, but she’s back to focusing on the pitcher’s net that’s situated in front of the line of trees that marks the end of the Tuckers’ property.
I don’t need to see her eyes to know her gaze is fierce as she eyes her target. Bailey has never been chill about anything, and when it comes to sports or games, forget about it. The girl gives new meaning to the word ‘intense.’
Even as a kid, she was that uber competitive child who wouldn’t let a game of tag end until she’d been declared the winner.
Her arm draws back and she lets loose, nailing the picture of the catcher’s mask in the middle of the net.
Thwack.
“Ethan wants to do little league next summer,” she says.
I blink in confusion, and for a second I’m thrown by the fact that we’re still talking about the pitcher’s net. And then I don’t respond right away because I’m confused all over again trying to picture little baby Ethan playing baseball. “No more tee ball?”
She shakes her head. “This was their last year.”
“Wow.” I swat at a bug that’s landed on my arm. “And Nate?”
“He’s not interested.” Her lips twitch up a little at the corners. “Says athletics are a waste of his time.”
I laugh. I can totally picture him saying that.
“First grade keeps a guy busy,” I agree. I love that kid. I loveboththose kids. They’d come as an unexpected surprise to the Tucker family when Bailey, Jane, and I were in middle school. Since I’d never had siblings, I’d been fascinated by the whole thing. I still remember the day they came home from the hospital in vivid detail. It’s ingrained in my memory, just like the day my dad left a couple years after that.
Between infants, puberty, and delinquent dads, it was a busy few years in our little neck of the woods.
I eye the net again, memories flooding me at the sight of the old, worn net. “Your dad must be psyched.”
Bailey gives a little snort of amusement. Her dad had been just as fanatical about Bailey’s softball games as she’d been back in the day. He’d been crushed when she’d finally quit freshman year—because of Grayson.
