“Wait. Want to go somewhere?” he asks, a glint in his pretty eyes.
“No thanks.”
Without a second thought—or any regrets—I head to the bar to wait for Reese. She grins knowingly when she finds me. “I saw you dancing with the hottie.”
“He was all right.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And will you go home with him?”
Laughing, I shake my head. “Nope.”
She parks her hands on her hips. “Is it because you’re not over him?”
Sucker punch.
From my best friend too.
Rolling my eyes, I shrug, but inside I’m thinking busted. “Let’s dance.”
I grab her arm, but she refuses to budge. “Not until you tell me the truth.”
I huff. “I believe I just did.”
“Do you miss him?”
“I’m not waiting for him, if that’s what you’re asking. That would be stupid. It’s over. We didn’t make a pact to meet in five years at the top of the Empire State Building. We didn’t promise to find our way back to each other. We broke up,” I say, voice tight, muscles tense.
“I know, Grant,” she says with a gentle squeeze. “It’s me. Your friend. Your bestie, okay? All I’m asking is if you miss him.”
Her blue eyes are so earnest, so caring. Just like her touch. “I miss the possibility of him,” I admit.
Her expression goes soft, and she throws both arms around me. “Maybe someday?”
“Maybe,” I say, my throat tightening, that dangerous emotion known as hope rising in me as I hug her back.
But when we return to the dance floor, I’m still determined to finish what I started when I took that flight out of New York after winning Rookie of the Year.
I’m ruthlessly determined to stop thinking about Declan Steele.
In the middle of the next season, Chance’s wife, Natasha, leaves him, and we all keep an eye out for him as he goes through his divorce—Crosby, Sullivan, Miguel, and me. We take him out after games when we can. Now that my sister has opened a hipster bar in Hayes Valley, we have a place to go that feels like home. Sierra slings trendy cocktails at the Spotted Zebra, rocking a pink streak in her hair now. But she still wears Dragons earrings to taunt us.
Sometimes I think Chance likes to go there to talk to her as much as drink. Well, she is chatty, like a good bartender, and he seems to need it.
Later that year, the Cougars do make it to the World Series.
It’s more than a dream come true. More fantastic than every boyhood wish, beyond any cliché.
It’s utterly exhilarating, and it’s the most thrilling moment of my life when game six rolls around and I catch all nine innings and every pitch.
I’m behind the plate when Chance Ashford throws a ninety-eight-mile-an-hour fastball and the Miami Ace batter swings through it—
And misses.
I am fireworks.
I am a parade.
I wrap my glove around the ball so tight, shout to the heavens, then run out to the mound, tackling my teammate. The rest of the guys join us, as we win the World Series.
It feels like the greatest night of my life, and then, somehow, it’s even better when Declan calls me the next day, congratulating me. We spend an hour talking on the phone about the series, recounting every pitch, every inning. I relive each moment as I share it with him. He listens to me tell the story, and it feels right.
Just right.
I don’t know what to make of that, especially when something like a butterfly has the audacity to land on my chest.
It reappears, bigger and faster, over Christmas when I call to wish him a happy holiday. Then, on a Thursday morning in February, it shows up again, accompanying a text from Declan Steele.
21
Declan
Then
* * *
The first few months after Grant leaves New York are the hardest.
I’ve never really known what that’s like—getting over someone. Everyone else has been a clean break.
This is the opposite of a clean break. It’s a messy ending, one that keeps spilling over into my life, but at least there is baseball at the end of a cold winter.
The sport has gotten me through hard times before and it does it again as I learn how to hit a slider well, improve my fielding more, and drive up my consistency at the plate even higher.
I spend time with Emma, Fitz and Dean, Tucker and Marissa, and Brady and Greer. Over the next few years, the latter two couples get married a month apart and I go to their weddings.
Tucker ties the knot first, and I attend his wedding stag. I go to Brady’s February wedding alone.
And life goes on like that.
I develop new interests. I find new bands to listen to, I play paintball with Fitz, I scour stores and libraries for new books to try out. Dean and I become closer, and the brainiac in him keeps pumping recommendations at me—non-fiction stories of scandals and racy tales of business upheavals.