Safe at First Read online

  “Gotta take this,” I said with a grin as I sprinted outside for some privacy.

  “My man. What’s up? How’s ball?” I said as I answered and searched for an empty place to talk, where no one would eavesdrop or accidentally overhear.

  “Why are you making my life so difficult?” Chance asked, and I furrowed my brow in confusion.

  “Come again?”

  “My life. Why are you messing with it?” he said once more, and I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Uh ...” I stopped walking and stood still.

  “Sunny, Mac. What are you doing?”

  Pulling the phone away, I breathed heavily into the air before getting back on. “What did you hear?”

  “I heard you were a jerk to her last night at some party.” He sounded annoyed, and I knew that if he were here, he would be lecturing me in person.

  If Chance already knew about last night, then Sunny must have been really upset when she left. She must have called Danika.

  “I wasn’t a jerk per se—” I started to explain when he cut me off.

  “Why are you being mean to her? I know you like her. You’ve liked her since last year. So, what’s up?”

  I couldn’t very well sit here and tell my best friend that I was having a hard time letting my guard down because I was scared, so I improvised. “I don’t know. I just see her, and I turn stupid. I’m not sure why.” Lies. Lies. Lies. I knew exactly why.

  “You see her, and you turn cruel. That’s not like you. Sunny doesn’t deserve that, and we both know it. What’s really going on? Talk to me, man. Is this because you didn’t get drafted?” He asked the last question quieter than the rest, his voice cracking a little under the weight of it.

  It was the one topic that most of us ballplayers avoided and never talked about after the fact. It was too sensitive a subject. Too touchy. Too painful.

  Looking around, I noticed a few girls staring in my direction, so I started walking again, realizing that standing in one place was going to pose a problem. “Um ... I mean, yeah, that’s part of it,” I admitted reluctantly.

  “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you seem ...” He paused. “How should I say this? Sadder, I guess.”

  “You think I seem sadder?” I asked, hoping I sounded crazy.

  When did Chance think I was sad in the first place?

  “Mac, I’m your best friend. I might be distracted with my own career right now, but I know when you aren’t a hundred percent yourself. And you haven’t been since last June.”

  “Why are you just saying something now then?” I asked, feeling a little disappointed that it never occurred to him to ask me if I was okay before today ... especially if he’d noticed. It had been months.

  “I thought you’d snap out of it. I was letting you work through it on your own, but from the sound of it, you’re not getting better. How can I help?”

  A small huff mixed with a laugh escaped from deep in my throat. “Make sure someone picks me up this season, so I don’t have to go work for my old man.”

  Chance blew out a loud breath. “Ah, fuuuck. I forgot all about Dick. How could I forget about your dad? No wonder you’re so stressed out.”

  “Yeah,” I said, agreeing with nothing in particular. “I’ll figure it out. Not everyone gets drafted, right?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” he snapped. “It’s not over yet. Hell, it hasn’t even started. Don’t forget about Cole and every other guy who got picked up his senior year. It doesn’t mean anything that you didn’t get signed last year. You know that.”

  Cole Anders. I always circled back to him in my mind as well since he had been in the same situation as I currently was—worried that this dream would end when senior season did.

  “I know,” I said, hoping to placate Chance, but the nagging feeling in the back of my mind wouldn’t go away. What if I wasn’t good enough? A lot of guys weren’t, and that wasn’t me being a whiny little bitch; it was me being realistic. “And hey, I’ll apologize to Sunny, okay?”

  “Yeah, all right. But don’t play with her feelings. Only apologize if you mean it. Let her in, Mac. I think she might be exactly what you need.”

  I heard Danika’s voice in the background saying something I couldn’t quite make out, and I realized how much I missed having them around.

  “Trust me, I know. Why the hell do you think I keep trying to stay away from her?”

  Sunny wasn’t the kind of girl you dated and then let go of when the semester ended. She was the bring her home to Mom type. The kind of girl you fought to hold on to, not the one you let go. Sunny Jamison was the girl you married.

  “I know exactly why,” he said with a laugh. “You’re a pussy.”

  “You are what you eat,” I fired back without thinking, and I swore I could see him rolling his eyes from here.

  “Mac,” Chance said, his voice turning serious, “one last thing.”

  “Yeah?” I kicked at the dirt while I waited for him to say whatever was coming next.

  “What happened freshman year was fucked up, but it wasn’t your fault. And not all girls are like that. Hell, most girls aren’t. Sunny would never do something like that to you.”

  “I know she wouldn’t,” I practically whispered, feeling a little caught off guard.

  Even though Sunny was a good girl, what if I wasn’t enough for her? What if she looked at me and only saw a guy worthy of being a fling? I wasn’t sure I could handle the rejection. Believe me, I noticed the hypocrisy.

  “You deserve to be happy. And you deserve a good girl. Even if you don’t think you do.”

  “Jeez, Carter, you’re the last person I ever expected to get all this lady advice from, Mr. I’m Never Falling in Love.”

  “Yeah, yeah. What can I say? I was an idiot. Danika’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He sounded so confident.

  “Better than baseball?” I asked even though I was only teasing.

  “A hundred times over.”

  I gasped. “Only a hundred?”

  “If there were a choice, I’d pick Danika every time,” he said without taking a breath. My best friend had fallen head over heels in love. “Hey, I gotta get to the field. Call me if you need anything, but fix it, Mac. FIX. IT,” he repeated sternly, emphasizing the words as if I needed the additional reminder before Danika yelled from somewhere in the background, “Fix it, Maaac!”

  I laughed. “Tell your girl I will. You know where to send the bill.” I tried to joke about him being my therapist, but I was honestly grateful for the talk as we ended the call.

  I knew what I needed to do, but I had no idea how to go about doing it.

  You’ve Got to be Kidding Me

  Sunny

  Danika video-called me when I was in the hallway of my apartment, following behind a girl I’d never seen before with crazy green-and-black hair that I sort of loved. It was almost like Danika sensed that I was this close to making a new friend. Granted, I hadn’t said two words to the girl yet, but I had just been about to introduce myself when my phone rang.

  “What’s up, cockblock?” I said with a laugh as I answered her video call, the girl with the fun hair turning around to eye me for only a second before she kept walking.

  “Wait, what? Cockblock? Where are you?” She narrowed her eyes and moved her head as she tried to see around me.

  Unlocking my front door, I stepped inside and locked it behind me. “Home. But there was a girl I wanted to meet, and you ruined it.”

  I tossed the food I’d just bought onto the counter and plopped down on the couch, holding the phone in front of my face.

  “Oh, you were trying to replace me. Good thing I called.”

  She smiled, and it made me smile back. I really missed having her here.

  “What are you wearing?” I asked, squinting at the bright blue T-shirt.

  “It’s a team shirt. Chance has a game, and I like to be supportive.”

  “Does it have his name on the back?”

  “Of course it does. What kind of girlfriend do you think I am?” She moved around, so I could see the back of the shirt, but it didn’t work. Everything turned into a blurry blue blob instead. “Anyway,” she said as she walked around her place, “I just called to tell you that Chance talked to Mac today.”

  There was no way I could hide the surprise on my face. “Shut up. He did? What’d he say?”

  Her face contorted a little, and her eyes pulled together. “Basically, he told Mac to pull his head out of his ass and talk to you.”

  I pondered this information for a minute.

  “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy,” Danika asked, making a pouty face.

  “I don’t want Mac to talk to me because Chance told him to. I want him to WANT to talk to me.”

  She rolled her eyes all dramatically. “Oh my God, Sunny. He does want to talk to you. He said he turns stupid whenever he sees you—or something idiotic like that. Whatever happened to him freshman year really messed him up, I think. He has trust issues. And I overheard Chance saying something about his dad, but I don’t know what it was exactly.”

  “That doesn’t give him an excuse to be shitty to me,” I argued because it was true. As much slack as I was willing to cut Mac, I didn’t want to be treated like crap in the process. I hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

  “No, it doesn’t. I totally agree.”

  “I’ll let you know if he reaches out,” I said in a sarcastic tone because I wasn’t going to hold my breath or anything.

  Danika nodded her head before telling me she had to go and ended the call. Her face disappeared, and I sat there for a second, holding on to the phone before remembering that I had food waiting for me.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening cleaning my apartment and organizing my baking drawers. I liked all of my things to be in just the right place. And even though there was no one else around to mess it up, sometimes, I was the one who ruined my perfect order.

  Everything I did only served as a slight distraction. I kept checking my phone like a crazy person, making sure it was turned on, the battery hadn’t died, or that it wasn’t on silent. But Mac never texted. Or called. Or emailed. Not that he had my email address, but still, he could have found it if he looked hard enough.

  And I kicked myself every time I logged in to social media and checked his profile for updates. There weren’t any. But that didn’t make me any less anxious. At least when he was posting in his stories, I knew what he was doing and what he was up to. His silence only made my mind go into overdrive, making up all kinds of reasons as to why he wasn’t posting in the first place. Most of them involving girls, like the one I’d seen walking out of his room that night.

  Speaking of that girl, I thought to myself as my finger hovered over the list of people he was following on the app. It was a way smaller number than how many were following him, so I pressed it, looking for her face as I scrolled down the list.

  Aside from a handful of girls, myself included, Mac was following mostly other baseball players and baseball-related profiles. The girl from the party wasn’t one of them. I wanted to throw a freaking celebration for that tidbit of knowledge alone. I had no idea why that brought me any sense of relief, but for whatever reason, it did.

  Feeling more than a little stalkerish, I clicked on each one of the other girls’ profiles that he was following to see if they went to school here and to look at their pictures because ... I was a female, and we were curious—aka competitive—but they were all private. It was probably for the best. The last thing I needed was to fall down the rabbit hole of Mac’s social media and get myself all worked up, which would have definitely happened.

  And that was exactly why I stopped myself from scrolling through his likes and comments on his regular feed too. I’d done that more than once over the summer, and it hadn’t gone well for my emotional state. Seeing the number of comments the guy racked up with each picture, plus the kinds of things that girls posted, I only imagined what they said in his DMs.

  Walking into my room, I tossed my phone on my bed and headed toward the shower before promising myself that I wouldn’t log on any more tonight. School started tomorrow, and I needed the sleep, not the headache.

  The next morning, the usual thrill of the first day of classes rolled through me as I stretched my arms over my head and smiled to no one. I couldn’t help it; a new school year always made me a little excited. You never knew who you might meet or what might happen.

  Practically hopping out of bed, I grabbed a pair of jean shorts and a plain white T-shirt. Simple but still cute. It was too hot to wear combat boots and socks, so I opted for a pair of sandals instead. Liking what I saw in the full-length mirror, I walked into the bathroom to put on some makeup but couldn’t stop staring at my hair.

  It was long and blonde and had been for all of my life. I’d never once colored my hair or done anything different with it. And while I loved it, it suddenly felt a little stale. Maybe it was the girl I had seen yesterday with the Billie Eilish hair that seemed to work so well on her that got me thinking. NOT that I wanted to color my hair black and green, but maybe I could pull something else off. Lavender maybe? Silver? Icy blue? I pulled at the strands, deciding I’d mess with them later. For today at least, I’d have the same old blonde hair that I’d had forever.

  After finishing my makeup, I grabbed my bag and my keys before heading into the kitchen. I stuffed a bottle of water and a protein bar into my bag. I rarely woke up hungry, and to be honest, I had to force myself to eat breakfast most days—hence, the protein bar. Phone in hand, I glanced at it one last time and started to hustle.

  I liked being early to class. Not on time, definitely not late, but early. And since it was still morning, I knew that there were most likely no classes before mine started, so I could get in there, find a seat, and get comfortable. School was technically close enough that I could walk if I wanted to, but in this weather, I’d be sweating through my shirt by the time I got there. And even though parking could be a total pain in the ass, I decided to drive anyway.

  It was a typical morning, the streets were crowded and I’d just accelerated to make it through a yellow light when I heard a loud thud. My car immediately started pulling to the right as horns honked, and I gripped the steering wheel like my life depended on it. Maybe it did. I was confused, and my car wasn’t cooperating, pulling to the right as I tried to navigate it toward the left.

  The sound got louder and more consistent, and my car felt like I was driving over a gravel road. I looked in my rearview mirror, signaled, and pulled over to the side of the road with my heart in my throat. Stepping out of my car, I noticed the flat tire.

  Shit.

  I’d never changed a flat tire before, but I was a smart and capable girl. I was sure I could figure it out. They didn’t keep a spare in the trunk for no reason, right? I thought about calling my dad, but what could he realistically do? He’d probably tell me to call AAA, but I didn’t have hours to sit here, waiting on the side of the road.

  Checking the time on the dashboard, I realized that I was most likely not only going to be late for class, but I might also miss it completely. I couldn’t miss my first day of school. Popping the trunk, I walked back there, making sure no one hit me while I did it. It crossed my mind that being on the side of the road with a flat tire wasn’t the safest situation to be in. A driver could lose control of their car and hit mine—or me. It wasn’t unheard of.

  Staring at the spare tire and the equipment to change it sitting there, I tried to pull the tire out, but it wouldn’t budge. While I was stared at it, frustrated, a car pulled up behind me, and I looked over, a little nervous at first. The passenger door flew open, and a guy in a baseball hat stepped out before the car even came to a complete stop.

  Great.

  Mac Davies was either here to rescue me or make it all worse.

  There Might be a God

  Mac

  I threw open my bedroom door with a smile and heard my roommates already chatting it up in the kitchen. As I rounded the corner, I saw Matt standing at the stove, cooking.

  He turned around, a giant, goofy grin on his face as his eyes met mine. “First day of class, man. I am pumped!”

  I smiled back, sitting down at the counter between to Dayton and Colin. “Should be cool. It’s whatever. What are you making?” I asked, curious if it was going to be edible or not.

  “Eggs, toast, and sausage for everyone. Don’t even think about leaving this house without food,” he insisted, pointing his spatula in our direction, and I shot both Dayton and Colin an inquisitive look.

  Colin shrugged. “It’s a little weird that you’re taking on the role of mom in the house since you love to party so much, but I like being fed, so thanks.”

  “Yeah, man. Thanks for cooking,” I added as I noticed four glasses all filled with orange juice, sitting just out of reach.

  Matt must have seen because he scooted them toward us before hustling back to the stove like a gourmet chef.

  If Matt hadn’t let us know he could cook, we all would have attempted to switch off at some point, burning shit or making it poorly. We’d learned pretty quickly last year that none of us were any good in the kitchen if the meal was more complicated than spaghetti, ramen noodles, or protein shakes. Every athlete seemed proficient in making shakes to survive on if we had to. And pasta was a no-brainer. Except that one time when Cole hadn’t cooked it long enough and we’d ended up eating crunchy noodles that almost broke our teeth.

  “I’m fired up,” Matt yelled as he divvied up the eggs and sausage evenly onto four separate plates before shoving them our way.

  As we reached for the plates, we hit each other like we’d never eaten breakfast before.

  “About?” I asked around a mouthful of food before realizing that it was hot as fuck.

  “Class. Being here. I’m excited to be at this school and on the team. I’ve heard so many things,” Matt explained as he buttered the toast and gave us each a slice.