Home Run Baby: A Sports Romance (45 page)

“Junior…” Coach greets me as soon as I step out, pushing off the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Yeah, Coach?”

“The team comes first.”

I pause. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing is more important,” he says. “Not even a pretty girl. I don’t want to see you picking fights with the team like that again. She’s not worth it.”

I bite my tongue, wondering if he’d be saying the same thing if he knew it was Eliza I just defended. “Yes, Coach,” I say, swallowing it down. “I understand. It won’t happen again.”

He nods and wanders off, disappearing down the hall towards his office.

She’s not worth it.

In a way, I see his point. If the team isn’t on the same page, then we don’t play well together on the field. It’s my job as quarterback to lead the offense and I can’t do that effectively if they hate me.

Maybe I should make an appearance at this party, after all. Just an hour or so to smooth things over with the guys before heading to the library to do a few practice problems Eliza assigned me.

It couldn’t hurt, right?

***

“Long time no see, Junior Morgan.”

I look up from the couch to find Stephanie Gomez leaning over the arm with her tits hovering just an inch or two away from my chin.

“Hey, Steph,” I murmur, sliding away to distance myself from her rank, potent perfume.

She smiles wide and leans in to close the gap. “What have you been up to this semester?
I’ve missed you…
”

Her hand slides over my thigh and I pause with sudden clarity. Last year, this move would have floored me. I’d take one look at her sizable cleavage, wink into her glazed, drunken eyes, and ten minutes later I’d be tugging on her blonde hair to let her know I was about to finish. But now?

She’s
repulsive
.

“I’ve been keeping busy,” I say.

“Not too busy for little, old
me
tonight, are you?”

I push her hand off my thigh. “I am, actually.”

She winces, feigning disappointment.
“Boo!”

If the rejection stung her, she certainly isn’t showing it. She scampers off and instantly falls into John’s arms — and he’s more than welcome to take her. He nods in my direction and flashes me a thumbs up. I guess that’s the upside to Junior Morgan being supposedly off-the-market: the ladies move on to the next available guy in line.

A body plops onto the seat next to me. “Saving yourself for me, Lover Boy?”

I laugh. “Hey, Grant.”

His brows bounce and he takes a sip from his plastic cup. “Your roommate wouldn’t happen to be here tonight, would he?”

“He’s around,” I answer, shaking my head.

“Good.”
His eyes scan the crowd like a ravenous hawk.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him. “This doesn’t seem like your crowd at all.”

“It’s more my crowd this year than
yours
, apparently,” he says. “I’ve been to the last
three
pre-game parties.
You
have not.”

“Bad timing,” I shrug. “I was busy.”

“Oh,
I know.
”

I glance at my phone to check the time and find a new text from Eliza.

How’s the studying going?

I’ve been here about two hours now and from the looks of it, John’s about to whisk Stephanie off someplace more private. I’ve effectively done what I came here to do. He won’t be mad at me come morning and if I remember Stephanie’s skills, he probably won’t even remember why he was mad to begin with.

I tap out a simple reply.

Good.

There’s no sense in getting into details with her now. “I’m gonna head out,” I say to Grant.

“So soon?”

“I have some studying to do.” I pause at his smiling face. “Hey, Grant… can you maybe not mention to Eliza that I was here?”

“Oh,” he blinks. “Was I not supposed to?”

My chest sinks. “What do you mean?”

He flashes me his phone and I read his most recent message to Eliza.

Lover Boy is here. Where you at?

Her reply is brief but it cuts me like glass.

He is?

“When did she send that?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “Ten minutes ago.”

Well, shit.

I reach for my phone. Eliza knew I was here when she asked how the studying was going, meaning that my passive, simple, no-details-required reply wasn’t as innocent as I thought. I lied to her and she caught me in it.

“Bye, Grant.”

He waves me away and I push through the crowd of drunken football players and their adoring fans, dodging a few handsy ones of my very own as I go.

I call Eliza as soon as I step outside. After five or six rings, I heave a sigh.
“Pick up, Ellie…”

The phone vibrates with a new text message from her.

I guess that incentive was too easy after all.

I call her again but she doesn’t answer.

“Dammit…”

She thinks she’s not a priority to me but that’s not the case at all. I send a reply.

Meet me at the library.

The last thing I want is for Eliza to think I lied to her. Which, I did, yes, admittedly, but it’s far from what she must be thinking right now. For all she knows, I knew about the party earlier today and just didn’t bother to tell her about it. She thinks I went to it and blew off studying because being the star quarterback is more important to me than acing a math test but it’s not. It’s—

Holy shit.

Who am I?

Maybe John is right. I
am
pussy-whipped.

Getting an A on this test doesn’t just mean I’m one step closer to ravaging Eliza’s body in new, fun ways. While that excites me to no end, the real reason why I want to do well is because it would make her
happy
. She works so hard at making sure I stay off academic probation. I don’t want to let her down.

I sit down at the table in our study room and pull out my geometry book. She never replied to my message. She probably won’t show up tonight and I don’t really blame her at all.

I grab my pencil and I get to work.

Chapter 18

Eliza

I walk out of class and run right into Grant.

He holds out yet another cup of coffee and I heave a thick sigh as I take it from him. “He better be paying you to deliver these things.”

“He is.” Grant reaches for my cup and spins it around to show me the name written on the side.

Buzz buzz.

I reach into my bag and my fingers wrap around my phone as the text message vibrates it.

Library. Second floor. Study room B. Now.

“Think you’ll actually go this time?” Grant asks, taking a sip from his own cup.

I inhale the strong scent of black coffee. This is the fifth cup in the last two days Grant has hand-delivered to me after class — all courtesy of Junior Morgan. “I’ll think about it.”

“Or you can keep it up,” he chuckles. “Three more trips to the coffee cart and I’ll be able to afford that blazer I saw at the mall last week.”

I give a short laugh. “In that case, I might wait it out.”

“In all seriousness, though… Cut the guy some slack.”

“Why?”

“Because he didn’t do anything wrong.”

I stare at him. “He asked you to lie for him, Grant.”

“He asked me
not to mention
it to you and that populates the gray area between truth and lies, in my opinion.”

“Hey, the guy can do what he wants,” I argue. “It’s not like we’re dating or anything.”

Grant chuckles. “Okay… let’s try that one again. This time,
with feeling
.”

“Shut up.” I step down the hall but Grant stays close.

“I’m just saying, maybe you should
re-evaluate
that last part,” he says. “Drunk hotties were throwing themselves at him the whole time and he politely declined them all faster than that uptight, retail hag and my credit card.”

“I will happily buy you that blazer
myself
, Grant,” I laugh. “You can stop hinting at it.”

“Yay! Friendship!” He holds up his hand and I give him a high-five. “Look…
Go talk to him
, okay? Either put him down gently or make up. I don’t like seeing you so miserable.”

“I’m not
miserable
.”

“Eliza…”

He stares at me and I can’t argue with it. It hasn’t even been two whole days and I already miss Junior
freakin’
Morgan.

“He declined them, huh?” I ask.

Grant nods. “Let him explain what happened in his own words. If you don’t like it, then we’ll sit across the quad and throw shade at him from now until the end of the semester. It’ll be fun.”

I try not to laugh but that’s always impossible when Grant shows his sassy side. “Fine. I’ll go talk to him.”

“Thank you,”
he says. “You just earned me another twenty bucks.”

“What—” He spins around and takes off in the other direction before I can finish. “Traitor!”

“Bye, Eliza!”

“Bye,
Brutus.
”

Grant winks at me before disappearing around the corner.

My phone shakes with a new message and I flip it up to read it.

Please.

I drop it back into my bag and walk across campus towards the library.

***

I push the door open to study room B to find Junior sitting at the table. He stands up, immediately dropping his phone down from whatever distraction he used while he waited for me to show up.

“Hey…” he says, surprise crossing his face. “Thanks for coming.”

I close the door and lean against it. “Well, someone had to stop Grant from cleaning you out.”

Junior smiles. “It’s a worthy investment.”

I stand still and wait, unsure whether I should ask questions or if I should just let him talk. Despite everything we’ve been through and done to each other, this is the first time there’s ever been an awkwardness between us and I fucking hate it. All over a stupid party.

“I’m sorry,” he says, breaking the silence.

“For what?”

“For lying to you, to start. Not even sure why I did in the first place.”

“You and me both.”

“I just didn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”

I pause, feeling a light flutter in my gut. If cocky bastards everywhere needed a poster child, Junior Morgan would be the instant front-runner. I’ve never gotten the impression that he cared at all about what I think of him.

“Why would I be disappointed in you?” I ask. “You went to a
party
. That’s your thing.”

“I was supposed to be studying,” he says, “and I was on my way out when I got your text asking how it was going. Rather than explain the whole story, I said it was going good. I didn’t know that Grant had already told you I was there—”

“Junior — party, study, fuck, kill —
I don’t care
. You can do whatever you want. The one thing I don’t get is why you didn’t mention the party when I asked what you were doing that night.”

He takes a step forward. “I didn’t know there was going to be a party… but the team invited me at the last minute and when I said I needed to study, we fought about you and I felt like I needed to make it right with—”

“Wait, you fought about
me
?” Panic rises in my chest. “Why were you fighting about
me
?”

“Not you,
specifically
. But with how much I study nowadays, they kind of figured out that I have a tutor.”

“
Why
does that mean you have a tutor?”

“What else would make a guy like
me
suddenly care about my grades, Ellie?”

“Okay…” I pause, seeing the logic in the reasoning. “But why would you having a tutor cause a fight with the team? Why would they even care?”

He opens his mouth to answer but hesitates. “Because… they…” His eyes fall to the floor between us.

I sigh with annoyance. “They
what
, Junior?”

He keeps his head down. “They wanted to
borrow
you and I got a little defensive.”

My lips twitch at the red in his cheeks. “You…” I push the chuckle down. “You defended me?”

“Yes.”

“Like…” I exhale a quick laugh and his head jerks up. “You defended
my honor
?”

He narrows his eyes to hide the embarrassment in them.
“Yes.”

“Wow, that’s…” I bite my lip. “That’s
new
. No one’s ever defended my honor before…”

“They were out of line,” he says. “Coach, too. He said you weren’t worth starting fights over.”

My smile drops. “He said that?”

“Yeah, but…” Junior shifts on his feet. “I’m sure if he knew I was defending
you
, he wouldn’t have said it.”