Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 122219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 611(@200wpm)___ 489(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
“Nice try, smooth talker. How long did you two date?”
“Not long.” He tossed his hands in the air in surrender. “It was really short.”
“How short is short?”
“Like three, four years.”
“Four years?!” I gasped, stunned by the news I was discovering.
He’s so ugly!
“I know that sounds bad, but honestly, Avery, it was so long ago. We were in a college relationship. It is ancient history.”
“It didn’t seem really ancient to her,” I muttered. “She’s in love with you.”
He laughed and shook his head. “She’s not in love with me.”
“She spent the whole game night talking about how wonderful you are and how you taught her everything she knows about thrust-to-weight ratio, which sounds highly inappropriate to me.”
“Oh no. That’s not some weird sex thing if that’s what you’re thinking. Thrust-to-weight ratio is what compares the thrust produced by an engine to the weight of the vehicle and—”
I placed a hand on his forearm. “Wesley.”
“Yes?”
“I might not know rocket science, but I know women. She was talking about you thrusting your weight into her vehicle.”
He shook his head. “You’re overreacting.”
“Don’t say that. Otherwise, I will truly overreact, and you’ll end up sleeping on the couch. All I’m saying is it would’ve been nice to have a heads-up that you were bringing an ex to our house for game night. When the only game we should’ve been watching was the Super Bowl.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Is that what this is all about? The fact that you missed your football game?”
“No, it’s not about missing the game even though rumor has it that it turned out to be one of the most exciting games in the history of football. It’s about the lack of communication. I was put into an uncomfortable situation, and I didn’t like that, Wesley. I don’t like being blindsided.”
“You’re right.” He moved over to me, placed his hands against my shoulders, and kissed me. “I’m wrong.” He kissed me again. “I’m sorry.” Kiss. “Forgive me.”
I grumbled but kissed him back. “Fine. But only if you watch the replays from the game tonight.”
“Deal. But tell me… What did you think of my friends?”
I liked Lance and Patrick. They were funny and down-to-earth in a way that I appreciated. But Drew? Yeah, screw her. I didn’t want to tell him the truth, though, because that seemed mean, and I was almost certain he’d just chalk it up to me being insecure. Nothing drove me crazier than the idea of a man thinking I was insecure due to him.
Still, I didn’t want to lie because that seemed wrong, too. So I told him the only thing I could think to say. “They’re smart,” I complimented them. “Very, very smart.”
He smiled as a burst of pride shot through his system. “I know, right?”
2
AVERY
After the Super Bowl, I went straight into my favorite season: baseball. I was head of the physical education department at our town’s high school, and for the past five years, I’d been the assistant coach for our baseball team. That was until this year, when Head Coach Erikson stepped down, giving me a real shot at running the team. Over the past few years, my sisters considered me the head coach even though it wasn’t an official title. Coach Erikson made sure to keep me beneath him, making it hard for me to help the team.
He had a lot of old-school coaching thoughts. He was in his late sixties, and he and I butted heads often. I was looking forward to proving that the Honey Creek Hornets weren’t a bad team—they simply had bad leadership behind them.
The first weeks of February were our preseason, and I was thrilled to get started again. I took pride in the sport more than anything even though our team wasn’t the best. Still, we had some pretty impressive players I thought could make it to the big leagues. I believed in those boys and knew they could do amazing things on the field if given the right direction.
Cameron Fisher was one of those players. At least he had been until he went through a big personal loss last semester. I could see it in his game that losing his mother did quite a number on him. I was still trying to figure out how best to help the kid, seeing how he was a junior now and scouts were highly interested in his game. That was until recently.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry…
Oh balls. The kid was going to cry.
Cameron stood at the plate, biting his bottom lip to push down the tears cooking in the back of his eyes. He was already two strikes down, and based on his lip-biting and elbow-trembling, he was about to get his third out.
Lately, Cameron has had stage fright. He was easily the best player on the team. That boy could hit a home run with his eyes closed during baseball practice, yet when it came to playing against another team, he froze up like a TV dinner left in the back of a freezer for over a year.