Page 50 of The Way We Swing Back

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the room was the unmistakable presence of Maissie. She sat dead center of the second row, scribbling in a pink notebook, her focus locked on writing whatever nerds wrote before class had even started. I debated sitting in the back but took the seat next to Maissie, choosing familiarity over a room full of strangers.

“Aren’t you a little young for this class?” I asked as I sat.

“Aren’t you a little dumb for this class?” she sniped back, not even glancing at me.

“Good one, for a kid,” I said.

“Right, because I’ve never had an idiot senior think he’s smarter than me.”

I laughed at her boldness. I pulled out a notebook and pen, the smell of a new school year everywhere. “Okay, okay. Do you want to keep exchanging insults, or do you want to call a truce?”

“Can I get one more first?” she asked, turning to face me. She finally let the smile wipe across her face, almost like she could tolerate me.

I rolled my eyes at the sophomore.

“Truce,” she said.

There was a beat of quiet between us as she flipped a page in her notebook. Then I asked, “Gav says you’ll keep tutoring him this year? We need him to be eligible.”

She groaned. “How are you all so obsessed with such a dumb game?”

“No need for such hateful language,” I said.

“Besides,” she said, not meeting my eye, “it’s called studying when you’re dating.”

That sentence hit like a foul ball to the ribs. Dating? Gavin? My mouth hung open, unable to process such a foreign concept.

But was it foreign? That explained the lame excuse of summer tutoring. The pink when her name came up, then Gavin defending her to Zach at breakfast.

Before I could recover enough brain cells to form a sentence, the bell rang for the start of class. She gave me one last look—barely containing her own blush climbing her face—before she turned back to her notes.

I spent the rest of class pretending to follow the syllabus while trying to figure out when the hell that had happened.

After the last bell, I met briefly with Coach Berrios before I biked straight to the Quinns’—well, I guessed, my home now.

The sound of ball hitting metal greeted me as I made my way to the backyard. I didn’t have to see him to know Gavin was batting. The contact he made had a distinct pop now and grew sharper by the day.

When I stepped into the backyard, I spotted Zach behind the L-screen, feeding balls from the bucket without pause. Jake was sprawled on the grass, barely paying attention. None of them looked over as I dropped my bag by the netting; Gavin just switched sides of the plate.

I watched his swing as he settled in left-handed. It had tightened over the summer—still compact, but the explosion in his hips was real now. He drove everything with power, his strength catching up with his swing, the workouts with Zach paying off.

“Last one,” Zach said.

The pitch floated across the middle, and Gavin hammered it right back to where it’d come from.

I ducked under the netting to help pick up the bucket of balls. “Nice round, kid.”

“Stop calling me kid, Easton,” he said, swiping sweat off his shorts. “I’m taller than you.”

“No way,” I said, getting an inch away.

I looked at Gavin. Even at fifteen, he still had a baby face that could pass for twelve. His cheeks were round, with no facial hair in sight. But he wasn’t wrong. We were eye level, and he may have had me by an inch. His shoulders were narrow, his arms still stringy, but I had to tilt up ever so slightly. When had this happened?

“Told you,” he said smugly.

“Maybe you won’t look like a skeleton in a baseball uniform by next season,” I shot back.

“I’ll still be taller than you,” he proudly said.