| |
––––––––
I FELT FANTASTIC WHEN I woke up. Better than I had felt in a while, actually, and it got me to wondering if maybe I was beginning to feel sick before I even left. At any rate, I was up and energetic not long after the sun rose, and went down to get my breakfast well before anyone else. I was already done and heading back upstairs when most of my teammates started dragging themselves to the lobby to grab whatever they could eat and drink quickly.
Heading back to my room, I showered quickly and got dressed. It was the last full day of practice before the games started, and I wanted to get some extra batting practice in. If I headed down early, I could beat most of the team down and probably impress Coach enough that I wouldn’t suffer the dreaded drop in the lineup that he was so famous for doing with any player that missed a practice.
As it was, I was used to hitting second in the order when I wasn’t pitching. Even when I was pitching, he often had me hit early in the lineup, but he preferred to keep me in the traditional nine-hole. I was looking forward to a day of working out hard and seeing what I had in me after the sickness had finally gone away. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to get back into fighting shape before the games, and if I needed to drive myself into the dirt today to get ready for it, I was prepared to do so.
A weight had been lifted off my shoulders in a way last night. Gavin had seemed almost disappointed when I had described how I should have sent him away. And I couldn’t help but notice his eyes float down once or twice to my low-cut dress. It made me feel pretty good about myself, even if I chastised myself for letting that thought creep back in the forefront of my mind.
No, now it was time to focus on what I was here for. Competition. Winning. Glory.
And keeping my scholarship.
I headed down to the field and found myself alone for a good ten minutes before our hitting coach and two other girls joined me. I had been doing a soft toss against the cage behind the batter’s box, letting my arm warm up when they came in, and silently they joined me, turning it into a triangle toss. A few minutes later, the coach walked out to the mound with a bucket of softballs, and again silently, we looked at each other, deemed me the first to go, and they took their places in short left and short right field.
I went back to the bench, opened up my bat bag, and grabbed my favorite bat. Taking a few experimental swings, I stretched with it over my head, bent at the waist, and then went into the batter’s box with an eye on crushing the first pitch I saw.
Without a catcher there, until the next girl arrived, Coach was going to be lobbing easy pitches at me, not wanting to loiter behind the plate and give the other girls some practice running down fly balls. Too bad I had no intention of letting them catch anything.
The first pitch was a floating sinker, almost shoulder height. I let my weight hang back on my back foot as long as possible, and as I swung through, I didn’t even feel the bat hit the ball. The usual shock of aluminum bats and heavy softballs would send a reverberation up my shoulder, but this was smooth as silk. The ball shot off the bat like a cannon, and I admired it as it took off for center field.
As it sailed over the fence, Coach turned back to me and nodded. He grabbed another ball and tossed again, and again, I launched it out of the park. The other two girls didn’t even move when the bat made contact. They knew.
“All right, Barry Bonds,” Coach said jokingly. “See if you can crank this one.”
He wound up, surprisingly good form for a man who had never played professional softball, and fired one in low and in. Technically, it was a fastball. But Coach was in his forties and was used to tossing overhand as a baseball player all his career. His spin rate on an underhand pitch left a lot to be desired.
I crushed it, high and deep over the fence in left field, pulling it just enough to give it the angle, but not enough to go foul. It sailed far out of our view, and as it disappeared out of sight, Coach whistled.
“I hope to shit that doesn’t hit someone’s car,” he said. “Sheesh, Lila, we give you one day off, and you come in like Sammy Sosa.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “I don’t like being sick. I’m making up for lost time.”
“Save some of it for the game, will you?” he laughed. “Why don’t you and Sanchez switch until we have a catcher and someone to go fetch your home run balls?”
I laughed and nodded, heading back to the bench to change out of batting gloves and into my fielder’s glove.
The rest of batting practice came about an hour later when we had almost the full team down. I went back to smashing balls deep, though not all of them ended up out of the park. A few dinged off the fence, and one or two ended up popped up at the plate. All things considered, I was very happy with how it turned out.
Then it was time for me to switch up and go with the pitching coach. As I made my way to the bullpen, I saw that there was only one other girl there pitching. I looked at Coach Franklin and motioned to Rea, the girl working out.
“She’s starting the first game?”
“No,” Coach said. “You are.”
“Me?” I asked. “After I missed practice?”
“Trust me, I was as surprised as you were,” he said. “But Coach said you’ve got the ball. She’s on tap as the first reliever and is working out for long relief in case we need to pull you early.”
“You won’t have to,” I said.
“If your pitching is anything like your hitting today, I would think not.”
I took the mound in the bullpen beside Rea and nodded. She smiled meekly. Rea was young, a sophomore who showed lots of promise. Thus far, she had only been used in late relief, but if they were working her arm out, they thought there was a possibility she could be a starter. I could feel intimidated by that, but I didn’t. Today, I just felt too good.
The first pitch I threw was like cutting through butter with a hot knife. It was intensely satisfying. My arm was already warm from tossing and taking BP, and I fired the first pitch in near my high-water mark speed. The next few pitches inched up closer to it. Then I started working on my breaking pitches.
Everything was working. I felt like I was not working out whatever stress and frustration I had with the whole Gavin and Star situation by channeling all of it into focus on the ball. I felt like my fingers could feel the seams better, and the ball did what I wanted it to more. I was just playing better, all the way around.
As practice ended, I packed up my bag and tossed it over my shoulder, heading out of the field and back toward the hotel, past the field where the boys were doing their practice. Some of the girls were huddled behind the cage behind home plate, and I joined them without them noticing.
Gavin was on the mound, watching something going on in the outfield before the catcher caught his attention. Then he stomped his spot on the mound, rocked back, and fired a sizzling strike.
Watching his motion was like watching poetry. It was so clean, so fluid it almost made you forget that throwing a ball overhand at that speed wasn’t a totally natural movement of the body. Like a world-class dancer executing a pirouette, his body just moved the way that he wanted it to, and with a grace and power that seemed other-worldly, the ball left his hand at just the right split second and went right into Kevin’s catcher’s mitt.
The radar gun lit up. Ninety-eight miles an hour.
“Holy shit,” one of the girls in front of me said. “He’s going to hit a hundred one of these days.”
Suddenly, Gavin looked up as he caught the ball coming back to him from Kevin, and I knew he was looking at me. He smiled and waved. I waved back before I even thought about where I was or who was around me.
Instantly, I heard whispers and giggling and saw eyes flash toward me. One girl whispered something to another, and they laughed hard. I felt embarrassment creep up my neck again, threatening to turn my skin into the shade of a tomato in the sun.
Either they thought I was hitting on him or that I was pining for something I couldn’t have. Either way was pathetic. None of them would believe that he would actually be interested in me. Why should he? He was Gavin Freeman. He was a god already. I was just the curvy, too-thick jock girl who played softball.
Besides, he was dating someone. Someone much more appropriate.
I felt a bitterness in the back of my throat and slipped away, heading back to the hotel without another thought. If I waited a few minutes, it was likely that the boys would be done and I could actually talk to Gavin. But I didn’t want to wait. What’s more, I didn’t want to be seen waiting. The last thing I needed was to look even more pathetic by being the girl who hung out, waiting for Gavin to get out of practice so he would pay attention to me.
Trying to push the negative thoughts out of my head and focus on my success on the field for the day, I made my way back inside and dropped my equipment by the head of the bed. Drawing the curtains, I decided to go ahead and disrobe in the middle of the room and toss my clothes into the laundry bag. I’d need to wash them tonight so I was ready for the game tomorrow. But first, I was going to shower.
I turned on the water and waited for it to get warm as I stood in the bathroom, cycling through music on my phone until I found something I wanted to listen to. Sticking the phone into the sink to give it a little more reverberating sound, I got into the shower and sighed as the water loosened my muscles.
My body lit up the second I touched the soap to my skin. I couldn’t help it. The water was warm, and my adrenaline was still going from such a good practice. And the image of Gavin, sweat rolling down his neck as he stood on the mound, that slight grin as he waved at me, it was too much. My fingers slid down my stomach and between my thighs, parting the soft hair at my core and finding my clit.
I closed my eyes, sinking into the image. There was no stopping it anyway.
I envisioned him there with me, standing across from me in the shower. How his hands would feel on my skin. How his lips would feel on my own.
My fingers swirled over my clit while my other hand held on to the wall for support. In my mind, it was Gavin holding me up. Holding me close.
He would lift my leg, pressing my back against the wall as our lips crushed into one another. My heart would thump as I felt the head of his massive cock penetrate me. I would gasp as he filled me, and then I would tremble, begging for more. And he would deliver.
My mind raced with the fantasy of Gavin and me locked in an embrace in the shower, in the bed, on the tiny couch where he’d sat while I was sick. It raced with images of me on my back, riding him, on my knees below him. I could nearly feel the warmth of his thick, bulging cock on my tongue.
I came, sliding down the wall as I whimpered in ecstasy. Eventually, I gained control of myself again and finished my shower, deciding that, just this once, I wasn’t going to feel guilty.
