Page 4 of My First and Only Crush

It’ll have to be fine, because my dad keeps telling me this team is built to go all the way.

If I ruin that for him—and for Trick—I’ll never forgive myself.

* * *

Unknown Number: Your dad says you’re not flying home with us

I get the text when I get off the plane at LAX. My stomach does a funny swoop, shame souring in my tummy.

Unknown Number: This is Trick

I knew that already. I add him to my contacts list and take a deep breath.

Sinclaire: I had to get back to school.

Trick: Ah, okay. Makes sense. See you soon, I hope.

I wish I could say yes, but it’ll really depend on how he plays without me.

CHAPTER3

TRICK

Texas / November

I’ve got my dick in one hand, hard and throbbing, and my phone in the other. The screen is extra bright in the dim light of pre-dawn, and it should feel recriminating.

On one hand, the guiltisthere. But that hasn’t stopped me all season, so why should it stop me today?

And in a perverse way, knowing how wrong it is to hunt through Sinclaire’s Instagram posts for tiny glimpses of long, strawberry-blonde waves and her bright sunshine-filled smile only sharpens my arousal.

I haven’t seen her in months, so these online glimpses are all I get.

Wicked desire slithers through my veins as I slow-scroll her posts.

It’s five in the morning, and I should be asleep, resting.

Today is the last time I play professional baseball. Tonight, my team plays in the final game of the final championship series of my career. We’ve pushed our rivals to the very limit, and one way or another, it’s going to end.

So I should be asleep right now. That’s my routine, and after twenty years of playing pro ball, I know how important rest is to my performance.

Instead I’m looking at the short text message chain we’ve exchanged. Eight months, less than twenty text messages.

In May, she told me that her thesis was accepted.

In June, that she accepted an internship with a women’s basketball team in New York.

In July, I asked her if she was coming to the games we were playing there. She couldn’t, she had a conflict.Sorry, she wrote back.Love this batting streak you’re on, though.

I flip back to her Instagram, not wanting to read the last few messages where I ask her if she’s coming to the play off series.

Questions she just didn’t reply to.

I’m in love with a girl who doesn’t even want to get text messages from me.

Not just in love with, cowboy. You’re stroking your meat to a reflection of her hands in a mirror.

It’s a photo from a few months ago. She was on a podcast, talking about being a female statistician in sports, and she shared a photo of herself, her hair tumbling forward, covering up her face, her hands wrapped around a microphone. All of it is framed in an oddly dark, hyper filtered selfie taken in a mirror.

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