Page 55 of Nothing Like the Movies

“What do you need?” Clark lowered his camera and looked over at me.

“I need you to run this over to the dugout and give it to Wes Bennett when he comes off the field.”

It was insane, both that I thought my words about baseball could help and also that I was trying to help the jackass who’d broken my heart, but I couldn’t stop myself.

This wasn’t about us, after all; it was about, like, UCLA sports.

“I was going to move over there for the first pitch, so sure,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “But are you sure you want your boyfriend to be the one passing notes to your ex?”

“It’s not a love note,” I said, suddenly nervous as hell about what I was about to do. It was a terrible idea, reaching out to Wes Bennett, but I somehow felt like I needed to. “So I think it’ll be fine.”

“Then I’m on it,” he said, taking the paper from my fingers before walking away.

When the team started coming off the field, I pretended to be taking shots while I watched Wes through the camera lens. Hedropped his glove onto the bench and grabbed a bottle of water, his face full of tension.

Where the hell is Clark?

I kept watching, the voyeur with the camera, as Wes squirted water into his mouth, his throat moving around a swallow that was wildly distracting.Why is that distracting?My heart was racing—oh God—when Clark appeared beside him. I couldn’t read his lips, but as Clark spoke to Wes, I had regrets.

Maybe I shouldn’t have sent him into the dugout.

Wes lowered the bottle and looked at Clark through narrowed eyes, like he didn’t quite understand, but Clark just kept talking.

And then he held out the paper—oh Gawwwwwwwwd—the paper that I had sent over.

Oh my God.

I felt shaky as I watched Wes’s big fingers unfold the note.

What was I thinking??

His dark eyes spent a few moments on the paper, and I felt like a fool.

Like a ridiculous, childish moron who thought her inane words about baseball could somehow help a D1 college pitcher throw himself out of a funk.

My face was on fire because I was mortified by my impulsivity.

Wes looked up from the paper and said, “Thanks, man”—with a nod—before Clark turned and walked away.

But as soon as Clark was gone, I watched Wes’s mouth slide into a slow, wide smirk.

That smirk, dear God.

And then he was looking at me.

Even though the camera was between us, as well as the home-plate portion of the infield, his eye contact was intensely direct as he mouthed the words “thank you.”

To me.

I quickly turned my back to him, unwilling to acknowledge what’d just transpired. My face was scorchingly hot as I started taking shots of the outfield, of the fans in the stands, of anything that wasn’t Wes Bennett.

I was the world’s biggest loser because it was such a Little Liz move, sending a missive via courier to the pitcher in the dugout. The little weirdy loved that stuff, and I was mad at myself for accidentally doing something she would’ve approved of.

But as soon as the game started, I stopped caring.

The stadium had a first-game-of-the-season electricity about it, where it seemed like every attendee was watching with bated breath in anticipation of what was about to come. It was sunny and warm, without a cloud in the sky, and the whole package was a creator’s dream: the perfect setting with the perfect action.

I was almost overwhelmed by the wealth of images in front of me, my hands in a frenzy to capture as much as I could. My camera and I were all over the place, but I froze when “Power” started playing over the speakers.

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