Page 79 of The Third Baseman

I stopped. Fuck. Fuck.

Left. When in doubt, go left.

Left it was.

I took off again. She can’t have gone too far because Marnie was nothing if not a stickler for punctuality. She wasn’t ever going to take longer than an hour if she was using her lunch break; my girl was a rule follower.

Maybe because it was mid-week, maybe because it had rained the day before and the ground was damp, or because the air was still a little cooler than usual, but the park wasn’t as busy as I was expecting it to be.

If it had been a little busier, I might have missed her.

It was only when a kid screeched and bolted up the path followed by a frantic mother that I finally spotted her.

I stopped dead and ducked behind the nearest tree. The heavy pounding of my heart had nothing to do with the sprint I’d taken to get here.

I dropped down and fiddled with my shoelace, pulling my cap down lower as a large group of schoolgirls passed by. Thank fuck my shirt was long sleeved; I didn’t need to be outed while spying on my ex-girlfriend.

In fact, if no one ever found out about what I was doing, the better.

I waited until the girls passed, and got back to my feet. It was now or never.

I peered around slowly and watched; her hair was up, her glasses were on – not even resting on her head. They were on her nose.

My heart leapt, actually fucking leapt, and it was possible you’d have seen my grin from space.

Marnie Matthews might have gone on this fucking date, but she definitely didn’t want to be there. Ace had been right.

I couldn’t see Coffee Douche. I could only see her face and her smile, or rather fake smile, which told me everything I needed, and I almost felt stupid for panicking about it.

Even the past few weeks on the brief occasions I’d made her laugh, her eyes had lit up like the Fourth of July, and for the briefest second she’d look at me like she used to look at me; until she went back to the ever-present scowl. Even the scowl was growing on me.

But this moron couldn’t even make the little creases fan out from the corners.

Yeah, I knew when Marnie was interested, and it was definitely not the expression she was wearing right now.

Coffee Douche had his back to me, and from what I could tell, he was pretty average. Average size, average brown hair, average shirt. Average and nondescript, which was probably why she looked so bored.

If I needed further confirmation, it came when she began chewing on her cheek as she nodded wide-eyed. I learned a long time ago that was how she forced herself to concentrate when she was struggling. She was a second away from yawning.

I turned and leaned against the trunk with a broad smile while I wondered what he was trying to impress her with.

He’d learn soon enough; it took a lot to impress Marnie Matthews.

After a quick chuckle to myself, I remembered the reason I was here in the first place.

Fuck.

This was all my fault.

What was I doing?

She was on this date because I’d forced her on it. I thought back to what she’d said about us not being an us, how I hadn’t apologized… how I’d broken her heart.

I thought I’d just needed to remind her of what we had been, but I’d underestimated her stubbornness.

I hadn’t taken her seriously enough, and I’d been handling this all wrong.

She’d asked for space, and I hadn’t listened. I needed to let her come to me, and as much as I didn’t want to, I needed to leave her here.

---