Page 96 of The Shake Off

A perfect game. Every pitcher’s dream.

I’d had two combined no-hitters games; I’d had one no-hitters game when I was in college. But a perfect game… nope. There’d only been twenty-four total recorded in the entire history of the Major Leagues. It was rarer than a pipe dream.

But this guy… the one who’d thought I was an overpaid pretty boy two months ago, now seemed to think I was capable.

And I wanted to believe he was correct.

“Dude… watch what you’re doing, will you?” I shoved Tanner back into his seat and off my lap where he’d actually dropped down.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and nodded to the piece of paper Boobs McGee had handed me, which I didn’t realize I was still carrying. “What’s that?”

“Some girl gave it to me. Probably her number.”

When I opened it to show him, however, it wasn’t just her number. It was a polaroid of her wearing nothing, save for a strategically placed arm squashing her tits down.

Call me555-638-2981

Shellie xo

“Whoa.” His eyes widened with way more enthusiasm than mine did. I had no enthusiasm for it, therefore attempted to rip it half but it’s surprisingly hard to rip a polaroid, so I screwed it up as best I could and threw it in the trash.

“What are you doing?” Tanner almost yelled.

“Tossing it. What do I want with it? She probably gave one to all the guys.”

“I didn’t get one,” he sulked, “and just because you have a girl now, doesn’t mean this needs to go to waste.”

He snatched it from the trash and tried to smooth it out before carefully slipping it into the front pocket of his backpack.

“Dude, we’re leaving the city. In a few hours we’ll be a thousand miles away in a different country.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Keep her warm for next time we’re in St Louis. She might live in New York for all we know.”

I didn’t argue because I didn’t care, and watched him open his backpack, reaching in forCosmo, the one Lux had earmarked. I was reading an older edition I’d managed to get delivered on back order, because the four of us had reasoned that it was all new to us, therefore was acceptable. Parker had made the very valid point that it was like binging a box set. I was also too busy thinking about the comment he’d just made.

The one about Payton being my girl.

She’d become the first thing I thought about when I woke up, just like she’d become the last thing I thought about as I went to sleep. In the past week, it had almost become subconscious for me to reach for my phone and check my messages the second I opened my eyes… sometimes even before they’d opened. And if there wasn’t a reply, it was becoming harder to ignore the disappointment.

No matter how tired I’d been, I’d jerked off every night before falling into bed, usually to the thought of her lips around my dick. Last night, I’d pictured her face as I’d used the vibrator on her, watching her mouth drop open as I slid inside her, and I swear I could still feel the way her pussy had clenched around me.

I hadn’t come quite as hard as I had with her, though it hadn’t been far off.

We’d been sleeping together for seven weeks and two days. I knew this because it was the length of time I’d been improving my pitch. And outside of the days I’d been traveling, we’d spent almost every night together. The days I had been traveling, we’d managed phone sex three times, because it was virtually impossible to get that type of privacy.

Butmygirl?

Doing the math, I assumed the time we spent together meant she was too busy to have sex with any other guys. If I was bringing my competitive side out, I hoped I’d tired her enough that she didn’t have the energy, but the rest of me – the bit that made my chest feel like it was caving in at the thought of someone else touching her like I touched her?

Yeah, that fucking bothered me.

Did that make her my girl? Was this dating? Could it be dating if you hadn’t been on a date?

I hadn’t seen anything inCosmothat would suggest it to be so, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know.

I liked Payton. A lot. More than a lot, and I had no intention of stopping what we were doing. So yeah, shewasmy fucking girl.

I should probably tell her.

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