Page 67 of Call My Bluff
Okay, maybe notcompletelyimmune.
Noah swung thebat as hard as he could, reveling in the way the connection jarred his bones all the way to his spine. The ball crashed against the far wall of the batting cage just asa second popped from the automatic pitcher. He smashed that one, too, though it went wide and rolled harmlessly down the netting that protected the rest of the Saturday arcade crowd from his agitation.
Hitting pitches usually quieted his mind, but today even getting to beat something with a metal stick wasn’t helping. It had been two weeks since he’d brought her back to the arcade, and while he hadn’t expected an overnight transformation, he’d really thought there would be something—anything!—to suggest that maybe Olivia could be convinced to see him differently, that maybe their game could morph into something else.
But so far, nothing.
And he was running out of ideas.
Noah ripped off his batting helmet and put it and his bat on a rack by the cage door as he left. What he needed was an expert. Unfortunately, female friends weren’t really a thing in his life, so he only had one option—but at least he knew she would answer. He entered the number by muscle memory, barely even looking at his keypad. It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon—the perfect gap between the lunch rush and the dinner shift—and his mother answered on the third ring.
“Hi, sweetheart!” she said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I have a problem,” Noah groaned, sliding down to sit on the sidewalk in much the same way he’d sat with Olivia months before.
“Oh, really? Is it the car again? I can send you some—”
“No, mom, it’s not the car,” he interrupted.
“Oh. Well, then are you okay? Are you sick?”
“No, I’m not sick. It’s...” He sighed, almost second-guessing himself. “It’s a girl.”
There was barely a pause on the other end of the line. “The one you call Pixie?” she asked.
Noah brought his brows together in surprise. “How do you know about Pixie?”
His mother laughed faintly. “Honey, you talk about her all the time.”
“Do I really?” he wondered aloud. If he did, he honestly hadn’t noticed.
She laughed again, louder this time. “Oh, baby, you’re in deep, aren’t you?” she asked fondly. “I don’t even know this girl’s name, but I know she loves popcorn, works with children and seems to enjoy driving you crazy.”
Yeah, that about summed it up.
“Well, she also thinks I’m ridiculous,” Noah added almost bitterly. “I’m doing my best to change her mind, but she still seems to think everything I do is a joke!”
“Of course she does. Why wouldn’t she?”
Noah stopped, startled and, honestly, a little offended. “What does that mean?” he demanded.
His mother sighed. “Honey, you forget that I know how you are with women. You hide how you feel behind jokes and games,” she explained. “No woman with a brain in her head is going to take you seriously until she knows that you takeherseriously.”
“Well, how exactly do I do that? Because nothing so far seems to have helped,” he protested.
“Have youtold her?”
Noah felt his stomach start to twist into a knot. “Told her what?” he hedged.
“Told herhow you feel?” she asked, emphasizing each word.
Noah flicked dirt off the knee of his jeans and didn’t answer right away. “Sort of,” he mumbled.
“Baby, ‘sort of’ isn’t going to cut it this time,” his mother said. “Smart girls don’t want ‘sort of,’ they want to know exactly where they stand and why. They want to know they aren’t just part of the crowd, that they would be safe with you.Tell her,” she insisted.
The knot in Noah’s gut got tighter, and he shifted on the concrete. Just the idea oftellingOlivia what he was thinking made him antsy. “But what if she doesn’t like what I have to say?” he asked.
“That is the risk you take, sweetheart,” she said gently. “That’s the price of falling in love.”
