Page 57 of Wild Pitch
“Wait.” Audrey tilts her head. “You still call him by his last name?”
I do a double take at the topic change. “Uh, yeah. It’s either that or Cowboy.”
“Does he call you Garcia too?”
“That or darling in that Texan accent of his. Why?”
“I’d have thought that with all the time you spend together you’d have become friendlier.”
While munching, Rose chimes in, “He calls me princess.”
“Apparently I’m sugar.” Audrey points at herself.
I clamp my mouth, my eyebrows tightening. I guess he has a cutesy southern nickname for every woman in his life.
“Whatever.” I wave my hand. “For the record, I’m also hanging out with Rivera and Kim a lot and we’re all still on a last name basis.” I lean back on the couch. “Except maybe Rivera and Starr because they’re besties. But anyway, this isn’t the point.”
“Sorry, you were saying?”
“Starr has a new idea that is pretty out there.” They both lean closer in anticipation. I take a deep breath and blurt out, “He wants to set me up on a blind date.”
Instead of garnering the gasps and outrage I expected, Rose reacts to ask, “With whom?”
Audrey’s eyebrows go up. “Is it with himself?”
“No!” I shout and turn to Rose. “And I don’t know! I have no idea. He just sprang this on me like an hour ago. What do I do?”
“First I’d ask with whom,” suggests roomie one, the popcorn monster.
“But that would defeat the purpose,” surmises roomie two, the armchair hoarder.
“I should say no, right?” I glance from one to the other. “Right?”
Audrey sets her iPad on her lap and steeples her fingers. “But what if—and I know it feels like a big one—what if he legit finds someone awesome? Like, he’s not the kind of guy who’d pull a prank about this.”
“Haa, I hadn’t even thought about that.” I shake my head. “You’re right, though. He’s a pretty trustworthy guy in that regard at least. But what if he finds someone weird?”
“Weirder than men on dating apps?” Rose asks without any malice, pure conjecture alone.
“Oof, yeah, no.”
“The question is… What if he’s the one who shows up to the date?” Audrey asks.
Wait.
Wait.
Why does it feel like someone snatched the couch and I’m falling into a void? I have to grab fistfuls of my fluffy blanket to make sure I’m still sitting in place and not experiencing real vertigo.
“He wouldn’t,” I say firmly.
“Why not?” asks roomie two.
I blow a raspberry so hard that I’m pretty sure she won’t need to water the living room plants anymore. “Look, we’ve all seen baseball boys flirting at bars. They have the subtlety of bulls. Especially him. Like, if he was into me in any way shape or form he’d let me know, Rivera style.”
Audrey snorts and Rose chuckles. This is the post-Rivera club, we’ve all been asked out by him at one point or another.
“Cade’s more subtle,” Rose says, reaching for another handful of popped kernels and we both turn to her. “In fact, he rarely initiates. Women are usually the ones who do.”
