The brown-headed temptress dressed in her tight white jeans shorts, tiny black tank top, and flip-flops looked like a broken doll.
“Wrigley!” the girl that’d been sitting beside the bombshell cried. “Move!”
I growled at the people that were crowding around me and said two words. “Back. Off!”
They backed off, giving me enough room to shift the woman’s hair away from her face and take my first look at her eye.
It was already swelling, turning a deep shade of purple.
Shit.
“George!”
I ignored Coach Siggy’s voice and felt for a pulse, happy when I’d found one.
Unconscious. Not dead. Good.
“George!”
I kept ignoring him and smoothed a hand over the woman’s face.
“Wake up, beautiful.”
As if she’d been waiting for my call, her eyelids fluttered open, and the intense gray eyes were once again staring back, looking at me.
“Hello,” I smiled. “I’m sorry.”
She smiled back. “Sorry for what?”
I pressed lightly on her forehead, right above where the swelling was starting, and said, “For hitting you in the face with a ball.”
She moaned. “That’s gonna suck the next few weeks.” She frowned. “I’d say I’d take your balls to my face any time you want, but…I have a class for battered women tomorrow. This is going to be hard for them to look at.”
I held my laughter inside…barely.
I also silently agreed with her.
My mother wouldn’t have taken advice from some woman with a black eye. She’d have just looked at her as another victim.
The girl started to sit up just as the medics made their way down the steps to us.
“You okay, ma’am?” the first medic asked.
“Yes,” the woman answered.
“Wrigley!”
‘Wrigley’ looked around my crouched form and saw her sister there, staring at her with worry in her eyes.
“I’m okay, Diamond,” Wrigley promised. “I told you we shouldn’t have come here.”
Diamond gave a watery laugh. “I also told you to watch for fly balls in this section. Which you insisted we sit in because it didn’t have netting to obstruct your view. Are you glad we sat here now?”
Wrigley stuck her tongue out at her sister, and I found myself thinking about sucking that tongue into my own mouth.
“Game’s on, Hoffman!” Coach Siggy bellowed. “Either get your ass over here and get the game back on or find your way to the locker room.”
I’d rather find myself into something else, but alas, I wasn’t a total cad.
I stood up, but not before pressing a kiss to Wrigley’s hand. “Hope you’re not too fucked up tomorrow to teach that class.”
Wrigley’s eyes met mine. “Oh, I’m a pro at hiding my bruises.”
And, before I could so much as comment on that, or relay how angry it made me feel to know that she had any experience at all hiding her bruises, she made her way up the stairs with the paramedics, leaving me no reason at all to be standing in the stands.
I sighed and went back down to the field, easily vaulting myself over the wall.
Then I went back to the box, and hit a solid line drive up the middle, yielding me a double.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t look for her throughout the game.
She came back some time in the third inning. She was gone by the eighth.Chapter 2Your mom called. You left your game at home!
-Things Wrigley screams at baseball games
Wrigley
Lumberjacks vs. Strokers
“Did I get hit with a freakin’ anvil or something?” Wrigley asked. “Jesus, this hurts.”
“No,” Diamond laughed. “You got hit with a foul ball.”
I grimaced and continued to layer my makeup on, not stopping until it was absolutely perfect.
“How does it look?” I asked, trying not to wince when I pursed my lips.
Today was going to blow. Really, really bad.
It hurt to smile, let alone talk.
And I had a speech that was going to take me upward of over an hour to give.
“Nobody said you had to go today,” Diamond pointed out.
I gave her a look. “You know I don’t have a choice.”
Diamond shrugged. “You do, you just would rather not admit that there’s someone else on your team that can do it.”
That was true, at least partially.
I did have a team that could easily give this speech. However, since the entire speech topic was so near and dear to my heart, I wanted to give it.
“Whatever,” I muttered. “I’m still going, so it’s not like it will save me from having to see someone. Mom made me promise.”
“Mom was high on morphine when she asked you to make that promise. She could’ve just as easily shared that she wanted you to donate all your net worth, and you’d have done it because it was her dying wish.”
“I don’t have any net worth,” I pointed out. “I have like, ten dollars to my name. Literally. I think it’s more like nine dollars and change. Dodger forgot to pay his part of the rent again.”