The Dugout(4)
I smile kindly at him. “Like a ballplayer.”
Chapter Two
CARSON
“Thank fuck,” I answer, placing my EarPods in my ears. “I need to hear your voice.”
“You make it sound like we’re dating,” Knox says, on the other end of the phone.
I huddle in the corner of the dining hall, waiting for my teammates to show up. Because of my show of unsportsmanlike conduct on the field yesterday, Coach Disik suspended me from practice today and is benching me for the next game as well. Just what I fucking need when I’m trying to enter into the draft at the end of the season.
I’m already behind thanks to my injury, add to it my shitty performance on the field, and now warming the wood in the dugout, I’m never going to make it to the big leagues.
“We are dating. We’ve been dating since freshman year,” I say.
“When you say shit like that, it makes our relationship seem weird.”
“Hey, I warned you I was clingy when we first met. It’s not my fault you let me into your world. How’s your mom by the way? I miss Mama G this season and watching her tits bounce up and down in the stands.”
“I will murder you.”
I laugh, feeling a small sense of relief talking to one of my best friends on the phone after the stress I’ve been carrying.
Not only did I miss out on being drafted last season, but because my two best friends, Holt and Knox, were drafted, they left me with all the underclassmen, making me the only fucking senior on the team.
If you’ve been counting, that’s number two hundred sixty-two when it comes to swift kicks to the crotch when it comes to my luck.
Luckily, there are a few guys I’ve been able to lean on this year, Jason Orson being a big one since we share a wall in the loft.
And for the record, he thinks Badcock’s story about tripping is a crock of shit. He was one of the guys in the dugout and saw the sheer force and speed he was running at. Badcock had one thing on his mind: destroy Carson Stone.
I begrudgingly allow him access to the baseball loft, as the weasel head has convinced some teammates what he did was accidental. But he’ll never make it past door duty while I’m here. Maybe he’ll consider his actions next time before he goes and snaps another man’s Achilles tendon.
Poking fun at my love for Knox’s mom is one of my favorite things to do so I say, “She sent me Oreo brownies a few weeks ago, and I pictured her while eating them.”
“I’m about to hang up.”
Laughing harder, I stop him before he hangs up—he’s done it before and refuses to answer the phone when I call him back . . . multiple times. “Coach benched me.”
Silence.
I check the screen to make sure he actually didn’t hang up on me. “What? Why?”
Slinking against the brick wall, I ask, “Do you want the real reason or the ‘for show’ reason.”
“Start with the ‘for show’ reason.”
“I struck out three times in one game yesterday, lost my cool, slammed my bat to the ground, tossed my helmet toward the dugout, and screamed ‘fuck’.”
Chuckling, Knox says, “Yeah, that will get you benched.”
“But he also benched me from practice and the next game.”
“Ouch, really? That seems harsh and unlike him. Now I’m curious. What’s the real reason?”
l observe the campus from afar, the different types of students always interesting me. There are the happy students without a worry in the world, the ones who just skate through college on their parents’ dime. Then there are the stressed and neurotic who are about to have a mental breakdown any second—love the nervous ticks in their eyes. And then there are the student athletes who have ice bags Saran-wrapped to every part of their body, looking tired and ready to pass out in their sub-par plate of spaghetti and meatballs. We’re all here for one goal: to earn an education, and yet, our lives and worries are vastly different.
My benching would probably seem menial to someone struggling with student loan debt and trying to earn a piece of the pie in academic scholarships, but like I said, we all have different worries that plague us.
Mine just happens to control the entire outcome of my career.
Biting on my bottom lip, I close my eyes briefly. “I think he’s trying to light a fire under my ass so I get my shit together and start performing.”
“Still in a slump?”
“Let’s just say Gunner’s slugging percentage is better than mine.”
“Oh fuck.” He chuckles, and I don’t blame him. When a pitcher is getting more hits than a middle infielder, there’s something seriously wrong going on. “Dude, Gunner has the ugliest swing ever.”
“Tell me about it, and yet, he’s still able to hit the ball. I might as well step in the batter’s box with a blindfold strapped across my eyes and stick my bat over the plate, hoping for any kind of contact at this point.”
“Dude, I had no idea it was this bad.”
“Because you’re in your own personal hell, trying to make a name for yourself in the minors.”
He chuckles. “I wouldn’t call it hell, but I will say this, the accommodation at Brentwood far exceeds anything I’m sleeping in now. Rich and privileged university to Double-A ball is a rude awakening, that’s for damn sure.”