“Kid are you sure your old man won’t check his stash?”
I lifted my eyes from my phone and smirked at Carlos, each of his hands wrapped around the neck of a bottle from my father’s liquor cabinet. “Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter,” I replied. Hell, if he did happen to notice and thrash me around, at least he’d remember I existed.
Carlos squinted at me but went back to moving all the liquor to the living room, and I returned to staring at Peyton’s text.
Dandelion and Oakley think you should stop back by sometime :)
Who the hell named their pit bull Dandelion? Evidently, the same girl who named her horse after a tough-ass gunslinger, quoted inspirational posters, and had a smile sweeter than honey. And damn it if all those things didn’t make me want her that much more.
Two weeks had passed since the day at her ranch. Two weeks since she’d told me about her illness and showed that inner-fire. When I got home, I’d looked up GBS on the Internet. She was right—it was rare. Even crazier, no one seemed to know how people got it. It wasn’t genetic. Sometimes it was preceded by a cold or the flu, but not in every case. Often, healthy people, athletes even, went from walking around and living life one day to lying immobilized in a hospital bed the next.
I still couldn’t believe she’d gone through that and came out the way she had. Positive. Determined. If I’d been in her place, losing the ability to move and control my body, just lying there helpless without any answers, who knows what I would’ve done. Most likely complained and given up.
More than attraction, I admired this girl. Which honestly pissed me off.
Peyton was off-limits. I knew that. I just kept forgetting why.
“Do you guys mind if I fast forward through this crap?” Brandon asked, already skipping ahead on the video. I pocketed my phone without replying to Peyton’s message. “We’re behind time and I want to get to the action.”
“Hell yes I mind,” Drew replied, snatching the remote from our pitcher’s hand. “I like the human interest shit. If I’m gonna watch two dudes beat the shit out of each other, I want to be emotionally invested.”
He glanced at me and grinned, rewinding to the beginning. I shrugged, honestly not caring either way. As long as I wasn’t alone, they could do whatever the hell they wanted.
Dad was traveling again, and Annabeth had taken my brother to her parents’ house. Rosalyn always had weekends off, which meant I’d have the house to myself until Monday. Most people think this would be awesome—visions of Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear in that old movie flash through their mind. But the truth is, being alone sucks. The walls close in, the silence is deafening, and you can only play so many video games before you slowly go insane.
Unfortunately, my usual distractions weren’t appealing, so I’d invited a few of the guys to watch the fight on Pay-Per-View.
“The personal stories are all fluff,” Carlos replied, settling down with a bottle of Jim Beam. “But if you fast-forward through the octagon girls, I’m gonna have to hurt you.”
I shook my head with a laugh. Carlos, I’d quickly learned, was all talk. Pushing to my feet, I headed to the large cooler in the corner as the announcers began discussing the title fight.
“Did you guys watch that dude on Ultimate Fighter last season?” I asked, pointing at Alex Ryan’s face on the screen. Taking out an ice-cold beer, I twisted off the cap. “Broke his damn toe in the middle of the first round and kept on attacking. This match is gonna be a bloodbath.”
Drew turned up the volume and we all fell silent as we listened to Joe Rogan make his predictions. A video package started, showing Alex and his opponent training in their home gyms and wrapping up their previous fights. They’d both bested the most insane competition ever to enter the octagon, proven themselves when and where it counted, and made it to the top. Win or lose tonight, they deserved their spots.
That’s all I wanted at the end of the day—for people to say that about me. That I’d beaten the best and earned my spot. That I belonged there… wherever there was. I hoped it was baseball, and so far, Coach seemed to agree. He’d already pulled me aside a few times after practice, gave me tips during unstructured period, and was even nominating me for an invite-only catcher showcase, despite the fact that I was only a freshman. Things were trucking along exactly the way I wanted them to. I just had to make sure it stayed that way.
“Now there’s my honey right there,” Carlos said as a girl with a deep tan, long dark hair, and a huge rack strutted away from the cage. She sat back in her chair and winked at the camera. “That girl wants me.”