Chapter 5

Mackenzie

He has a date.

Brooks has a date.

And when Sarah off-handedly says Ainsley seems nice, I realize the Fireballs are about to lose their brand-new power slugging third baseman, because I'm positive he's planning on sleeping with her.

He has to be, doesn't he?

And it's not like I can be around all the time to stop him.

Which means I need to talk to someone.

I need to talk to a very specific someone right now.

"Do you know where the bathroom is?" I ask Sarah.

Beck points me toward the nearest mansion. "Through the kitchen and around the corner, past the mascot posters."

Ugh. Damn mascot pictures. I hate the new mascot options.

Sarah frowns at me. "You okay on your own?"

"It's only the bathroom." And I'm sweating like I'm exercising with ski gear on in hundred-degree heat.

I force a smile and head off, weaving through players that would normally leave me consciously in a coma—swear it's a thing—and looking for a familiar face.

Lucky for me, he hasn't gone far, and he's not surrounded by other players. Just a bunch of women.

Women.

How can he be thinking about women at a time like this?

I grab his arm, and his brows shoot up over his bright blue eyes. "Hey, Mac. What's up?"

"I need to talk to you," I whisper.

Brooks is over near the fire, laughing at something his date said, and I don't want him to see me.

First, because shaking his hand did weird things to my insides, and while he's a virgin, I'm not, and I know exactly what those things are. And second, because I'm mildly terrified that he'll recognize me from last night.

Cooper, thank god, jumps right into action. "You bet. Here. The laundry room in my building's quiet. Is that okay? I mean, if you can't talk there?—"

I grip his solid arm tighter and tug. "Where?"

Yep.

Turns out I can talk to anyone if I'm properly motivated, though now that Cooper's leading me into a house, up the stairs, past bedrooms where the baseball players sleep, and closing the door to the laundry room, blocking out the noise of the party and leaving us in a very, very small confined space, I'm noticing that my deodorant has failed and my boobs are sweating and these heels were only a good idea in that I'll look like a million bucks when the EMTs find me.

My dads will be so proud.

"What's up?" Cooper asks.

Babe Ruth bless him for being so good about this after I've been a total spaz around him for almost two years now. "Hold on. I don't think I can say this if I'm looking at you."

"Okay." He turns his back, and now I have a view of Cooper Rock's ass, and anyone who tells you all baseball players don't have the best asses has zero taste.

"Gah. No, I have to turn around."

"Should we both stay turned around?"

I spin, stare at a shelf of laundry detergent with four different brands and types of detergent over the dryer, which is blinking that a load is done, which means I'm standing basically next to a baseball player's underwear, and I blurt it all out. "Brooks Elliott is a virgin."

Yeah.

I said that.

Cooper chokes on air. Pretty sure he's laughing. Or trying not to, since silence settles heavy and thick almost immediately. It smells like dryer sheets in here.

Maybe I can rub my armpits with dryer sheets. That would be more effective than my deodorant.

Clearly.

"I…that…huh," he finally says.

"It's a superstition thing," I continue in a rush. "I can't tell you how I know, but I have multiple sources that have confirmed that if he has sex, he won't be able to hit a ball, and I need the Fireballs to win."

"What sources?"

"I can't tell you. But it's the truth. Ask Sarah. Or Lila. They were both there." And they were, at the cookout in Copper Valley last fall where Brooks's sister, Parker—one of Lila's best friends—drunkenly confessed that she was sure he was a virgin. "But don't let them tell you how they know either."

More silence covered by the hum of the party music sneaking through the walls.

I don't know if he's contemplating that I'm a few papayas short of a fruit basket, or if he's realizing that this is actually life and death of our favorite team that I'm talking about.

"You know how important it is that the Fireballs win this year." My chest is getting tight. Too much talking to one of my idols. And Cooper is definitely idol-able on the field. Even being on the worst team in baseball, he wins awards for his glovework and his bat, and I think he might be my top competition for most loyal Fireballs fan ever.

"Dude, yeah, I…I guess I never thought this would be the first thing you'd ever say to me. But it makes sense."

"He's trying to get laid," I add.

"That's understandable. I mean, thirty years with no sex…I'd be climbing the walls. Or I'd have a really big right forearm."

"He can't." Yeah, breathing is definitely getting harder. And no amount of reminding myself that Sarah's probably right, and I need to do something different to contribute to my favorite team's cosmic success, is helping with the impending hyperventilation. "He can't score if he gets laid."

"Technically, if he gets laid, he's scoring, but I see—whoa, hold up. Do you need a paper bag?"

"Yes." I gulp air. I am such a basket case. "No."

"Aw, Mac, I'm just a guy."

"Your brother told me. And your sister. But you're Cooper Rock."

"I sometimes fart in the shower and blame it on Torres."

"I know." And now there are black dots dancing at the edges of my vision, and my breath is coming in what should be huge gulps, but instead feels like dainty little sips of air-tea.

Get a grip, Mackenzie. You can do this. You HAVE to do this."Please help me. You can't let Brooks have sex. You can't."

"Shit. Here. You need to sit somewhere, and I need to go find you a paper bag."

He grabs my elbow and tugs, and I trot along while he leads me out of the laundry room.

I'm in the hallway outside where all of my heroes sleep.

Yep. Not gonna make it. "How's my lipstick?" I pant. "Will the paramedics judge me?"

Cooper pauses, coughs, his eyes twinkling, and then guides me into a bedroom down the hall after pausing outside the first bedroom we pass.

Oh my god.

Am I in Cooper Rock's bedroom?

"Here. Sit. Breathe. I'm texting Sarah—wait. Give me your phone. If you can't talk to me, maybe we can be text friends."

I shove my phone at him. Once he's gone, I'll label his contact information as something like Gomer Aloysius Perdywagon, and then I'll be able to pretend I'm not texting with Cooper Rock.

I hope Brooks—and the whole team—appreciates the lengths I'm going to in order to save his game this year. If anyone can turn the Fireballs around, it's Tripp and Lila and this coaching staff they're building, and wouldn't everyone regret it if Brooks getting laid was the one thing that kept the team from the post-season?

"Okay. My number's in there under Fiery the Dragon, and I texted myself from your phone so I have your number too. I'm gonna go find Sarah."

I squeeze my eyes shut even as a little voice whispers, you did it, Mackenzie! You talked to him! "Don't let Brooks have sex."

"Look, Mac, I want to win as bad as everyone, but there's a code, you know? You can prank a guy a few times, but you can't cock-block a teammate repeatedly for no reason."

"Winning is the reason." I am such a disaster. Normal, rational people probably don't enlist the help of professional baseball players to interfere with a man's sex life.

But it's the Fireballs.

You try growing up the daughter of two drag queens, dealing with all of the crap that comes with having nontraditional parents, because kids can be total assholes no matter how much you learn about love and acceptance and the beauty of originality at home, and then tell me you wouldn't go to extreme lengths to help a team that gave you an escape from the mocking and teasing and made you feel like a normal kid who belonged somewhere, even if that somewhere was a fandom.

There's nothing like the unity of the true-blue fans of a team that never wins.

Wearing a Fireballs jersey made me feel connected to something bigger at a time when I desperately needed it. Still does. I can walk down any given street, pass someone in Fireballs gear, and there's this instant connection, like yeah, man, I feel your pain, but we're in this together. We're not alone.

In my teenage years, when I turned into that shit kid myself who decided that my dads sucked and that they were trying to ruin my life—not because I had two dads, but because doesn't every teenager feel like that?—it was baseball that brought us all back together.

"Please?" I say to Cooper. "Please stop him. I could quit my job to stalk him, but I only have so much in savings and only so much more in credit, and even I know that's crazy talk to spend eight months going into debt just to cock-block a baseball player. Plus I'll probably get arrested."

He sighs. "I promise I'll look into if he's trying to sabotage the team. You—stay. Okay? Stay here, and I'll be back as soon as I can find Sarah."

He leaves me in the room, and my breathing evens out almost instantly.

But you know what?

I did it.

I talked to Cooper Rock.

High five to me.

And if I did it once, I can do it again. And maybe that will be good luck for the home team.

But maybe not right now.

Right now, I'm good with continuing to hide in this bedroom, and sit on the bed where I know a baseball player sleeps, and practice not freaking out about it.

I know I'm irrational. I know it's nutty. I know they're just people.

But I want to believe in heroes.

I don't know how to be normal around my heroes. It's like, I want to know they exist, but I don't want them to see how dorky I am underneath the silent thing.

I have issues. I know. I know.

I hear voices in the hall, and they're not Sarah's voice, or Beck's voice, or Cooper's voice.

Nope.

That's Brooks Elliott's voice.

"Don't come in here," I whisper. "Please don't come in here."

The door's wide open.

He'll see me if I don't move.

And so I do.

All while whispering don't come in here.

Completely in vain.