Page 18

For the batter: when the count contains more strikes than balls. For the pitcher: vice versa.
CASON
“What took you so long?” I’ve been waiting on Ez to get out of the shower for an hour. How there was enough hot water for that long is a miracle.
Ez moves past me, a bowl of cereal in hand. “Drowning boneless babies in the shower.”
I stare at him and notice what he’s wearing. “What the fuck?”
He makes a jerking off motion and walks past me in a leopard robe. If you’re not 100 percent comfortable with male nudity on a daily basis, do not join a baseball team.
I scratch the side of my head, unsure if I want to ask my next question. “Why are you wearing a robe?”
“Because it’s classy as shit.”
I set the bag of jelly beans I was eating for breakfast on the couch. “No man should ever wear a robe. Ever.”
“Bitch, please.” He makes a tsk sound, his lips pressed into a firm line. “I look good.”
“No, you don’t.” There’s a door slamming outside, so I peek out the window to see his uncle Luca standing outside his dust-covered SUV with a blonde, scared-looking girl. I’ve been sleeping here long enough to know that Luca is about as unstable as Jack Nicholson’s character inThe Shining.“Dude, what kind of shit is your uncle into? He’s either burying bodies in the desert or bringing them home.” Shit doesn’t add up. He’s got hiking gear everywhere but doesn’t hike. His car is constantly covered in a thick layer of dust, and he’s gone at all hours of the night.
Ez stares out the window with me and the chick getting into the black SUV like some kind of kidnapping gone wrong. “Don’t ask. The less we know, the better.”
“That’s exactly what people who are into shady shit say.” I raise an eyebrow at him, and he shrugs. “He just shoved that chick into his car.”
With a mouthful of cereal, he quirks an eyebrow out the window. “I think it’s his girlfriend.”
“You think or youknow? Last week he had a fucking chicken running around the kitchen.”
“I never said what he did was legal. Stop asking questions. My last roommate did and pissed him off.”
I look around the small house in south Phoenix. It’s pretty far from campus, doesn’t have air conditioning, and smells like weed. Constantly. For two college athletes, that’s a bad thing. “What roommate?”
“Exactly.”
I snort, shaking my head. “I need to find a place to live.”
“I said you could sleep here. Not that it was safe. Yeah, you do. You’re a horrible roommate. Why do you leave your shit everywhere?”
“I don’t.”
He points to the couch and the clothes I have strung out all over the place. “Really?”
I reach down and take my shorts from the kitchen counter where I left them earlier and toss them on the pile of not clean clothes I have next to the TV. A baseball falls to the floor, so I reach down and pick it up. “You’re being dramatic.”
Frowning at the mess, Ez plops himself on the couch, using my pillow to support his head, and he props his arms up and swipes his finger over the screen on his phone. “How do you get kicked out of a college dorm with a full scholarship? That’s next to impossible.”
“I don’t know. Good luck, I suppose.” It’s a long story about how I ended up on Ez’s couch. He’s living with his uncle, who is as scary as the rest of his family. I’m pretty sure I saw him kill a dude last week, though I’m too terrified of him to ask if what I saw was real.
“You need good luck for tonight. Chiasson is gonna have your ass if you don’t pitch good.”
I toss the baseball in my hand from one to the next. The last thing I want is to lose my starting spot to our backup pitcher again. “I know.”
Noticing my bag of jelly beans, he picks it up. “Did you pick out all the butter popcorn ones?”
“Yep.”
“Damn it.” He digs through the bag. “Any cotton candy left?”