Page 7

Jamil

It was a packed house for our first home series of the season.

Even in the locker room we could feel the vibrations from the sheer amount of people inside the stadium.

The anticipation that everyone shared for how this season would go—the fans, the team—was palpable.

It was in the nervous bouncing my teammates were doing as we waited to take the field.

It was in the way Tommy unlaced and relaced his shoes.

It was in the way my heart felt like it would beat right out of my chest. But the moment I emerged from the dugout onto the field with Tommy by my side and heard the excitement from the crowd, the nerves fell away.

“God, I love that sound,” I told Tommy as we stretched behind the foul line, taking in the size of the crowd.

“It never gets old.”

“Want to play some catch?” I asked Tommy as I threw him his glove.

I took off toward centerfield to give us enough space to stretch out our arms. Centerfield was, in my biased opinion, the best seat in the house.

If I could paint, the view of a full stadium from centerfield would be hanging in my home right now.

The view of the perfectly manicured grass, the spotless infield, the white chalk lines, the fans in the stands. It was art.

Tommy lobbed the ball my way and I caught it with ease.

As I drew my arm back to send the ball his way, I caught sight of chocolate-brown hair and a body that I’d been thinking about for weeks.

It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen Harper in the people around me and every time before had been a figment of my imagination, like my brain was trying to conjure her.

I couldn’t see the woman’s face, so I wasn’t certain it was Harper, but this time felt different.

Intuition was screaming at me that it was her.

This woman was standing in front of a camera while holding a microphone—a field reporter.

I was fortunate to be surrounded by multiple medical professionals with the way my heart stopped beating in my chest. Was it really her? Or had I finally lost it? Maybe Tommy was right, and I needed to move on if I was starting to see Harper’s curves in every woman around me.

“Jamil! Watch out!” I barely glanced up in time to see the ball come barreling toward my face. Only my reflexes managed to save me from a black eye. “Are you okay?”

I took off toward Tommy, ignoring his concern. “What are you doing?” he asked me once I was close enough. “You spaced out like you were stuck in a trance.”

“Maybe I was.”

Tommy’s brows drew together.

The smile on my face probably made me look like a maniac. “I think the universe is on my side today, Tommy.”

My best friend was looking at me like I’d somehow got concussed in the time I’d run out to centerfield and back. “What the fuck is wrong with you, J?”

“Do you see that woman?” I tried to point nonchalantly at potentially-Harper to avoid bringing any attention to us. Tommy turned his entire body to look, and I let out a hiss as I stepped in front of him, afraid we’d get caught looking.

“Do you know how to be discreet?” Tommy ignored me as he peered over my shoulder.

“What about her?”

Flashes of Harper’s hair fanned out on the white pillow in my rental in Florida appeared in my mind. I could almost feel her skin against my lips as I kissed every inch of her body.

“I think she’s my mystery girl.” Tommy’s eyebrows raised as he continued to stare at potentially-Harper. “Dude. Can you be any more obvious?”

He ignored me again as he continued to study the woman with narrowed eyes. “The one from Florida?”

“Yes,” I hissed, as if we were close enough that she could hear me.

“What are you going to do about it?”

What was I going to do about it?

What if she didn’t want to see me again?

I couldn’t get her out of my thoughts. I was seeing her in people I passed every day.

I had no idea why she lived in my head. Maybe it was because of the electricity that had jolted me awake for the first time in months, taking my mind away from the current condition my life was in.

When I’d kissed her for the first time at the table outside the taco truck, I thought I was just looking for something to distract me—to take me away from my current reality.

Now I wasn’t so sure. Her leaving before I’d woken up without even saying goodbye was a clear message on what she wanted.

So why was I even considering befriending her?

I must have waited too long to reply because Tommy squared his shoulders and told me, “I have an idea.”

Panic seized my chest as Tommy tore off around me, heading straight for the woman with the microphone. There wasn’t a single chance that whatever plan he had concocted in his head would turn out well.

“Tommy,” I whispered at him as I followed close on his tail. “Stop.”

“Just trust me.” He came to a stop a few feet behind the reporter, but clearly within the frame of her shot. He inconspicuously waved me over.

Oh, so now he knows how to be subtle.

I shook my head and waved at him to come back over by me, but his stubbornness kept him standing awkwardly in the back of her frame, staring into the camera.

This was bound to end up on the sports network shows later.

Once I was next to him, I leaned over to whisper into his ear. “What was your plan now?”

Tommy shrugged and I had to fight the urge not to punch him on live television. “She’ll notice eventually.”

The world slowed down as the reporter began to turn around.

First, I saw her side profile and then all at once I was looking at the woman I had held in my arms. Harper’s eyes met mine and I saw them widen, just barely.

But it was enough to know that she recognized me.

Tommy was looking at me with concern as he watched me stare at her, frozen as a statue.

Gone was any trace of my usual bravado or confidence.

Harper’s gaze left mine and focused on Tommy.

“Tommy Mikals. Hi, I’m Harper Nelson. I’m a reporter with SC News, part of ESPN. Do you have a few minutes for an interview before the game starts?”

Nelson. Her last name is Nelson. And she’s a field reporter. For my team.

Harper must have known who I was in that bar when I sat down next to her, but she never mentioned it. She never even asked me a single personal question like I assumed a reporter would have. She enjoyed my presence the same way I enjoyed hers. My heart quivered.

Now my heart was clenching hard enough I was terrified I was having a heart attack on national television.

“Are you sure you don’t want to interview Jamil? I think he’s more a man of the people.” I barely felt Tommy’s arm wrap around my shoulder as I focused on Harper. She was doing an incredibly good job of avoiding any more eye contact.

The set of her shoulders was stiff and the grip she had on her microphone was turning her knuckles white. Her eyes darted back to me before looking away again—too nervous to hold eye contact. “I think he’d be great to interview after the game.”

I deflated like a punctured balloon.

If only she would look at me for longer than a split second she’d maybe see that I wasn’t upset that she left.

I only hoped that we could continue our conversation from that night in Florida, because that was the first time, and the last time, all the stress I’d been carrying drifted away.

That blissful feeling of peace was intoxicating, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

“I’ll catch you in the dugout,” I told Tommy, my eyes still trained on Harper.

If she didn’t want to talk to me, I wasn’t going to push it.

From my spot in the dugout, I watched Harper interview Tommy.

My best friend turned on his usual charm that he normally saved for interviews and managed to make Harper throw her head back with laughter by the end of it.

Envy latched itself around my ribcage and squeezed.

I wanted to be the one to make her laugh like that.

I wanted to be close enough that I could hear the way it sounded.

The announcers began their pregame introductions and I only walked out of the dugout to join the team once Tommy was done with his interview.

“Why are you smiling?”

Tommy’s grin only grew wider. “Because I could feel you trying to strangle me from the dugout.”

“I barely know her.” The words felt wrong leaving my mouth because while I didn’t know who the world thought Harper Nelson was, I did know that after a few too many drinks she laughed hard enough to snort.

I knew she could devour a basket of chips and salsa like she’d never have it again.

I knew how the sensitive spot in the middle of her shoulder blades made her gasp.

To me those were pieces of her that mattered more than what the world knew.

“You could cut the tension between you two with a butter knife,” Tommy whispered as the announcers began to read off the starting lineup.

“I’m not talking about this right now.”

Tommy leaned back over. “I like her. She’s feisty.”

A sigh pushed through my lips as I grabbed my glove and took off toward centerfield.

I tried my best to push the woman standing near our dugout taking notes out of my mind.

I had too much riding on my shoulders for a distraction like that.

Questions about why she was here and what that meant floated through my mind.

I wanted to swat at them angrily and banish them from my thoughts. But that would be an impossible task.

Harper was nowhere to be found when the game ended.