“Enough, Todd!” the whole team yells, and Coop and I laugh as Candace reads the clue on the Clausometer.
As we rush over to the next clue, I can’t help but watch Coop. And when he reaches up and turns his gray Firebirds baseball cap backwards on his head, my breath catches.
Shoot.
Shoot, shoot, shoot.
I have a crush on a baseball player.
CHAPTER TEN
LIESEL
“Idefinitely had one more than you!” I tell Coop on the way back to the hotel. He and I are in the backseat of the “party bus,” and Candace and two of the data engineers are talking and laughing in front of us. “You forgot the Naughty List puzzle?—”
“That was Paul, not you!” Coop says.
“No, it wasn’t! Paul got the crossword, but I did the—” I stop myself. “Rats. It was Paul.” I groan and bump my head against the back of the seat. Coop closes his eyes and rests his head on my shoulder. I shove him off, knocking his hat to the bench in the process. I scoop it up before he can and put it on my head. I get a whiff of his peppermint shampoo in the process.
Oh, wow, that’s nice.
Coop takes his hat off of me and returns it to his own head, his wavy hair poking out from the bottom. “A hoodie is one thing, but no one wears my hat.”
I give a disbelieving laugh. “It’s a hat. You probably have a hundred.”
“No, I have one. And a backup at home.”
I take it off his head and put it back on mine.
He takes it back off and returns it to his own head.
“You don’t understand. Finding a hat that fits me is like … Cinderella’s glass slipper. It’s a perfect fit. I can’t let anyone wear it.” He pinches my nose. “Not even you.”
I don’t let myself smile or blush at his implication that I’m special. I mean, I squeal inside a little, but that’s because I’m tired and not thinking straight. It’s almost eleven, and I hardly slept last night, what with having to fix the roster.
I yawn. “Coop, you wear a hat every game. And this is a team hat.”
“Yeah, and I’ve tried every single hat New Era sent me. Hundreds of them. This is the only one that doesn’t make my head look weird.”
“Don’t blame the hat,” I say. “It’s your weird head’s fault it looks weird.”
He pushes me all the way over, and I start giggling against the seat. And I can’t stop.
“Whoa,” he says, laughing. “Someone’s getting punchy.”
My laughter stops.
“What? You okay?” he asks. He pulls me up, and suddenly, tears spring to my eyes. “Liesel, are you okay? What happened?”
I shake my head, trying to shake my frown off with it. “It’s nothing.”
“Liesel, you went from laughing like a schoolgirl to looking like I murdered a puppy in front of your face. What’s up?”
I don’t want to say anything, but I’m tired and have lost my filter and too much inhibition. “I get silly when I’m tired.”
“I see that.”
“My brothers always had late games and tournaments, and when I’d get tired on the drive home from a game, my family would do dumb stuff to make me laugh. I’d start giggling and wouldn’t be able to stop, and my mom would always say, ‘Someone’s getting punchy!’” I give him a sad smile and wrinkle my nose. “I haven’t heard someone say that in a long time.”
