Prologue
Lennox
“Ithought your pitches broke records because you stroked one out too many times during your high school days, but the Matched app ding possessing your phone the past ten minutes proves otherwise. Tap ‘no’ occasionally, man. Leave some fish in the ocean for the rest of the chumps.”
Terrence, third baseman for Morrison State University, tosses me my cell phone. I only just catch it since my hands are wet from a recent shower I had to wash off the funk of a grueling training session. Even with the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division 1 baseball season not officially starting until February, Coach Randall has us running drills like tryouts are next week.
Mercifully, they’re not, leaving me plenty of time to comb through the matches I’ve secured the past week. Matched is like every other dating app out there, except it doesn’t pussyfoot around the fact it is a hook-up app. You scroll, you approve, and if you’re matched with someone in the area, you organize a time and a location.
Easy fucking peasy.
Dating has never been an issue for me, but with my athletic scholarship also based on academic performance, I don’t have time to wine and dine anyone, much less college girls yet to ditch the three-date rule. Matched keeps it simple. We match, we hook up, then we go our separate ways, but regretfully, there have been a handful of loonies constantly ruining it for the rest of us lately.
Fingers crossed, I don’t stumble onto one of them tonight. I’m eager for some fun. I’d just rather it be without the drama my father’s life is rarely without.
“I’m officially fucking jealous.” Sprouts of Terrence’s twisted black afro bounce along with his big head when he hops foot to foot. “Your matches are like scouring the pages of a Victoria’s Secret swimsuit edition.” He stops bouncing, cranks his neck, then scrolls back through my potential ‘dates’ like the fumbling fingers that should have gotten him booted from the minor league won’t have him wrongly accepting some unwanted pairings. “Thatisa Victoria’s Secret model, isn’t it?”
I take a closer look, my heart rate kicking up when the brunette’s face registers as familiar. “I think it is. Let’s send her a message.” I express my comment with a cocky edge that will have Terrence convinced I’m inviting him for a three-way. The truth is only exposed when I twist away from him to ensure Amia’s private message details aren’t disclosed.
A touch of the sky-high ego Amia’s immediate reply causes takes a beating when her message announces she’s out of town for a month. She’s keen. Just not until fashion week is over.
“Lucky there is still plenty of fish in the sea,” I murmur when Terrence’s chuckle about the disappointment on my face isn’t reserved. “Well… forsomeof us.”
When I scroll through possible candidates with immediate availability, Terrence keeps watch over my shoulder like his junk is covered by more than an almost see-through towel. I could tell him to scan his own potential hookups, but since that would have him de-nutted by his high school sweetheart, Indigo, I let him live precariously through me. It’s the least I can do since he conned the RA of his dorm into letting us room together.
Originally, I was assigned a dormitory on the other side of the campus. It was the furthest from the baseball mound and full of students who think a raging Friday night is playingDungeons & Dragonsuntil the self-imposed eleven o’clock curfew.
I met Terrence while scoping out the playing field Morrison spent over two million dollars perfecting last year. He organized for me to be bunkered with him within three hours of being informed about my rooming situation. We’ve been teammates and somewhat friends ever since.
I say ‘somewhat’ as I’ve walked in on him in the buff too often to feel comfortable giving our ‘thing’ an official title. Teammate works much better.
My bluish-green eyes lift from my cell’s screen when Terrence murmurs, “She’s cute.Different, but cute, nonetheless.” I unknowingly slowed my scroll on the profile of a petite blonde with big blue eyes and thick-rimmed glasses balancing on her tulip-shaped nose. She’s attractive but far left field compared to the type I usually go for. That might have more to do with the fact the goody-two-shoes, brainy girls don’t often troll Matched for Friday night entertainment. When they do, it’s because they’ve misunderstood how it operates. “She has the sexy scientist look down pat…” His words trail off when I flick past SummerNights23’s profile. “What was wrong with her? Girls can be smartandcute. Indigo sure puts that theory to the test.”
When he rubs his hands together as if he looks forward to Indigo’s recognition of his underhanded compliment, I dart my eyes around the locker room, seeking an electronic apparatus. Upon failing to find a flashing red light directed my way, I shift my suspicious eyes back to Terrence. “If I find out you re-registered me on Hidden Watch, you won’t need to worry about Indigo castrating you for looking with no intention to touch. I’ll be front and center with a pair of tweezers and a blow torch.”
Hidden Watch is a dating app for voyeurs. They don’t approach you like a married-up mother of four with a weekend free pass. They watch from afar like freaks with disfigured morals. The last time Terrence rigged his cell phone to the ceiling fan in our dorm without my permission, he made a fortune. Although my hits on Matched quadrupled when my videos went viral, I wasn’t given a chance to gobble up the attention. The instant my father gloated on social media that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, I scrapped the thousands of matches Hidden Watch had gained and started anew.
This is only my second week back in the game.
I look like my father and pitch like him, but our personalities are on opposite ends of the spectrum. He’s the sole reason I opted in for three years of school instead of being drafted to the MLB straight out of my senior year. The man who’s been watching me pitch since the ninth grade was peeved as fuck I turned down a fat-wadded offer ballers would sell their left kidney for, but after meeting my father, Lindsay understood my hostility.
Perhaps if my father were given the chance to be a youth when he was a youth, he wouldn’t be trying to relive his formative years now. He hurt my mother a lot during their ten years of marriage, and just when she’d finally had enough, the universe had other plans for her.
After brushing off the downer my father’s multiple failures always plague me with, I whip off my towel, then tug on a pair of briefs and gray sweatpants. By the time a plain white tee covers my torso, an address for one of my Matched candidates has dropped into my inbox. It’s for a location not too far from Morrison, and our meetup time is only a short twenty minutes away, so instead of calling it a night like Terrence will since he is as pussy whipped as they come, I double tap on BookLover21’s message, agreeing to both the time and location cited, then slap Terrence on the shoulder. “Don’t wait up. Coach Laker’s plan to exhaust us to the brink of collapse didn’t work. I’ve got a week’s worth oftestosteroneto disperse.”
When he reads my comment in the correct manner—my testosterone comment has nothing to do with excess hormones and everything to do with the heaviness of my nuts—he grimaces before reminding me to cover up. “Remember… herpes is for wimps.”
The first time he quoted that, my dick wanted to hibernate in my stomach. I wrongly believed he had heard about the rumor my father paid out the eye to make disappear. It was only after taking in a handful of conversations in the locker room did I unearth the reason for his caution. The head cheerleader wasn’t popular last season for no reason. The catcher, star quarterback,andalmost all the basketball team discovered that the hard way in the weeks following summer break.
Thankfully, I rocked up for the first semester six weeks late, or I may have been one of those statistics. My fondness for cheerleaders only waned when I learned my father appreciated their easy-access skirts and midriff tops as much as I did. He also believes age is merely a number. Not even chasing girls in the same age bracket as his son slowed him down. If anything, it made him work harder.
With the hour late and my annoyance taken out on my bike’s throttle, I make it to the address cited in the Matched messenger app with four minutes to spare. I stand on the sidewalk with my helmet lodged under my arm and my dark brows drawn together. The location isn’t quite what I was expecting. It’s too quaint to be nestled between glammed-up sorority houses, but the ‘Best Coffee for the Next Four Hundred Miles’ sign flashing in the front window makes it even less kosher.
Curious to discover if the ‘50s bungalow has guest bedrooms, I walk up the cracked footpath and enter the carved wooden door. My lips twist when the pungent aroma of coffee filters through my nose. It smells rich and inviting, even with most college-goers preferring a different type of brew this late on a Friday night.
A smile tugs on my lips when a worker hustles my way. She’s juggling half a dozen empty mugs on a tray like her hands are double their size, and a smidge of the chocolate powder sprinkled on every beverage is dusting her noticeable yet still delicate nose.
In preparation to ask her if there are rooms in the back, I hold my finger in the air like a kindergarten student busting to use the bathroom. Before a word can fire from my mouth, the blonde with wild, crazy hair barely contained in an alligator clip dumps the dirty dishes into a sink a foot past a swinging kitchen door, then digs a cell phone out of the pocket of her dowdy overalls.
