Page 18 of The Way We Swing

“Just thinking,” he said, turning back toward the sky.

“You’re cute when you think,” I said impulsively.Shit.

“You think I’m cute?” he asked, his lips twitching upward.

“Only when you think,” I blurted. That made it better, right? “What were you thinking?” I added, not wanting him to ponder too much about me calling him cute.

“This town. Your family. Now you.”

“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t find any other words. After five minutes, I couldn’t sit in silence any longer. “Did you have fun today?”

“Way better than my last holiday,” he said. He took a sip of his beer but didn’t elaborate.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

The question lingered, like so many did when we talked alone.

I opened my mouth to try again, but a loud pop filled the air. A red firework burst across the sky, lighting up the space between us. I watched, letting the color wash over me. At one point, I turned to look at Easton just to see his face. But when he noticed, I snapped my eyes to the sky.

What if I made a move on Easton, and I was rejected? I couldn’t lose him. I didn’t know how I’d gotten used to needing him so quickly, but I had.

By the time the fireworks ended, the mood had shifted. I pulled out the last two beers, and we drank in silence. We didn’t finish them—we fell asleep before we could.

I woke up with a jolt. Thunder cracked above, followed by rain that soaked through my shirt in seconds. Easton stirred beside me, blinking up at the storm, and we both burst out laughing as we scrambled back through the window and into the attic.

We stumbled into my room, soaked and out of breath, but neither of us said a thing as we changed for bed.

He slid onto the futon as I pulled myself under my covers. I kept waiting for the silence to crack—some dumb joke, some bold confession. Something.

But nothing came. Staying quiet seemed easier than telling the truth.

CHAPTER 7

“Ihave an idea,” I said as I put another ball on a tee. Easton smacked it into the net, the sound bouncing against the shed in our backyard.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Sweat stung my eyes from hitting for the last two hours. I took a breath before asking the question I’d been thinking about for the last couple of days. “Why don’t we take Gavin to his tournament this weekend instead of my parents?”

Easton swung again before responding; I stared at the ground, playing with the dirt while I waited for a response. “Good idea. Where’s it at?”

“About two hours away. We’d leave Friday morning and, if they play well, get back late on Sunday night.”

“Is Zach or Ricky going?”

“I don’t think so. Zach has football practice. Ricky doesn’t like watching baseball. Honestly, I don’t know how we're friends.”

“Cool. Just the two of us, then. I’d have to ask my grandparents, but they’re happy when I’m out of the house.”

He went back into his stance, itching for me to feed him another ball. He’d said “just the two of us” as if it was nothing, like it wasn’t the reason I was asking him to come on the trip.

We swung for another ten minutes before the sound of a car and the laughs of a thirteen-year-old broke us up.

Gavin half walked, half jogged around the corner. His yellow uniform was still on, the shirttail untucked in front; his red Crocs clashed with the rest of his uniform.

“Easton!” Gavin said as soon as he saw us. “I threw two runners out at my game tonight.”

“You’d think they’d know by now not to try to steal on you,” Easton said.