Page 9 of The Fall Classic

If I can sneak inside and hug the outer wall, he’ll never see me disappear down the small staff hallway with the staircase to my apartment. If I hadn’t left my bag behind the counter, I could have used the outside stairs.

But suddenly, the idea that he might not see me—that I could slip past him to the back and up the stairs and he would never know I was here—is the worst thing I can imagine.

My heart drums loudly in my chest.

Do it! Do it!

I pull the door open.

And the chime sounds.

CHAPTER THREE

Logan

This is her book.

Even if I hadn’t seen a red paperback in the back pocket of her shorts on the camera, I would know this book with a hundred different dog-eared pages is hers. She’s written in the margins of almost every poem in the book, and there are notes scribbled all over both pages of “The Road Not Taken.”

It’s practically a cliché for someone to love that poem, but Georgiana isn’t any other someone. Three different colors of ink have been used to underline passages and scribble out her cramped thoughts.

This isn’t a high school student reading the poem at commencement. This is someone who’s internalized it in different ways at different times. Someone who’s etched this poem into her heart.

I hear the chime of the door and whip around, and that’s when I see her—long blonde hair, huge brown eyes, her mouth forming an O.

Is she thinking what I’m thinking?

“It’s you,” I say.

“That’s my book,” she says at the same time.

So. Not the same thing, then.

Cool.

Cool cool cool.

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t sure, so …” I trail off.

“You weren’t sure if it was my book or if it was yours?” she asks, cocking her head like she really wants to know if I think I may have left my 2002 reprint edition of Robert Frost’s poems on this very same table earlier.

My face flames. “I didn’t mean that.”

Her lips turn into a half smile. “I figured, but I didn’t want to assume.” She pauses.

I pause.

She sticks her hands in the back pocket of her cutoff shorts, which, with her high-top Converse, make her legs seem longer than should be possible for her height. She’s probably my sister’s height—five-six—not tall enough to look so willowy. And she’s too tanned to look so ethereal, but that’s exactly what she is: willowy and ethereal. Bookish and beautiful.

I’ve lost my ability to think, let alone speak.

Honestly. The constant buzz of anxiety that swarms in my head at all times has just gone … silent.

Unfortunately, it looks like my anxiety might be intertwined with my intelligence, because I’m standing here speechless, like an idiot who ran all the way from the stadium in his jersey and cleats, blurted “It’s you,” and then stood there like a dummy.

What a great second impression.

“I’m not sure if you remember me,” I say, “but I’m Logan Fischer. I play for the Mudflaps, the local baseball team. But I’m on the extended roster for the Chicago Firebirds, too. The Major League Baseball team? We met in Phoenix because of that, in fact, during Spring Training. At a, uh, Firebirds fan event. I’m not saying you’re a fan, but you were with your niece, Lulabelle, and she said she was a fan. Um, I’m sorry I’m rambling. I really thought you were going to interrupt me long before now. Feel free to put me out of my misery.”