Page 19 of Built to Last

And he was okay with it.

I pushed that out of my mind. I had more important things to think about anyhow. Like crushing the Barracudas and winning the championship for the Walruses. Which wasn’t an easy task. The Barracudas were considered the best team in our league, and they showed us why with every inning we battled through.

Gilbert was their star batter, but they had depth. Before the bottom of the fourth, they were up, two-zero. Fortunately, Hiro hit a homer in the top of the fifth, and in the sixth, Smitty hit a ground ball that sent Lon home to even the score.

From there, it was a slog. I managed to strike Gilbert out in the bottom of the eighth, which was a morale boost for the Walruses. Gilbert glared across the grass at me as he lowered his bat in disbelief. He was pissed, but it was more than that. I absolutely understood what Hiro meant about the two of us eye-fucking, only the way Gil looked at me was more like some sort of vengeance fuck.

Just because we’d been skating around some new iteration of our connection didn’t mean we weren’t both fiercely competitive and ready to take each other down if given half a chance.

That chance came unexpectedly quickly.

“Why the fuck did you have to gloat like that when you got me out?” Gilbert demanded, following me into the equipment locker at the back of the brick building that housed a tiny locker room and toilets.

“What?” I snapped incredulously, turning back to him as I shoved the padded bases onto one of the high shelves. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You heard me.” Gilbert marched right up to me and stopped with his hands on his hips and fury painting his face. For some reason, that fury looked like hurt.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” I turned back to the shelves, needlessly straightening the bases.

Gilbert grabbed my shoulder and spun me back to face him. His touch was aggressive, but it also sent a current of unwanted lust through me.

“What the fuck?” I demanded, shaking him off.

“Who do you think you are anyhow?” Gilbert seethed.

“Dude, you need to calm the fuck down,” I said. “What are you even doing? The Barracudas won. You should be celebrating, not walking around with something up your butt.”

Gilbert’s eyes went wide at the analogy. “Like you would know about something being up my butt.”

A chill sizzled through me, and I took a step back. At least, I would have if the shelves hadn’t been there. I ended up with my back pressed against the shelves, feeling cornered.

“Is that what this is about?” I asked, a deep buzz starting low in my gut. Hiro’s observations rushed back at me. “Is this about us?”

Gilbert’s face went even redder than it already was, even though his anger shifted hard to something more fretful. “It’s not about anything,” he said, which was patently absurd and a giant flashing sign announcing he was definitely carrying around a chip on his shoulder.

I tried to push my anxiety into looking like I was the calmer and more collected of the two of us. “Spill it,” I said, crossing my arms. “Whatever it is you’ve been dying to say to me for months now, since construction started, just get it out and over with.”

Gilbert jerked back, and for a second, I was convinced he would flip me off and march away, never to darken my doorstep, or brighten my life, ever again.

Instead, he took a breath and said, “If you’re going to date Marco Andreotti, the least you could do is not throw it in my face.”

I reeled back, so shocked by every part of that statement that my brain shorted out and I could only gape at him. “What the⁠—”

Before I could make those words into a sentence that would come close to expressing my incredulousness, the lights went out, bathing us in pitch blackness. The loud click of a door being locked followed.

“What the fuck?” Gilbert said. That was followed by the sound of him shuffling over to the wall, then flicking the switch to turn on the lights in the equipment room. There’d been enough light coming from the main part of the building earlier that I hadn’t needed to turn it on.

As soon as the lights were on, we marched out of the equipment room and over to the switch for the main locker room. The room was immediately bathed in light, but as soon as I reached for the door handle and pulled, the door wouldn’t budge.

“Shit,” I grumbled, taking a step back. “Sean must have locked up without realizing we were still in here.”

Gilbert didn’t like that answer at all. “Hey!” he shouted, marching past me so he could pound on the door. “Hey, we’re still in here!”

I waited, hoping someone would hear him banging and come let us out.

Gilbert kept banging, but no one came.

“Fuck,” I sighed, stepping back and sinking to sit on one of the benches in front of the row of lockers off to one side. “How many times have I told Sean they needed to install a door that can be unlocked from the inside?”