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I wanted to shake him.

Smack him.

Kiss him and tell him that he was important to me. That I didn’t want to fix a damn thing about him. That it was okay to want both him and the theater.

But maybe none of that mattered.

Because maybe I wasn’t important enough to him.

“Look, you’ve got a really important opening night coming up.” Reed straightened himself. “And I—”

“—have a championship to win.” I stood and faced him. Ms. Sparrow’s words swirled around me with the humid passing breeze.

They need a Doolittle in that booth.

She was right. We did.

And if this was my last summer working with her or in that theater, then I’d have to give it my all.

Which meant I couldn’t give my all to the boy standing across from me. Suddenly, everything inside of me started to hurt.

“It’s like your dad said…” Reed sniffed. “I mean, it was probably just going to be a summer thing anyway, right?”

“Right. Just a summer thing.” I turned away so he couldn’t see the tears falling down my cheeks. “And now you don’t have to worry about finding the ‘right time’ to tell your grandparents.”

He took a step back. “Right.”

Everything around me changed to white noise, a loud static filled with blurred and shadowed answers.

Reed headed down the ladder, skipping the last three rungs and landing with a soft thump on the leaf-covered ground. He started walking away and then turned around. “Break a leg, Crowley. I know you’ll do great.”

My chest ached so much that I could barely breathe. I waited until Reed disappeared through the edge of the woods before I sank back down onto the worn planks of the treehouse and cried until I ran out of tears.

Chapter Thirty

Reed

“It ain’t over till it’s over.”

—Yogi Berra

Dad used to tell me that giving up baseball was one of the hardest things he ever did. That yes, he felt the call to serve our country, that he was damn proud to answer it, but that the pull of the game still held strong. Like gravity. He couldn’t ever let it go.

I assumed baseball was my gravity too. I was wrong. Giving up Eliza Crowley proved that.

Five days. Four practices. Sixty-two pitches thrown. Three rounds of running poles. Two rounds of PFPs. And all of them done in a daze because I had lost my center.

Because I was the idiot who suggested taking a break. Who quoted her own dad and said it was “just a summer thing.”

But she didn’t argue against it.

Maybe she had taken me to the treehouse to end it, and I beat her to it?

Coach Monaco clapped loudly and snapped my attention back to the game. “One, two, three. That’s all it takes, boys. Three outs, and we’re in the championship. Let’s go!”

Our guys rushed by me to the field. I cleared my throat as Ben tightened one of his leg guards. “Hey, man, I’m sorry I forgot to call you back. A lot of shit went down this weekend.”

“It’s fine.” Ben kept his eyes down as he finished strapping on his gear.