AllFreeNovel
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Maverick shakes his head, aghast. “Never.”
I lift a piece of pizza to my mouth and follow his gaze to the TV. Chewing silently, I watch an outfielder leap for a home run ball and manage to nab it before he falls into the stands. “That looked painful.”
“In middle school,” Maverick says, “I played on a competitive travel team, and I did basically that exact same thing. Except it was just gravel on the other side. Felt good.”
I look at him, surprised. “You were an outfielder?”
“Yeah. I switched to first in high school. I wasn’t a good enough defender to play outfield long-term.” He licks a bit of sauce off his thumb. “I like first better, anyway. Don’t have to run as much.”
I plop down on the edge of my bed, setting my plate beside me as I balance one slice of pizza in my other hand. “I played soccer in middle school. And elementary.”
Maverick literally chokes. He coughs, slapping his own chest, for five seconds before he manages to get out, “Really?”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” I say, a little miffed.
He must realize his mistake because he quickly recovers and rushes to reassure me. “No, that’s not what I meant. You just never seemed interested in playing sports.”
“I played every spring from first grade on to ninth. Just rec league when I was younger. Freshman year, I played one JV game and then quit.”
“Why?”
I finish the bite of pizza I’m working on before answering him. “After our first game, my coach pulled me aside and said that I wasn’t going to start anymore. She said that because I was ‘heavyset’—in other words, I was short and a size, like, eight when most of the girls were a lot smaller than that—I’d never get recruited to play in college. Not that that was a goal of mine.” I glance over at Maverick. He’s watching me carefully, his expression unreadable. “She thought that it would be unfair to give me playing time over the girls who had a shot at eventually getting scholarships. I just quit instead.”
Maverick's face is pinched. He stands up from his bed and crosses to the tiny trash can by the desk, dumping his paper plate and balled-up napkin inside. “Did you tell your dad?”
“Yeah.” My dad doesn’t have much of a temper, but within five minutes of hearing what had happened, he was on the phone giving the principal an earful. “He called the school. The coach finished out the year but didn’t come back. I always assumed she got in some kind of trouble over it.”
“Good.” He glances toward his bed, then at mine. When his feet move again, they carry him to stand in front of me. “Why didn’t you play again your sophomore year?”
Leaning back on my hands, I shrug. “At that point, I’d lost interest. Me and soccer weren’t like you and baseball. I never watched soccer on TV or went to a professional game or anything. It was just something I started doing because my dad signed me up every year, and then it became habit.”
Sliding his hands into his back pockets, Maverick shakes his head. “The thought of that lady saying that to you just pisses me off. I mean, you know you’re beautiful, right?”
Those words coming out of his mouth do funny things to my belly. “Sure,” I say glibly, the way I’d agree with a body positive soap commercial.
“Seriously,” he says, and then he squats in front of me, placing his hands lightly on my knees. “I mean it.”
“Yeah, we’ve established that you like to check me out.” I try to joke, but it falls flat. “It’s okay. I really am over it. It’s just…more of the pattern, you know?”
Maverick furrows his brow. “The pattern?”
I play with the hem of my oversized shirt. “Just…falling short. Not being good enough.”
“The hell does that mean?” he asks incredulously. “You think because your mom left, you’re not good enough?”
“I wasn’t for her.”
For a long, long moment, we look at each other. His grip on my knees tightens, each fingertip practically burning a hole through my skin. Mine are clutching the edge of the mattress. My toes skim the floor. Maverick’s breathing is a little too labored, a little too loud.
When he speaks again, his voice is low and serious, and I lean in, hanging onto his every word. “I’m not even gonna try to get in the heads of these other morons and figure out what their problems are, but you could fucking play soccer if you wanted to. Your coach had no business heading up a soccer team if she thought that only super skinny girls could play. I mean, Jesus. She was never going to get any power that way. You could be a great athlete, Zale. And yeah, I like to check you out because you’re fuckin’ hot, but you’re alsopretty.Like, stop in your tracks and stare pretty.”
I barely refrain from rolling my eyes. “Nobody has ever stopped and stared at me.”
“I did,” he says quietly. “On the plane.”
He seems like he means it, but every second of that plane ride is etched into my memory and I don’t remember this. “No. You just plopped down and asked me who I was.”
“I saw you when I was up the aisle a few rows. You were staring out the window and didn’t notice me yet.” Maverick flicks a piece of lint off my thigh, avoiding my gaze. “I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Still haven’t seen anyone prettier.”
