Pitch Perfect: Boys of Summer, Book 1 (13 page)

Emmy wove her way around them all until they reached the next wall of glass where a large tour group had just moved out of the way. The Skydeck’s big bragging right was now fully available to them.

“Get up here,” she said, and stepped right off the carpet and into what should have been a midair free fall to her death. Her heartbeat pounded when she set both feet on the glass floor of the viewing box—an outcropping of window that let people stand on the outside of the building and look straight down. She wasn’t afraid of heights, but she often said a small prayer of thanks when she stepped out and didn’t die.

“No thanks,” Tucker replied, both feet still planted firmly on carpet.

“Are you afraid of heights?”

“No.”

Liar. His face had gone white as a sheet, and his palm had become sweaty in hers.

“It’s perfectly safe,” she promised.

“So is standing right here.”

Emmy gave his hand a slight tug, urging him to come closer. “Come on, Tucker, would I do anything to hurt you?”

“You routinely bend my arms into positions the human body was not meant to be in. That’s never fun.” He attempted to pull his hand back, but she held fast.

“Step out here, I’ll count to five, and then you can be done, okay?”

He looked like he might argue until she held up her hand and showed him five fingers, then he hesitantly stepped out onto the glass platform with her.

“One,” she said, squeezing his hand reassuringly. “How did you manage when you came up here to do the Ferris Bueller thing?”

“I didn’t do it. I got up, took one look at the glass and left. And back then they didn’t have these little death boxes.” He glanced down at their feet and shut his eyes. Sweat beaded on his brow.

“So this is a real Chicago first for you. Two.”

He squeezed her hand hard enough it hurt, but she didn’t say anything. “As long as it isn’t a Chicago last.”

“You’re doing great. Open your eyes.”

He did and stared right at her.

“Three.”

“Three,” he repeated.

“Just look out, not down.” She pointed to the horizon and the view of the full city below them. “It’s beautiful.”

“It is beautiful,” he replied, but he wasn’t looking at the horizon.

“Four. Look.” She nodded.

“I am looking.”

“Five,” she said.

And he kissed her.

Chapter Seventeen

It was the most romantic kiss of her life, and Emmy had to cut it short.

The perfect view of her hometown glittered around her like Christmas lights, and a gorgeous man had her cheek cupped in one of his big, rough hands—touching her as though she were the most breakable thing he’d ever encountered. His lips tasted spicy from the banana peppers and hot chili flakes, and there was nothing unpleasant about it.

Her body curved into his like it was designed to fit alongside him, and she squeezed his hand when he parted her lips and grazed his tongue against hers.

She whimpered because she wanted more, she wanted everything, but she knew it wasn’t right.

“Stop,” she said, and that one word brought the perfect moment to an end.

He pulled back the second she said it, breathing harder than he had been before, and he disentangled his hand from hers, stepping off the ledge and onto the safety of the carpet.

Emmy looked down at the nothingness below her feet and felt dizzy, but she didn’t think it was because of the height.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not for the first time that evening.

“It was my fault.” She wasn’t sure how since he’d kissed her and not the other way around, but somehow she felt she must be to blame for what had happened. She’d brought him here, she’d given them this perfect backdrop. His actions made sense given everything she’d done leading up to it.

He never would have kissed her if they’d gone to the monkey house at Lincoln Park Zoo instead. Nothing romantic happened when primates were busy flinging poo at one another.

“No, it was my fault. I’ve been wanting to do that again for weeks. Every damn time I see you I want to.”

She knew. Part of her knew. And what was worse, that same part of her wanted him to.

“I knew you were going to be trouble.” She tried to smile, but they were both too distracted for it to work.

“I guess you were right.”

If there was an All-Star game for being a jackass, Tucker was a shoo-in to be the starting pitcher.

He’d made great progress with Emmy since his initial fuckup in Florida, and what had he done when she finally started feeling comfortable around him again?

He kissed her.

What kind of amateur, asshat move was that? Now she’d started keeping her distance from him again, only talking to him as much as was necessary and polite for them to work side by side.

And what was worse, it was totally screwing up his game. Every time he’d gotten to the plate in the three weeks since Chicago, it was a fiasco. He’d build up for a fastball and then he’d think about her patient instruction and how she’d walked him through the physical mechanics of how to fix his pitch.

That’s when he’d lose it. The pitch would go wild, and he’d fall back to the knuckleballs. He was still doing okay, and the team was cutting him a lot of slack by assuming his dodgy performances were due to the year he’d taken off.

But the real reason he wasn’t playing up to his full potential was standing in the dugout, quietly watching as he got worse and worse. Sure, it was only three bad starts, and he’d managed to go into later innings in two of them, even pulling the wins, but it didn’t matter. He knew he could pitch better than what he was doing, and anything below his best was garbage.

Now he understood why for the longest time women were considered bad luck on boats. He’d tried to bring one onto his ship, and suddenly he couldn’t find north to save his life.

Considering he could shut out the noise of forty-two thousand fans and play in spite of their jeers, it was all the more fascinating that one woman’s silence was all it took to knock him on his proverbial ass.

After striking out the third batter in the bottom of the fifth, he walked slowly off the field while everyone else jogged, and without stopping went right through the dugout, down the stairs and into the clubhouse.

It was unclear how long he’d have, since an inning was only as short or long as the side made it, but he needed a minute to himself if he had any hope in hell of finishing the game with a W.

The fates were against him though because he reached the clubhouse and walked into Emmy carrying an armload of fresh towels. She was so surprised to see him she dropped half the stack on the floor.

“Tucker, what are you doing here?”

“What are
you
doing here?”

“My job?”

That was a stretch. He’d become accustomed to Emmy’s habits, and she was in the practice of spending at least the first seven innings of each game in the dugout, preparing to handle major injuries. If she was already here in the fifth, it meant she was hiding.

From him.

“You don’t need to avoid me,” he said.

“I do.” She knelt in front of him to pick up the fallen towels.

With her down on the floor, Tucker was painfully aware of his dirty cleats right in front of her face and how bad he must smell, soaked in sweat. He wasn’t at his peak level of attractiveness right then.

“Why?”

“Because…” She hugged the thin white towels to her chest, and he was vaguely aware that towel service definitely wasn’t a job for a head athletic trainer. “It’s safer,” she admitted at last.

From the field, a loud, collective gasp drew her attention to one of the overhead television sets airing the game. It took less than a second for both of them to process what had happened. Chet Appleton had taken a nasty pitch directly to the neck and had fallen to the ground. Emmy dropped the towels and rushed past Tucker, up the stairs and onto the field. He was right on her heels, but the girl could
move
. In spite of being in the clubhouse when the injury occurred, she got to Chet at the same time as Jasper and Chuck, and was the first one bending over him when he rolled onto his back.

Tucker didn’t follow as far as the field, waiting for them in the dugout as was the general rule of thumb. Because of the distance he didn’t know what she was saying to Chet, but he watched as she touched the reddened skin of his neck delicately and asked him a series of questions. She said something to Chuck, who waved to the dugout.

They’d put in a pinch runner for Chet, which meant the hit was bad enough to take him out of the game. One of the rookies grabbed his helmet and jogged to the place on first base Chet had earned by taking the hit.

Emmy helped Chet to his feet and draped one of his long, gangly arms around her shoulder, walking him back towards the dugout. When they were within earshot, he heard Chet ask, “Did anyone get the plate on that truck?”

Emmy patted his back and smiled. “A truck? No, that was nothing but a big old bee. Stung you pretty good though, didn’t it?”

Chet winced. “’Cause I’m sweet like honey.”

“You sure are.” She eased him down the stairs, and the hometown crowd gave him a hero’s cheer as he exited the stadium. “Fans love honey too.”

“Fans love me ’cause I’m so pretty,” Chet added, and Emmy chuckled as the pair of them vanished into the clubhouse.

Tucker felt like a first-class scumbag, because his friend was hurt and all he could think about was how jealous he was of Chet making Emmy laugh.

Chapter Eighteen

Detroit at San Francisco, Record 35-29

Emmy was beginning to understand that living in San Francisco was very different from living in “Sunny” California. For starters, it was a rare occasion for her to see the sun, unless it peeked its face out briefly while she was at work—usually just long enough to burn off some of the fog.

Her morning started with a walk from her modest apartment in the Mission—the top floor of a renovated house—to a nearby coffee shop. Living in the Mission was a surprising move to those who knew San Francisco’s neighborhoods, but Emmy had only seen a good deal and a somewhat charming area.

The Mission was filled with hipster kids riding their fixed-wheel bikes while wearing thick coke-bottle glasses they didn’t need. There was a wide assortment of novelty restaurants like a mac-and-cheese bistro and a Chinese-Soul Food fusion diner.

She’d learned after her first month there she wasn’t in the right place, but she still wasn’t sure how long her stay in San Francisco would last, and she’d signed a yearlong lease on the apartment.

If things panned out, she’d pack up in the off-season and move to Berkeley. The commute would suck, but she’d come to love the small, charming houses and their overgrown yards, and how every street seemed to end in an amazing restaurant or handmade yarn store. Berkeley was definitely where she
wanted
to be.

The Mission was where she was.

She walked past a small grocery store with a brightly colored display of luchador masks, and took a left at the corner. A streetcar buzzed by her, the electrical lines overhead snapping and crackling in the damp morning air.

It was June, but Emmy wore a thick cable-knit sweater and didn’t regret it for a moment. That was the sneaky thing about San Fran—it was gorgeous in the most peculiar months. She’d worn her capris and T-shirts in April, and now spent most of her days in jeans and sweaters.

Coming from Chicago, Emmy had believed she was made of stronger stuff. They didn’t call it the Windy City for nothing, and when a cold gust came in off the lake, it was like living inside a cruel science experiment.

She was starting to appreciate that San Francisco was just a different iteration of the same experiment. The fog would creep in over the mountains and slither down through the streets, and the wind would come up from the Bay. There were days she didn’t see daylight and might have preferred to wear a winter jacket instead of a summer dress.

Strange place, the City by the Bay.

Emmy strolled up to her favorite coffee place and joined in the huge queue. There wasn’t a Starbucks in sight in the Mission, and she sort of liked that. Starbucks required no guesswork to her coffee, but there was no element of happy surprise either. She couldn’t sample something new every day and determine what she did and didn’t like.

This place, Philz, was different. They had about fifty roasts on the menu, and would grind the beans and hand pour the coffee made-to-order. She’d never known how many different milks and sweeteners existed. She almost felt guilty for liking her coffee black when someone else ordered a light roast with agave syrup and almond milk. It sounded so exotic.

It was probably disgusting, but it
sounded
amazing.

She pulled out her phone while the line slowly advanced and flicked through her work emails. A few questions from the management staff about Chet’s injury the night before, the standard stuff she got every morning in response to her nightly reports, an interview request from a women’s magazine—more fallout from Simon’s article—and an email from her father’s girlfriend, Melody.