Whatever Life Throws at You (8 page)

“This is not hanging out.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a baseball cap, yanking it low over his eyes. “This is working out. And working out with you is not something Johnson would ever be concerned with. Or anyone for that matter.”

I busy myself retying my running shoes. “Is that why you’re in disguise, trying to hide your face?” I lift a finger, pointing at his hat.

“I did pitch pretty damn well yesterday. A mob of fans could be lurking around the neighborhood.” He mocks, darting his eyes around, and then presses his back against the only tree in my yard. “Can you check for paparazzi? How does my hair look in case they do get a photo?”

I laugh and roll my eyes. “Are we running or what? It feels like your stalling?” I take off in a jog and Brody catches up with me right away. The swish of his track pants rubbing together creates a rhythm we can both move to without talking.

“So what’s your definition of an easy five miles?” Brody asks after mile one. He sounds a tad winded, but it could be my imagination.

“I don’t ever watch the clock when I run. Only after. But maybe seven and a half minute miles… Sometimes it’s probably closer to eight minutes.”

He pulls his hat up just enough for me to see his eyes. “Can I request an eight minute day?”

“Wimp.” I grin at him and then my eyes betray me, roaming over the length of his body. So much for solemnly swearing not to do that. To cover my slipup, I start tossing technical corrections at him. “Maybe if your shoulders weren’t all hunched up you could conserve some energy for your legs and lungs.”

He grunts out a few choice words, but I see his shoulders drop.

“You look good with a neck,” I say again and then regret the statement immediately. My face flames, and my gaze drops to the road in front of us.

“If you say so.” Brody grins and falls into step with me, much less winded now. He’s probably one of those runners who needs a lot of warm-up to get comfortable. “You’re pretty into this running thing, aren’t you?”

“Not like you and baseball,” I say.

He’s quiet for several seconds then finally replies. “I think it’s exactly like me and baseball. Except maybe more like playing for my Triple-A team.”

“Lower caliber, like I said.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just with Triple-A…my teammates were…”

Nicer? Willing to shake your hand?
“Were what?” I ask, afraid to admit to what I saw through the windows last night.

“It’s hard baseball without the show,” he concludes, steering away from mentions of teammates. “Well, actually they do all kinds of weird crap for fans at minor league games, but our number one job is to play baseball.”

“Isn’t that your job here?”

“I don’t know,” he says, staring straight ahead, his expression shifting to what I know as the focused athlete face. “I’m just not sure anymore.”

The awkward silence has finally arrived in time for the beginning of our third mile around the neighborhood. I concentrate on our steps and the sound of Brody’s swishing pants. Pretty soon sweat is dripping down my face, and I’m lifting my T-shirt to wipe it away. From the corner of my eye, I’m nearly positive I catch Brody checking out my stomach, but he looks away so fast I can’t be sure. And I’m not sure I’m ready to know that answer. I kick harder and increase the pace, despite it being an easy day. “Come on, superstar, let’s see if you can really keep up.”

His response is instant, his steps matching mine. And for a little while, we stop being Annie, the coach’s daughter, and Brody, the new Royals pitcher. We have the same ability to leave our damaged outer shells behind and float through the streets as nothing more than two athletes.

In less than thirty minutes, the pressure, the doubts and fears, the guilt of built-up lies and past mistakes will return full force, but for now, that weight is off.

pre-all-star

Break

Chapter 8

Lenny London:
Good luck to my St. T gal pals—Annie Lucas and Jackie Stonington—who are running at sectionals today. In case you’re wondering, running is like driving only there’s more sweating and less sitting. I don’t recommend trying it if you haven’t already.

2 hours ago

“My dad’s not coming,” I say to Coach Kessler after tucking away my cell phone. “His flight got delayed in New York.”

Coach K pats me on the shoulder. “It’s all right. You’ll have your best run ever today and qualify for state, and he’ll be there for that race.”

I can’t do anything about it, so I nod and keep warming up.

Today’s the first meet that I’m doing the mile and the two mile full-out. I’ve done both in two other meets, but Coach K had me run one race hard and the other event easy and then flip-flopped them at the next meet. Now I need to hit both with my best times so I can qualify for state.

I squint up at the bleachers and spot Savannah and her daughter Lily walking across the first row of seats.

A smile spreads across my face, and I run over to the fence to greet them. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Your dad called and told us you needed a cheerleader or two,” Savannah says.

I high-five Lily, who doesn’t like to talk much. She sometimes likes riding her bike alongside me while I run in our neighborhood.

“Thanks for coming,” I say to both of them. A bullhorn sounds, and I hop down from the fence. “Gotta go.”

“Good luck!” Savannah calls after me.

When it’s time for the one-mile race, butterflies are going batshit crazy in my stomach, but I turn my focus to the track in front of me and up until that last lap, I’m following my routine perfectly. The only person ahead of me is Jackie Stonington. The logical part of me knows she’s taller than me, her stride is longer, and most importantly, I don’t
have
to beat her to qualify for state, but as we round the last curve, I can’t think about anything but winning. My legs kick harder, my arms swing faster, and suddenly my step overtakes hers and I cross the finish line a full three strides in the lead.

Coach Kessler is going nuts, jumping up and down because St. Teresa’s has just claimed the top two spots at sectionals for the one mile. My teammates are screaming like crazy, which is why I don’t feel the muscles tensing in my right leg until I break away from the group and retrieve a Gatorade from my bag. Savannah gives me a thumbs-up from the bleachers and motions to her phone pressed against her ear, indicating that she’s already calling Dad to tell him the news.

I finally see my time up on the scoreboard:
4:47.

Not only is it my personal record, but also damn close to the state record. I start to head toward the bleachers again to sit with Savannah, but a guy leaning against the fence behind me catches my attention. I squint into the setting sun and try to identify the person with the
Chicago Blackhawks
’ hat pulled way down over his face. He’s in disguise.

Is it bad that I’ve memorized the outline of his body even without seeing his face?

I glance back at Savannah once more. She’s turned around chatting with Lenny and some of the other junior girls who aren’t on the track team. I check to see if anyone else is watching me and then slowly, I make my way over to the guy on the other side of the fence.

“I thought you were stuck in Chicago?”

Brody pulls the hat further over his face. “Nah. I wasn’t on that flight. Your dad and Frank had to go to some meeting, I guess. My flight missed the storm by an hour.”

I lift my tank top up to wipe sweat from my forehead. I bet the blond models never sweat. They probably smell like roses all the time. “But what are you doing
here
?” At a high school track meet. More specifically at
my
track meet.

He shrugs. “I was in the neighborhood. Didn’t you hear? I got an apartment a block away from here.”

I knew this would happen eventually. He’s got a contract for half the season now and tons of money to spend on a place of his own. No need to borrow the London’s guesthouse anymore.

I work really hard to hide the disappointment from my face. As much as I enjoy Lily’s one-speed bike clicking beside me, I like running with Brody around the neighborhood even more. “So you’ve got your own man cave. I don’t even want to know what will go on behind those doors.”

Brody doesn’t deny anything.
Figures
. But whatever. His free time, his life. I get it.

“Did you…um…see the race?” I ask, not knowing if he really was just wandering the block, or if he came to watch, and when he doesn’t answer right away, I glance sideways at Brody. He’s looking at the times on the board, like he’s thinking hard.

“Your hamstring hurts,” he says.

If it were Dad asking, I’d deny it. Instead, I nod.

“You shouldn’t have pushed it so hard. You didn’t need to win today.”

So he did watch the race. “I know.”

“What’s the qualifying time for the two mile?”

“Eleven twenty-seven,” I say right away.

“That’s a cakewalk for you, right?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t call it a cakewalk, but it’s not full-out for me.”

He points toward the running clock at one end of the track. “I know it’s against your rituals of not checking your time during the race, but you can see the clock every time you hit the last straightaway. Just run the race against the clock, qualify, and then figure out your strategy for state later.”

He remembers my race rituals? I mentioned it on our very first Sunday afternoon jog around the neighborhood, but that was weeks ago. “That could work.”

“You can’t get all
I’m the best
at the end and start trucking over people or you won’t be able to walk tomorrow,” he warns.

I bite my lip and look away from him. “That’s gonna be hard.”

He laughs and then both of us glance up to see a group of five girls in purple uniforms heading over this way.

“You’re Jason Brody, aren’t you?” one of the girls squeals.

“Guilty.” Brody removes his hat and the serious expression is replaced by the playboy smirk I’ve seen on the cover of way too many newspapers and websites since Opening Day. “I was hoping to snag a hot dog from the concession stand, but this girl spotted me, begging for an autograph.” He nods toward me, and I roll my eyes.

“We, like,
love
you,” the girl who spoke first says, practically shoving me out of the way.

“Seriously,” another girl adds.

“Can we get a picture?”

Savannah and Lily appear out of nowhere. She must be trained to spot this kind of commotion from a mile away. She holds out her hand for the girl’s phone. “Let me take it for you.”

The girls race around to the other side of the fence and Savannah narrows her eyes at Brody. “No more high school girls after this, understood?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Brody says. “Women. Lots of women. Never girls. I know the drill.”

Ugh. Talk about major TMI. I’d rather eat raw oysters than stick around to see this event.

My escape goes unnoticed because Brody’s crowd never thins out for the rest of the meet. He’s officially reached celebrity status. This is something that weighs heavily on my mind through most of my next race. Is he going to get too busy to hang out with me? Is he already hooking up with new girls every night? With the new downtown bachelor pad, why would he ever need my company?

And why do I even have to care? Why can’t I go back to hating him?

During the race, I follow his plan exactly and keep my eyes on the clock. It literally kills me to not push it at the end, but I hold back and hit the finish line just under eleven minutes and twenty-seven seconds.

And I manage to do this without ever looking over at Brody and his parade of fans. Bonus points for me.

The doorbell rings at ten thirty at night. I’ve just showered and put on my pjs so I’m totally not expecting Brody at my front door. I glance outside into the driveway and spot what looks like a brand-new SUV. “Did you get an apartment and a car?”

“Yep,” he nods. “Like it?”

He’s holding a small black box and a pile of wires. The object he’s brought over distracts me from answering the car question. “Are you cloning me or something?”

“Two Annies? Not sure I could handle that.” He walks through the front door and locks it behind him. “Electrical stimulation.”

“That sounds R-rated.”

His forehead wrinkles, and he stops in the hallway. “Can’t be R-rated since your dad told me to bring it over. Where is he? Not back from New York yet?”

“He will be in a few hours,” I say. “Is this gonna hurt?”

“Not much. You’re tough, you’ll be fine. Last door on the left, right?” He steers me into my bedroom before I even answer him and flips on the light. “Lay down on your stomach.”

I hesitate for a second, my brain scrambling to guess what this procedure will involve. Eventually, I flop onto the bed, grab a pillow, and pull it under my head. He sits on the other side of me and places several stickers attached to wires onto the back of my thigh. Goose bumps form all around the places where his fingers brush against my bare skin. My pulse shifts and it’s now much closer to what it had been during sectionals today. My face heats up, too, and the reaction catches me off guard. I haven’t felt these awkward guy/girl feelings around Brody since the day we met, when I interviewed him in his post-shower state.

That day, my embarrassment revolved around being in over my head, not to mention potentially getting in trouble, but today is different. The goose bumps, the heat from his touch—I don’t have to be a scientist to understand this reaction.

Forget it, Annie. Just forget it.

I use my athlete focus to block out this revelation, at least for right now. Brody turns on the black box and his hands finally leave my skin, giving me the chance to clear my head. I do feel a shock running through my leg from the machine, but it’s not exactly painful.

“One hour of this three times a day until state, okay?”

I’m afraid he’s going to leave, and I really don’t want him to—for no reason I’m willing to admit. “So, did you get rid of all the girls eventually?”

He groans. “I took like a thousand pictures. There’s no way I can go to your state meet.”

Had he planned on going? Maybe Dad invited him. If Dad asked, Brody would probably want to say yes, though not for me exactly.

“Yeah, no one will be watching me run, it’ll be all about you,” I joke, pushing the questions aside.

“You were such an idiot tonight.” He grins at me, before leaning back against my favorite pillows.
Okay, so he’s not leaving
. “But watching you pass up that tall girl with six foot long legs, that was fucking awesome.”

“And now I’m getting electrocuted for it.”

Neither of us have a response to that because it’s true. I got impulsive and stupid and yet it still felt awesome to win. And there’s no way to know right now if it was worth it. Not until after state.

“Can I ask you something?” he says. I nod and, before speaking again, Brody plucks the book off my nightstand and starts flipping through it. “Why does your dad wear a wedding ring?”

I adjust my head on the pillow so I’m looking at his side, instead of his face. It’s less intimidating this way. I mean, Jason Brody is stretched out across my bed, that’s like every teenage girl in Kansas City’s dream right now. “My parents are technically still married. I think my dad takes that saying, ‘If you love someone let them go’ a little too seriously.”

“But where is she?”

I close my eyes and let out a breath. “I don’t know. We saw her in December and she was in the middle of touring with some folk band.”

“She’s a musician?”

“Musician, singer, actress…adult film actress.” I press my face into the pillow briefly, not wanting to take a chance of seeing his reaction to that last thing.

“Wow,” Brody says. “How long has this been going on?”

“The running away or the porn films?” Okay, they aren’t exactly porn, but really really close to it.

“The running away.” His calm voice relaxes me, and I roll over onto my side to face him finally.

“Forever, I think. When Dad’s baseball career didn’t work out, she wanted to find her own spotlight. I can’t remember much from when I was really little, but I remember Dad taking me to school on my first day of kindergarten.” And I remember the teacher going all wide-eyed at my mismatched clothes and messy hair. My mom never has a hair out of place. “She wasn’t around then. He’d just tell me she was working. I figured it out eventually.”

“But you had Grams?” He idly flips through the pages of my book again.

“We moved from Texas to Arizona right before middle school so Grams could live with us. She was already having problems, early Alzheimer’s, and my mom’s brother, my uncle, wanted to put her in one of those homes run by the state, but Dad wouldn’t let him.”

I miss those days when Grams was lucid more than not. Now it’s like she sleeps too much, and she doesn’t ever have a grasp on reality. I don’t tell Brody this, but I really want a few hours with the real Grams. Even though I’m happy Mom’s out of the picture, I want to ask Grams about her before she started running from us. Like when she was my age. What was she like? I could have asked Mom on her last visit, but she’s not a reliable source. And I’d ask Dad, but I’m a little bit afraid that she was a better person back then and if he remembers that, he’ll never be able to let go.

“Grams is your mom’s mom?” Brody’s face fills with surprise. “She’s not related to Jim?”

“Correct.” I pick at the fuzzy material of my comforter, keeping my eyes down again. “He still loves her. I don’t get it. It’s like he thinks he can’t do better. Sometimes I think he wants to stop having those feelings, but then she shows up again.”

His brows rise. “So they’re like,
together
when she visits…?”

“Oh yeah,” I say. “And then when she leaves, he’s a mess.”

“That’s fucked up. Especially with his leg and everything. I can’t believe she screws around with him like that.”