Page 86 of The Fall Classic

“I would have told you I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about you from the moment we first talked.”

“Over a coffee order?”

“Over The Chronicles of Narnia. When you were holding the book in Spring Training and flashing those dimples like you knew I couldn’t resist them.”

“I didn’t know.” I smile. “But I do now.” I smile bigger, unable to help it.

He puts a fist to his chest. “Geez. You have no idea what those do to me.”

I take a sip of my hot cocoa and smile, the sweetness sending a pang to my jaw that rivals knowing we had a year and a half of almosts.

“Georgie,” he says, his dry humor gone now, and I know what’s coming and don’t want to hear it.

“I know,” I say.

“I leave for Chicago on Thursday.”

The pain is even worse now. “I know.”

Everything is still around us, but outside, a car honks at another car and the sound of people talking barely reaches up to my windows, just the rhythm of their conversation without any actual words.

“One of the pitchers is going on the injured list, and then I’m—then that’s it. That’s the call.” He pauses, but I’m staring at my mug. “I have to pack today. After I leave here. The team is sending a mover for my stuff in a couple of hours.”

I nod at my hot cocoa, because I can’t look him in the eye.

“I have a ticket for you for tonight’s game,” he says. “And one for Lulabelle, if she wants it.”

“She’s in school,” I say, and my voice comes out normal, which deserves a hallelujah.

“I’m coming back, Georgie. After the season. We’ll have months together, and we can keep arguing about every Robert Frost poem and stupid kid’s book and everything in between.”

I look up now. “I’ve never argued with you.”

He smiles. “That sounds suspiciously like you disagreeing.”

I chuckle, some of the heaviness in my heart lifting. “It was an important clarification.”

“Funny how your clarification sounded like an argument.”

I purse my lips and wrinkle my nose at him.

He raises an eyebrow. “What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“That was something.”

“Do you mean me scrunching my nose?”

“It wasn’t a scrunch. It was practically a sneer.”

I gasp. “It was nowhere near a sneer. I would never sneer. I would never even stick my tongue out.”

“Whoa, there. Things are escalating quickly if you’re talking about sticking your tongue out at someone.”

I laugh into my hot cocoa.

“I think you should stick your tongue out at me when I deserve it,” he says. “It’s allowed.”