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“Bottom of the ninth and this joker’s on the interstate. Hell, put me in to hit for him. Who’s running this fucking team?” “Dude,” Kim said under her breath, “it’s April. Chill out.”
I’m the blur. And everything that used to be background is turned up so loud, I can’t tune it out.
“I just want someone to know me,” Daphne said. “To love me for who I am but to also push me to be who I want to be.”
An entire color palette for a painting of a mountain landscape, all contained in the irises of his eyes.
They said eyes were the window to the soul, and maybe that’s why she’d been so scared to look into his. Because for just a second, she felt something click into place.
She wondered what he saw when he looked back at her.
“I have clients,” she said. “Articles to write, deadlines…” “Okay, but do you like any of your clients? Do you want to write any of those articles? What would happen if you, I don’t know, got hit by a bus and couldn’t do it for a few months?”
But it was all about those books that burrowed their way into your heart, that you felt like you’d carry with you forever.
When the pitch is good, you gotta swing.”
It would be fitting if she cried because of something he said. It would be the moment she’d been waiting for, karma truly on her scent like a bounty hunter.
She was so sick of all the different versions of herself.
She was easy to talk to, which was a dangerous quality in a reporter, but somehow he trusted her.
He’d felt her gaze on him like it was a physical touch, and then he’d felt self-conscious about feeling that way.
Something had happened…right? The air around them had been so charged she’d been surprised she didn’t get a static shock when he’d touched her. But then his touch had been so light, a mere whisper of his fingertips on her skirt, that sometimes she wondered if she’d imagined it. Sometimes she felt like she was walking around still waiting for that electricity to neutralize.
But he just stood up from his stool and picked up his glass, gesturing toward the seat next to her with a do you mind? type of expression. She shook her head before worrying that made it look like no, don’t sit here instead of no, I don’t mind, so she patted the seat next to her in a move she knew would haunt her until the end of time.
His middle finger was back to doing circles on his drink, and he was staring at the glass like he could put a hole in it.
Let him look. She wanted him to.
she was already turning away, hoping she could make it out of there before she did something to make it even worse, like start to cry.
She’s a water sign
She gripped his biceps like she was about to fall over, even though there was no fear of that, not with the way he was holding her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I—” “Don’t apologize.” He squeezed her thighs, and even that—more of a comforting gesture than a sexual one—made her tremble. “What do you need?”
they were on a three-game winning streak, which would’ve been a normal sweep for another team but which felt pretty momentous for them after their season up to that point.
Very New York Mets of them
He was so tense Daphne worried he’d break.
I don’t know what would possess you to stay anonymous in the first place, and then I really don’t know what would possess you to start a real-life relationship with the same person you catfished.
GO OFF GIRLIE
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He opened his eyes then, looking over at her. “You couldn’t hurt me.”
“Are you workshopping my period joke from weeks ago? Count this as a fatal flaw.” “Fatal? Come on. I think about you a lot. That can’t be a flaw.”
Daphne wanted to commission an essay from him about that one sentence—I think about you a lot. She wanted to know every specific detail. But she also didn’t want to come across as needy or desperate or insecure, even if she was feeling like all of those things. So she had to let that one go, too.
Whatever we were. She’d known it was coming, but still the past tense gutted her more than anything else.
“My boy Kepler has a saying—he says baseball is being endlessly optimistic in the face of math. I’m feeling optimistic. And I think he is, too.” And then Randy winked at her, heading to join the rest of the players disappearing into the clubhouse.
His gaze flickered to hers. “I said some things that day that I really regret,” he said. “And I didn’t say some other ones that I regret even more. I do love you, Daphne. I fell in love with you twice—first with your words and your kindness and the way talking to you always felt like the best surprise and the greatest comfort all at the same time. Then I fell in love with you—with your laugh and your generosity and the way you make everything else brighter. You’re the book I want to reread. For the rest of my life.”
