Striking Out in Left Field

My palms were sweating so much I could barely grip the clipboard. Coach Miller had assigned me to keep stats for the baseball team this semester, which sounded easy until I realized I'd be spending every afternoon watching Liam from the dugout.

Liam, who'd been my best friend since seventh grade, but who'd morphed over the summer into someone with biceps and jawlines and a smile that made my stomach do that weird fluttery thing.

"Nice hit, Chavez!" Liam yelled, slapping his teammate's butt as they jogged past. I pretended to be fascinated by my stat sheet, writing 'DOUBLE' in careful block letters.

This was fine. Totally fine. Just friends being friends. Except friends didn't make you want to simultaneously die and confess your love every time they looked at you.

"Yo, Maya!"

I jumped, nearly knocking over the water bottles. Liam stood at the dugout fence, wiping sweat from his forehead with the hem of his jersey. His hair was plastered to his temples. His eyes were that impossible shade of golden-brown that made me forget my own name sometimes.

"We're hitting the lake after the game. You coming?"

The lake. Where we'd all go swimming in our clothes because nobody wanted to change in front of everyone else. Where last summer, I'd almost held Liam's hand underwater but chickened out at the last second.

"Can't," I said, maybe too quickly. "Homework."

His face fell. Just for a second. But it fell.

"Oh. Okay. Maybe next time."

He walked away, and I watched his retreating back and hated myself a little. Because the truth was, I couldn't go swimming with him anymore. Not since I'd realized that every time his arm brushed mine in the water, every time we laughed at the same joke, every time he looked at me like I was someone special—I wanted to reach out. And I knew, KNEW, in that bitter way you know things when you're sixteen and insecure, that he didn't see me that way.

I was just Maya. The friend. The statistics keeper. The girl who made funny faces when she thought no one was watching.

The game ended with Liam hitting a home run that sent everyone wild. He rounded the bases, grinning, and I wrote 'HR' in my neat little letters and felt like I was keeping score on a game I'd never learned how to play.

"You coming or what?" he called from the parking lot.

I looked at my clipboard. At my palms, still damp. At him, waiting.

Some strikes you take. Some you swing at anyway.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm coming."