The Bullpen Incident

Maya's iPhone clattered onto the concrete, sliding right through the chain-link fence and into the bullpen. Of course. The one day she finally worked up the nerve to talk to him—the cute senior pitcher with the stupid perfect hair—and physics betrayed her like a_traitorous friend.

"My whole life," Maya groaned, watching her phone settle inches from where the bullpen bull—a massive, snorting Holstein named Bessie who served as the team's bizarre good luck charm—was currently chewing cud.

"That's messed up," said Jordan, turning around. His baseball uniform was pristine, unlike Maya's heart, which was doing something embarrassingly similar to Bessie's cud-chewing. "Want me to grab it?"

"No! She'll charge!"

"Bessie? She's literally _sleeping_. I got this." Jordan hopped the fence with an easy grace Maya would never possess, retrieved her iPhone with two fingers, and held it up like a prize. "Mission accomplished."

He climbed back over, phone intact, but when he handed it to Maya, their fingers brushed. Just for a second. And that's when her phone—still recording from when she'd tried to capture his perfect pitching form earlier—decided to blast her voice note diary at maximum volume.

"—and today I'm finally gonna tell Jordan I like him, even though he's literally out of my league and plays baseball like a _god_ while I can barely walk without tripping—"

Silence.

Maya wanted to melt into the concrete. Become one with the earth. Cease to exist.

Jordan's eyes widened. Then he smiled—not the polite, performative smile he gave everyone, but something real and surprised and devastatingly genuine. "Wait. You think _I'm out of your league?"

"That's what you got from that?" Maya hissed, face burning.

"Maya." He stepped closer, baseball glove tucked under his arm like it belonged there. "I've been trying to talk to you for weeks. I thought _you_ were out of _my_ league. You're in AP everything, you actually laugh at my terrible jokes, and you're not afraid of Bessie."

"Everyone's afraid of Bessie."

"Exactly." He gestured toward the bull, who was now happily ignoring them both. "So, baseball game Friday? You can sit behind the dugout. I'll hit a home run for you."

"That's so cheesy," she said, but she was smiling.

"What can I say? I'm full of bull."