An interview with a Major League Baseball rising star.
Excitement buzzes inside me like I swallowed Diet Coke and Mentos. I want to crow in victory until it reverberates throughout the locker room. But the rest of my college volleyball team wouldn’t appreciate that, and bragging is best shared with a friend or two, who will add their congratulations to your own.
So, I tuck my phone—and the news—into my pocket, shut my locker, and redirect. “Maybe I’m just excited about half-price fries at the new Mediterranean café on the edge of campus. But only for the next fifteen minutes. So, c’mon, women. Skedaddle,” I say, waving them along.
Tia snorts, yanking a tunic over her yoga pants. “I’m down, but I don’t think fries make you grin like that.”
“I dunno. Fries make me pretty happy,” I say.
“Fries make everyone happy.” Layla slides her feet into flats, then shuts her locker. “So it’s not fries.”
“Exactly,” Tia agrees, mischief in her eyes. “I think Reese has got something more exciting on her phone than sports stats, extra credit, or cute clothes.”
She’s right—on my phone is the equivalent of a winning lottery ticket for a woman with my aspirations.
I wiggle an eyebrow at Layla. She arches one of her own in an intrigued Is that so?
My sharp nod says That is so.
Tia glances between us in avid curiosity, stopping on me with a silent Really?
The three of us have been friends long enough to master communication through a code of raised brows, expressive side-eyes, and telling quirks of the lips.
“I’ll tell you as soon as we leave,” I whisper, hoping it will hurry them up.
I’m barely able to contain my excitement until we’re outside, where I grab my phone again and waggle it at them. “Here it is, in black-and-white pixels. Proof that I am the bomb. The goddess of sports podcasts.”
This is what I couldn’t do in front of the others in the locker room. It sounds obnoxiously cocky.
Because I am cocky, but only about things that I’ve worked my ass off for.
Volleyball.
Asking hard questions.
And making a plan for the future.
“Holden Kingsley,” I say, giddy about the opportunity that I made happen.
Through gumption.
Through going for it.
“I nabbed an interview for my little old college podcast with the second baseman for the LA Bandits. It’s his second year in the majors, and he crushed it in his first,” I say, feeling like I could blast off to the moon without a rocket.
Layla--whose name fits her perfectly, as if her parents knew they were going to pop out a six-foot-two volleyball star--squeals. “Shut the front door!” All sarcasm and resting bitch face vanish.
Tia stops in her tracks, blinking. “For real?”
I hold up a hand and swear, “One hundred ten percent.”
Layla demands more with a dish it out wiggle of her perfectly manicured fingers—polished with silver sparkles and barely a nick. How she manages that while playing volleyball, I don’t know. It’s one of her many superpowers. She’s also gorgeous, with carved cheekbones and amber skin that’s always radiant. “All right. Tell us all the deets.”
I give them as we walk along the athletic fields en route to the new café, saying casually, “I tracked down Holden’s email.”
“Through your dad?” Tia asks.
I sneer then wretch dramatically. “Please. I’d never do that. Plus, they don’t know each other. And I didn’t ask Grant either.”
“Grant would give it to you in a heartbeat,” Tia says.
“And I’d do the same for him. He’s like a brother to me. But nope, I didn’t call in any favors. I tracked him down through his agent, wrote a fantastic pitch letter that I sent via his people, and then, voilà, he replied directly to me.”
“Damn,” Layla says, shaking her head. “I’m kind of in awe that you snagged an interview, and all with a little good old-fashioned elbow grease.”
I shake my hips as we walk past the spring flowering of cherry blossoms. “I did indeed.”
Tia holds up a hang on a sec finger. “So, help those of us who haven’t memorized the major league rosters. Holden Kingsley is the one who went here a few years ago?”
I nod again, so excited my smile could span the entire campus. “Yep. College superstar, drafted in the eighth round, played in the minors for two years, and was called up last year. That’s him. Also, hello? Did you see his note to me?” I clear my throat and quote like I’m performing Hamlet, “‘Yes, Hell yes. Absolutely yes.’ I mean, is there any more enthusiasm than a triple yes?”
Tia taps her chin thoughtfully. “That depends. Does he normally communicate in threes? Like, do you think when he ejaculates, he says, ‘I’m coming. Oh God, I’m coming. Oh God, I’m really, really coming’?”
I swat her, laughing. “You’re so bad.” Layla laughs, and I wag my finger at her too. “Don’t encourage her. It’s like feeding the lions at the zoo.”
“I’m hardly encouraging her,” Layla says, with a dismissive wave of her sparkling fingers. “I have no idea what guys do when they finish that thing they do.”
“Come,” Tia says pointedly, staring sharply at Layla. “It’s called come. Just like you do when you finish that thing you do with girls.”
I signal for a time-out. “Can we please not talk about coming right now?” There are a million reasons I don’t want to talk about any of our sex lives, especially mine, since it’s a cipher. “This interview has nothing to do with sex.”
“Everything is about sex, honey,” Tia says, patting my shoulder.
“That is not true,” I point out, but this is a futile argument. Tia, a psych major, insists sex is the underpinning of everything. I contend that humans possess enough higher brain function to set sex aside.
Sometimes.
“Generally, I agree with Tia on this,” says Layla, then pats her flat stomach. “But I’m starving, and sex won’t fill my belly. But food will. Plus, as we dine, we can talk about Reese being all badass with her podcast. You went from just the two of us listening to. . . a whole nation?”
Laughing, I roll my eyes. “Definitely not a whole nation, but I have several thousand listeners now. The show is really helping me make a name for myself.”
That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
To make my own name.
To have my own reputation, my own thing, where I’m not just my father’s daughter.
Plus, the podcast will open job doors for me in sports marketing when I graduate. An interview with a big-name athlete will be publicity for the show and more experience for my résumé.
We turn onto a side street that leads to the latest new spot I found. Layla grabs her phone, taps on the screen, then clears her throat. “Ahem. Look at this—Holden Kingsley, with his arms of steel, his swoony green eyes, and his panty-incinerating grin, tops the Hottest Young Athletes Twenty-Five and Under list.”
“Ooh. So he’s not too old for Reese,” Tia singsongs.
“Please. That’s so not the point,” I say, because that’s crazy and not at all what the interview is about.