His flirtatious smile disappeared completely. He looked down at my hand, a million expressions flitting across his face, but mostly anger and annoyance. I left my hand there, floating in the air between us, until I finally realized, in my intoxicated state, that he had no intention of shaking it.

His jaw tensed and he shoved his hands into his pockets.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” I asked, trying to salvage the situation. “I just arrived in town and needed a drink and you just happened to come here as well!”

“This is my favorite bar.” His voice was flat. “Everyone knows that.”

I looked around and noticed we had an audience. Across the room was a table full of guys wearing Longhorn baseball caps. Some of them looked familiar. Nathan’s teammates, I would guess. Half of them were staring with open amusement, the other half whispering to each other. I would bet my hard-earned laptop that I was going to be the main topic of discussion at tomorrow’s practice.

“Funny that!” I wanted to sound as surprised as I was, but the alcohol seemed to make everything sound just a little too intense, which made it sound fake. “Guess I should have read the notes that were prepared on you and gone somewhere else tonight.”

“Sure,” he said, clearly not believing that this was all just a total coincidence. Not that I blamed him. Nope, it took a special kind of bad luck to end up in the same bar with Nathan Ryder on the one night I didn’t want anything to do with him.

“Really!” I tried to convince him, but he was having nothing of it.

I looked over at his teammates, who were still observing our interaction, and like a moron, waved.

I could even see a few of them assessing my outfit. I gave my dress a tug, unwittingly pulling the already low-neckline even lower. Nathan’s gaze followed it, before snapping back up to my face, the same stormy look slightly muted by a surprising blush on his cheeks. There were men out there that still blushed at the sight of boobs? I found it stupidly endearing. But then again, I was drunk. I found a lot of things stupidly endearing when I was drunk. Case in point, ex-boyfriend Nick. I realized I was rambling in my head and Nathan was staring at me.

“Want to introduce me to your friends?” I asked, really poking the bear on that one.

“No,” Nathan said bluntly. “I actually want you to leave, but since I’m a gentleman and you were here first, I’m going to go.” His voice was polite. Cold, but polite. “I suppose I’ll be seeing you tomorrow,” he said, pushing past. But he gave me one last glance over his shoulder. “Sophie Hall.” And for a moment there was that glimmer of attraction, maybe even some heat shimmering there, but if it had been, it was gone in half a second.

“See you tomorrow!” I responded, realizing the minute it left my mouth that I should have just stayed silent. His step faltered as he headed towards the door, but he didn’t stop and he didn’t look back as he pushed through the crowd and left.

I collapsed back on my barstool, and remembering my bill, dug for my wallet. But when I turned to the bartender, he just shook his head.

“Nathan said you’re on his tab,” he said. “You’re all good.” But the expression on his face said that I had screwed up.

Don’t worry, barkeep, I thought. I am quite aware of how much I fucked that up. At this point there was only one thing left to do. I pushed my empty shot glass towards him.

“One more,” I said.

* * *

I woke with a horrendous hangover. My head was pounding and the inside of my mouth was dry and disgusting, like kitty litter. Not that I knew how kitty litter tasted. My mouth just felt how I imagined it would. I looked down at myself and groaned. I had slept in my bra and a hand to my head revealed that I had left my hair in a bun all night. Unknotting that mess was going to take all morning. No wonder my head ached. Well, that and all the tequila I had chugged. I looked over at the clock and swore.

“Fuck!” It was already eleven a.m. I had to be at the practice field in an hour. It wasn’t far away, but I still had to make myself presentable, make sure all my equipment was ready, and stop the pain in my head. Step one—shower.

Somehow I wrestled the elastic out of my hair, managing to yank a couple of dozen strands from my head in the process. I rubbed at my sore scalp, hoping that it would alleviate some of the pain I felt right now.

The water was hot, very hot, as I ducked into the shower. It felt good and some of my headache floated away with the steam. I let the water hit me straight in the face. Somehow that always made me feel better.

But then I remembered what had happened last night. How I had probably fucked up my assignment with one little mistake.

I didn’t know what I had been thinking. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have just kept flirting and then when I showed up the next day we both could have feigned surprise.

Stupid, stupid Sophie, I told myself, pressing my forehead against the cold tile of the shower. Why couldn’t you have just left? Why did you have to say who you were? He was having fun. You were having fun. Everything was going great. Ugh. I gently mimed hitting my head against the shower wall, but even the slight bob of my head made it hurt again. Ugh. This was going to be a rough day.

I stayed in the shower until most of my headache was gone and I had decided on a plan. I was going to pretend like last night had never even happened. I would not bring it up, not reference it all. Perhaps he was so drunk that he wouldn’t even remember what had happened.

Yeah. Right. I had seen him, he had been drinking but he was nowhere near drunk. In fact, his gaze had become sharp and focused the minute I had sprung my unpleasant identity on him.

Yet, I hadn’t let his abrupt departure keep me from drinking myself stupid and that’s why I was shoving myself into my clothes, wincing with every sudden movement. Somehow I managed to wrangle my hair, wet and tangled, into a presentable braid. Sunscreen and curled eyelashes were as good as I was going to get makeup-wise today; besides, even if I had time, I didn’t have anything that would get rid of the puffiness under my eyes and my general state of disarray. I looked like I was hung over. Even in my nicest pair of jeans—the ones that Nick had always said made my ass look great—and a nice but casual white shirt, I still looked like death on a stick. I looked terrible and I was going to be late. I hated, hated being late. My mother was always late.

Speaking of which. I checked my phone and sure enough, three missed calls from her. I had just enough time to call as I headed to the practice field. I grabbed my bag, with my recorder and press badge, and headed for the lobby.

“Call you a cab?” Greg at the front desk asked as I walked past him. I paused.

I shouldn’t, but I was already running late, it was going to be hot, and the stadium was at least ten minutes away by car.

What the hell, I was on assignment. I could live a little, couldn’t I? That’s what all my co-workers would do. I turned back to Greg and gave him a wide smile.

“A cab would be great,” I said.

Five minutes later, I was speeding towards the field, the A/C blasting. My phone rang.

“Hon,” my mother said, when I picked up. I could hear the cigarettes in her voice. “I thought you were dead.”

“Not dead,” I told her. “Just in Austin.” Even though we spoke on a fairly regular basis and lived in the same city, I hadn’t seen my mom much lately. I told myself that it was because I was working so hard, but I knew that it was just easier to have the same conversation we always ended up having if I could hang up at the end of them. I knew that it hurt her that I wasn’t around as much, but I was just tired of feeling like I could never do right by her. We may look like sisters but beyond that we didn’t have much in common, primarily when it came down to the things we wanted for me. She wanted me to have a husband and I preferred a career. I was too young to be thinking about marriage, I kept telling her, but I knew she was worried I’d end up like her—a single mom whose resume included a lot of part-time jobs with no long-term security.

“How’s the hotel?” she asked.

“Really nice.” I knew she’d be impressed with the details. She loved a fancy hotel—had even worked in a couple over the years. “There’s a chandelier in the lobby.”

She let out a whistle. “Well, that ain’t bad.” I heard her take a drag of her cigarette. “Did you go out last night?”

No doubt she could hear it in my voice.

“Just for a quick drink.” No use getting into it with her, though she would have been proud that I didn’t pay for any of my drinks. “That’s what God made men for,” she always said. “That and fixing your car.”

“I was pretty tired, though, so I went to bed early,” I lied.

“Alone?” she asked.

“Yes alone.” I shook my head. Being totally and completely inappropriate was something of a specialty of hers.

“That cute boyfriend of yours didn’t go to Austin with you for a week away?”

A week away from what? I thought. From spending the day on my couch? But I hadn’t even thought of asking Nick to join me. In fact, I had been looking forward to being away from him. Maybe he was right; maybe I was stifling his creativity. And maybe he had been stifling mine.

“We broke up, Mama,” I told her.

“Oh.” Another inhale. “That’s too bad.”

“You never liked him.”

“I never met him,” she reminded me.

“Well, you wouldn’t have liked him,” I informed her. It was the truth.

“So you’ve said.” The next inhale was long. “I just don’t know why you keep dating these boys you don’t think I’ll like, hon. Doesn’t say much about your taste in men.”

“Or maybe it says something about yours,” I mutter under my breath, knowing that in this case, I was definitely standing in my own glass house with a bag of rocks I shouldn’t be tossing in her direction. Besides, it wasn’t her fault that Nick broke up with me. It might have been her fault that I had been with him in the first place, but I’m pretty sure scientists are still undecided about how much impact a mother’s dating habits have on their young, impressionable child.

Mom had dated some questionable guys; there was no doubt about that. And was it really my fault if I seemed to be following in her footsteps? I didn’t want to, of course, but maybe I couldn’t control what I was interested in. It was unnerving that so many of my ex-boyfriends had resembled quite a few of the “uncles” I’d had growing up. And we didn’t talk about my birth dad.

“He didn’t care enough to stick around,” is what my mom always said. “So he’s not worth our time or worry.”

Took a while before I believed it myself.

The practice field came into view.

“Mom, I gotta go,” I said. “I’ve got my first interview today.”

“With the fancy ball player, right?” she asked, and I could hear her blowing smoke into the receiver. I could practically smell the nicotine through the phone.

“That’s right,” I said as the cab dropped me off near the side entrance. I headed towards the field and as I got closer, there Nathan was, in uniform, talking to a girl in the stands. He had an amazing butt. Like, a bounce-quarters-off-it, hold-on-for-dear-life butt. A baseball butt, I guess. Better to fill out those white pants. Probably a result of all that running and squatting and whatever else they must do to stay in shape. I didn’t even care how he had gotten it, I was grateful just to have a front seat view of it.

Baseball players had never really done it for me. I loved sports, especially baseball, but athletes had never been my type. My best friend throughout high school was a huge sports fan—he had been the one to take me to my first football game, my first basketball game, my first everything, really. Sport-wise. But when it came to the guys I crushed on, guys like him had never fit the bill. I had always gone for the guys who looked great in the dim light of a bar—guys who were lean and long, a little dirty and whole lot dangerous. Nathan was nothing like those guys. Strong and broad, he knew how to fill out that uniform. It fit him perfectly, snug in all the right places. His face, mostly obscured by his baseball cap, boasted an impressive jaw line, one that I remembered well from last night.

What would have happened if I had taken him up on his offer? Taken his phone number? Taken him back to my room, ripped off all his clothes, and had my wicked way with him? For an hour. Or four.

“Is he the one with the great ass?” My mom’s voice interrupted my fantasy.

“Mom!” I coughed, forever embarrassed by her bluntness. Even if she was right. At least our combined taste seemed to be improving. But still.

“What?” she said, sounding offended. “I can’t notice a great ass? Please. I’m menopausal, I’m not dead.”

“I have to go,” I said. He hadn’t noticed me yet, his attention still focused on the girl in the stands. She looked younger than me, but not by much. I couldn’t help feeling a little jealous of the undivided attention he was giving her. Of course, I had no reason to be jealous, so I was immediately annoyed at myself for feeling that way.

“Call me later, tell me how it goes,” my mom said.

“OK,” I said, unable to pull my eyes away from him. I hung up the phone and shoved it back in my purse. Narrowing my eyes, I tried to wipe all my lustful thoughts from my mind. This was my chance to prove myself to my fellow journalists. I needed to do a good job with this interview. I needed to do a great job. I had to make him trust me. I had to make him comfortable. You can do this, I told myself. This is going to be your homerun, Sophie. Your home-fucking-run. Knock it out of the park.

I went over what I knew in my head. Nathan Ryder, twenty-two, Houston-born star pitcher for the Longhorns. If the rumors were true, he had a good shot at the Majors right out of college. It wasn’t an opportunity most college players got, but everyone was saying that this guy was special. I was here to cover the last game before the MLB draft. If everything went according to plan, Nathan would end up graduating college and heading straight into the big leagues. And I was going to be there to report on it.

Taking a deep breath, I put on my “I’m charming and so, so sorry for whatever I might have done, can I please make it up to you” smile, squared my shoulders, and headed towards my leading story.