The Boy That Stole My Heart

CHAPTER SEVEN

            Tap tap tap, my knuckles knocked against the door frame and he looked up from the manga he had his nose buried in. A piggy nose I thought, slightly upturned at the end, his lips the soft pink curve of a heart.
           "Hey nerd," I called but didn't move from the doorway.
            He smiled and I noticed for the first time that he had braces. "Hey! Come in!"
            "Cool," I said, pulling a mask out of my back pocket and putting it on before I came in.
            He cocked his head to the side, eyes squinted, and burst out laughing. "What the hell? You don't need that."
             "Oh," I felt a hot flush crawl up my neck. "Do you?"
             "Are you sick?"
             "No."
            "Then I will be fine."
            I plopped down on the bed next to him, laying back and grabbing the manga out of his hand. "What is this?"
            "Boruto." He told me. "It's about Naruto's son."
              I flipped through it. "I like My Hero Academia."
              "Nah bro, this is it. Borrow it."
            It was weird that it wasn't.... Well... Weird. Both of us had little experience in making friends, for different reasons of course, but we seemed to fit so well together and conversation came easy. Even the silences were comfortable. It was during one of these that he looked up from his sketchbook as if considering something.
            "What?" I asked.
            "Still don't have anything you wanna ask me?"
            "Yeah, what do you think it would be like to be really fat?" I asked him and he punched me in the arm.
            "Shut up you idiot!" He said grabbing onto me and shoving me onto the bed.
             It seemed so natural ato wrestle around with him when before I had not liked to be touched. Just brushing past someone in the hallway made my skin crawl. It was different with him, something about him making me feel... Normal.
             "I wish I could draw like you," I said as we lay on the floor next to each other, panting, our cheeks flushed with exertion.
              "I wish I could play baseball," he countered.
               I rolled over to face him, he did the same, and then we were close enough to make me nervous, a good nervous, but it didn't seem to bother him. "You can't?"
              "Nah," he said nonchalantly but I could tell it bothered him. "Too much interaction. Too many people. Too many risks."
               "You could play with me though, right? Like just the two of us?"
             "Really? You would want to?" He asked, trying to keep his face neutral and the excitement out of his voice. I had the feeling he had been let  down before.
            "Yeah," I answered. "Probably preferable to sitting in here with you rubbing the fact that I can't draw or paint in my face.
           "Or read," he said under his breath.
           That surprised me. "What?"
           "I wasn't going to say anything... But I think it will be funnier if I do. Earlier when you were reading the back of that manga you totally mispronounced a whole bunch of words.
           Then we were wrestling again but this time I wasn't so easy on him.
 
           "Okay, so here is a glove," I told him tossing it his way. We can start with a little bit of catch and then I'll show you how to pitch."
           "Uh..."
           "What?"
           "How are you going to throw with your arm broken?"
           "I can still throw the ball bro," I said, wiggling my fingers.
           He shrugged. "Okay, let's see what you got Mr one arm wonder."
           I would be lying to say that I hadn't underestimated him. He had an arm and I had to move back another fifteen feet or so.
           "You have good control. Wanna learn how to pitch?"
           He readily agreed, no longer able to contain his excitement, pushing and bumping me while we set up until I finally had to wrestle him down again.
            "Remember. Control over power okay?" I asked and he nodded. "Put it in my glove.
             And that's exactly what he did. It hit leather with a nice sounding thump. And another. And another.
            "Open that thing up," I called to him. "Put some zip on it. Let's see what you got."
             He was good. And I mean he was really good. One after the next into my glove, each faster and harder than the one before.
             "Dude, you're nasty."
             He flinched. "Why?"
             "It's slang. It means you can pitch bro. Like, you are better than me."
             "No, I'm not." He disagreed, but his cheeks flushed red.
             "I'm serious Logan... You might be a prodigy. Come here I wanna try something."
              "What is this?" he asked me.
              "It's a sinker, a two seam fast ball. What you were throwing is a four seam," I explained. " The idea behind this one is that it will travel in a straight line and then drop off at the end, right under the hitter's bat.
             It took him a couple tries but sure enough the ball started to drop more and more with each throw.
            "Am I getting it?" He asked.
            I laughed in exasperation. "Oh, you got it. It took me months of practice to get that. Let's try you out on the bat. You don't wanna pitch too much the first day or you'll injure yourself. You gotta build up to it."
             Batting didn't come as easy and I let him swing a few times to get used to it before I stepped in to help. "Choke up a bit and widen your stance."
           I put my arms around him in an attempt to show him how to swing and was greeted by a feeling akin to electricity. He was so small in my grasp, warm, and smelled of boy and sunshine. It was absurdly erotic and took my breath away.
           "Like this?" He asked, looking up at me, giving no indication that he felt it and I wondered if I had a crush on him. I hadn't had a crush on anyone since Melissa Forent used to steal my crayons in the third grade.
          "That's perfect," I said letting him go and walking back to my spot, trying to control the eratic beating of my heart. "Smooth and easy!"
           THWACKKK
           We both stood there watching the ball as it soared through the air.... And soared.... And soared..... And smashed through his kitchen window with a crash that was much louder than it should have been.
           The door yanked open to reveal an angry, disheveled Linda. "What the hell!!??"
           "It was him!" Logan said and I turned to see him pointing at me.
           "What!?"
           "ARE YOU TWO FUCKING SERIOUS!!!????" She screamed and started to run across the yard after us.
           Logan let out a hysterical burst of laughter and took off running, pushing me to the ground as he passed. It took two tries to get back to my feet and follow him, both of us laughing wildly and.... Free, as his mom screamed behind us.