Out of Her League |Lesbian Story|

Chapter 9

A wall of bodies crashed on me. Then I found myself in the air, carried by the others like I was a war hero. Our fans were going nuts at the sideline, chanting Darci! Darci! Darci!

"Oh yes! We did it!" cheered Felik. "I knew you were gonna make us proud!"

I blushed and giggled. After my teammates put me down, I saw my mom go up to Grigor.

"Excuse me," she said shyly to the big man. "I'm Darci's mom. I just wanted..."

Grigor surprised her by grabbing her hand in his and shook it firmly with gratitude. Felik joined him.

"Did you see your daughter out there?" he said. "What a wonderful baseball player she is!"

The mob of Russian supporters congratulated us.

My mom came to hug me.

"Oh my girl," she breathed. "I never knew you had such skills."

I shrugged. "Well, Dad obviously never told you about that."

"Oh honey, I'm sure he would be amazed if he saw the game," she said. "I was off my feet the entire time!"

I was just glad that my mom took the time to see me play, but a part of me wished my former coach saw what I did. But let's not get all carried away here. As a team, we still seriously sucked. In that game, the Red Stars scored equal runs until I did what I did. We still had a lot to work on.

~*~

In the old days, when I still loved baseball to death, I used to go everywhere with a ball. I'd always be tossing it from hand to hand, bouncing it against the wall and catching it back. I didn't anymore. I couldn't see the point.

But Olive had been pestering me to help her with some pitching and batting practice. So on Sunday after the first game, we headed down to the field.

We passed the Matryoshka restaurant. Olive was talking at jet-ski speed about baseball legends. She knew every league and dates of the games. She was a human CD-room.

Then there was a whoosh of noise on the footpath in front of us.

"Kapitan Dacri! And Olive! Hello ladies!" roared out Mitko.

He waved at us. We smiled and walked towards him.

"Don't worry about the scores," Mitko said. "Everyone enjoyed the game yesterday. You did amazing. All of you."

Then he turned to Olive.

"You know what you gotta do?" he said. "You gotta keep your center of gravity when you throw."

One of our Russian fans was peering out the window at us.

"Yes! It's them!" said the guys at the tables, beckoning their friends out. "From Grigor and Felik's team."

There were men and women smiling at us two and we didn't know how to handle the attention.

Mitko was still giving balance advice while I was having my hand shaken by the people there.

"You played very well, young lady," said an old woman. "She reminds me of Dottie in that baseball movie, doesn't she, Dimka?"

I was busy thanking them for all the compliments when a large brown bag was shoved into my hands by another woman from the next door deli.

"You girls like Khachapuri?" she asked with a bright smile.

"Oh...what...?" I mumbled.

"Your moms will, I bet," she said and proudly gave another one to Olive. "They're freshly baked in the oven."

I peeked into the warm bag. Thick, crusty bread shaped like a boat and filled with melted cheese. It smelled amazing.