After months of therapy, Garrett Delko is still struggling to cope with his brother's suicide. The only time he finds peace is on the pitching mound and with a mysterious girl he's been obsessed with since the first week of college. One night, he se...
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Okay, so he was officially being ghosted. He'd tried calling and texting Arianne with zero success. She even ignored the cute GIFs he sent. Man, if the guys back home could see him now, they'd laugh their asses off. Over the weekend, he'd staked out the lower quad cafeteria but either she'd seen him and fled or she was purposely not eating there.
"You need to march to her dorm room and demand to see her. You can't explain yourself if you never talk to her," Marcus said, throwing him a ball. Garrett caught it in his mitt and hurled it to Stephan who promptly threw it back to Marcus. Most of the team was warming up before practice except Jordan who was in a meeting with Coach.
"Yeah and come off as a possessive asshole," Stephan countered.
"It's not possessive. It's assertive," Marcus replied.
Stephan snorted. "I dare you to tell that to a girl's face and not get slapped."
Gus, who'd been running late, jumped the fence separating the field from the stands. "What's this about, Saint? You got a new girl? I thought you already had one."
Stephan piped up before Garrett could. "Keyword is had. He's trying to win her back."
"Already?" Gus asked. Raising his voice, he called out, "Hey Eli! You owe me twenty. Delko already fucked it up."
A couple of feet away, Eli groaned. "Seriously? I thought you had more game than that."
Irritated, Garrett flicked them off. "It's a simple misunderstanding."
"Misunderstanding my ass," Stephan muttered.
Garrett cut a quick but deadly glare. He didn't need the guilt trip when he was already riding the train to Regretville. His memories and conflicted feelings had wrapped around him so tightly, he hadn't taken a second to consider Arianne's. Had he learned nothing from his selfishness with Spencer?
Pages and pages of Spencer's handwriting lined the bathroom stall mocking Garrett. Love poems highlighted with violent yellow slashed through the eloquent words like a sword. His heart hurt for his brother who silently cried into his pillow every night. Every supposed friend had deserted him, his only oasis the baseball field. Garrett tracked him night after night, sneaking out of the house and onto the pitching mound. But no matter how much Garrett ached, he couldn't talk to Spencer. His walls impenetrable. It frustrated him. Anger boiling to the point of spilling over into his relationship with his brother.
His breathing accelerated as he glanced at the wall. FAG was written in big bold letters. Underneath Delko brothers was scribbled with multiple exclamation points and crudely drawn penises.
Assholes.
It wasn't like Spencer was the first guy to come out of the closet in Carlsboro. Of course, Spencer had been pushed out of that closet, his choices stripped like a convict in prison. Added on top was the fact that the person he loved was the mayor's son—a starch conservative who vehemently opposed gay marriages.
