Beautifully Knight (Jordan Knight Fanfic, Liadan #5)

Batting Cages and Bathrooms

-LOGAN-

The deceivingly happy tune of The 1975's It's Not Living (If It's Not With You) blared through the speakers of my best friend's Mustang and echoed across the batting cages at the neighborhood park where we'd played for hours as kids. Drumbeats and smooth guitar riffs softened the lyrics' allusions to a bad drug addiction and made for a rhythmic backing track to the ping of my bat smashing into a ball as hard as I could swing it. Like a missile, the ball took off down the cage with a surge of tension from my shoulders powering it forward until it slammed against the gate and crashed back down to earth to the sound of applause.

"Damn, Knight, who pissed you off today?"

"No, that's what you call a power hit! Not that sissy stuff you've been doing all night, Garcia. I know we handed you and Curtis your asses when it came to coaching today, but I thought you still had some fucking batting skills in you. Guess I was wrong."

"Shut the fuck up, Pembrooke. You ain't handed nothing to nobody. You just got a lucky break and the umpire missed five calls!" Zeke turned his baseball cap backwards and stretched his eyes in his partner's direction.

Zeke Garcia and Oliver Curtis were old high school rivals who Simon and I had joined forces with while playing baseball together at Northeastern University during college. Over the years, we'd become close through the bond that came from being teammates, but nothing had ever completely eliminated our love for our high school teams. Simon and I were Eagles through and through just as much Zeke and Oliver were Wolverines. And now that we were volunteers for the Little League teams back in our respective hometowns, that old rivalry had more than rekindled. In the midst of the drama and stress that came with growing up and "adulting", it was the one piece of our younger years' that we'd all held onto and I cherished every minute of it.

"Five is being conservative," Oliver pointed the mouth of his beer bottle towards me and Simon. "That ump was a blind motherfucker and you both know it. He wouldn't recognize the rules of baseball or softball if they bit him in the ass."

"We know no such thing," I shook my head and chuckled at the frowns on Oliver and Zeke's faces. "But if you want to redeem yourselves, you should probably curb the shit-talking and start focusing on your swinging."

"You say that like I can't do both," Zeke yanked the bat from my hand and I smiled as I high-fived Simon before heading over to the table where our small "audience" of four awaited.

Zeke's wife, Mary, Oliver's fiancee, Lorraine, Dani, and Hailey all sat gathered around a picnic table filled with an assortment of junk food we'd bought from the Dairy Queen just down the street.

The guys and I had finished off most of it, but the girls still nibbled as they drifted back and forth between watching our batting cage game and engaging in a conversation of their own.

As I approached, I tried to decipher exactly what they were currently discussing, but that invisible pull that always seemed to draw Hailey's eyes to mine across any space beat me once again and she turned in my direction.

"Nice hit," she said softly.

"Looked like another home run for the Eagles?" Danielle asked as Simon snagged one of her milkshake-dipped fries.

"You know it, baby! We got this locked down. One win for the kids down, and one win for the grown-ups in the making," he teased as he planted a kiss on her forehead.

"I wouldn't get too cocky if I were you two. Z's been doing a million batting drills with his team lately and there's no umpires here to cheat for you," Mary warned with a smile.

"Zeke really sold you that bill of goods about the ump, huh?" I asked as I tugged off my helmet and rested it on the table next to Hailey's purse.

"It's not a bill of goods. We saw the game. Plus, Ollie's been practicing too," Lorraine sang as she flipped through a magazine that I recognized as one of Dani and Aunt Beth's wedding catalogs. "And everybody knows that Wolverines eat birds."