“Ready?” he asks.

“Yup.” I take another practice swing.

“You’ve got good form.”

“I know.”

He grins. “Boy, are you humble. Here we go.” He feeds a ball into the machine and it whizzes toward me. I let it pass. I dig my boot into the dirt, wishing I had cleats. I take another practice swing.

“Again,” Brian says, dropping a ball into the hole.

This time I swing and make contact. The ball slams into the fence right in Brian’s face.

“Sure. Take whatever’s wrong out on me,” he says with a smile.

“That’s the plan.” Back into my stance. Practice swing before the real thing. This time I connect. Feel a rush of electricity tingle down my biceps and forearms. I knocked it out of the park. Well, I hit the rear nets. But I bet it would’ve been out of the park. And it feels good. I grin.

“Ready?” Brian asks, holding up another ball.

“Wait.” I drop the bat. “You got any more of that gum?”

At 7:00 p.m.—way past the 15 minutes I’d agreed to—Brian turns off the pitching machine. I only missed, I dunno, six or seven balls out of a hundred? My muscles are screaming at me and I’m stiff as stale licorice, but my mind feels clearer than it has in a long time.

“Damn, you’ve got a bat on you,” he exclaims, walking over as I pull off my helmet. “Fun?”

“It was,” I admit. “Now what about my questions? Are you going to answer them now?”

My stomach grumbles.

“Hungry?” He takes his cap off, smoothes his hair, and puts it back on.

“Starved.” I poke him in the chest. “But you owe me a bunch of answers.”

“True, true.” He hesitates. “Would you…”

“Would I?” I’m bouncing on my tiptoes now.

He secures his bat beneath his arm. “Want to get some food?”

Holy scandal!

“What kind of food?” I ask, calm and cool.

“I dunno, does it matter?”

“I don’t eat olives.”

He chuckles. “I once read that there’s an olive in the world for everybody, you just have to find it.”

“I haven’t found any olives that I like.”

“So we won’t get olives.”

I blow warm air onto my hands and rub them together. “Is this okay? I mean, are we allowed to talk off school property?”

He thinks for a few secs. “I haven’t read the school handbook. I have no idea. But we’re not going clubbing or anything. We’re just getting food, right?”

“Right.” Totally cool. I’m totally cool. Breathe. “Why do you want to get dinner with me?”

He lifts a shoulder, chewing his gum. “We both gotta eat.”

“Don’t you have plans? A family? A girlfriend? A wife?”

He laughs and jingles his keys. “Let’s go.”

“This place is a total swamp.”

Brian tosses his beige cap onto the dashboard. “I came here all the time in high school.”

“When? Like fifty years ago?”

“Oh, hush,” he says with a smile. He musses his wavy black curls before we climb out of his truck. The neon Foothills Diner sign flickers in the window. Empty plastic bottles and cigarette butts litter the parking lot. No one from school ever comes here—because it’s a total swamp, making it an ideal place where no one will see us.

He opens the door for me; the little bell jingles. Burger stench hits me in the face.

“This is one of my favorite places.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Killer cheese fries.” He points at me. “With bacon bits.”

My mouth waters. “I looooooovvve bacon bits.”

If Brian wants me to eat cheese fries, I’m eating cheese fries. I once read that the bloomin’ onion at Outback Steakhouse has 1,800 calories, so I can only imagine how much fat these cheese fries have. How big are the portions? I take a quick glance around the tiny diner and find that the plates are the size of trashcan lids. Lovely.

Brian asks the hostess if we can take the booth in the corner, and a wave of embarrassment floods my body. He doesn’t want to be seen with me. But if he didn’t want to be seen with me, would he risk going anywhere public? Believe it or not, swampy Foothills Diner is a public place.

“Parker?”

I look up to find Brian already sitting in the booth with his arm stretched across the back of the seat, and I’m still standing by the door. I’m such a nerd. I shuffle over and plop down in the seat across from him right as the waitress saunters up to ask for our drink order. She checks Brian out the way I stare at pictures of cupcakes.

Brian reads the drink menu. “I’ll take a PBR on tap.”

He ordered a beer?! He’s a coach at my school and he orders a beer? What does that mean? Does he feel comfortable with me like I feel comfortable with him?

“And for you?” the waitress asks, giving me stink eye. It’s like she’s daring me to order a beer.

I take the menu from Brian’s hand and scan it. My fingers stick to the sticky plastic. “Iced tea? Unsweetened.”

“Coming up,” the waitress says, smiling brightly at Brian, and then goes behind the counter.

“I forgot you can’t drink yet,” he says.

“I can’t even vote yet.”

He examines the mini jukebox on the table. “When can you?”

“April fifth.”

He rubs the scruff on his jaw. “So you’ve got a great bat. I can’t wait to see you in the field.”

“Who says you’re going to see me in the field?” I start looking over the dinner menu, to see if anything might be less than 80,000 calories.

“I figured…You know, since you enjoyed batting tonight, you might want to go out for the team again.”

The waitress sets our drinks on the table.

“I don’t know that I want to rejoin the team, but I do love softball,” I admit.

He rushes to sip his beer. “What happened?”

I fish a Splenda out of the sugar caddy, rip the package open, and stir the powder into my tea. “I’m not answering any of your questions until you answer mine, Brian Hoffman. You must be the king of deflection.”

“That’s me.” He shrugs a little, smiling. It’s cute, and I find myself leaning across the table toward him, cradling my tea glass with both hands.

“Tell me about you and baseball.”

He nurses his beer. “Not much to tell.”

“Not much?”

He swallows another sip. “I got a scholarship to play at Georgia Tech, but I never got much playing time.”

“What’s your position?”

“Right field.”

“You must be a great hitter, then.”

“I was,” he says softly. I get what he means: Playing outfield doesn’t take the kind of skill you need to play say, pitcher, catcher, or shortstop. All the really great batters play outfield.

“And then what happened?”

Half his beer is gone already. Will I have to drive him home?

“Lost my timing…wasn’t as good as I thought I was…coaches thought I’d peak, but I never did.” His brown eyes bore into mine. Embarrassed, but open. My mind flashes back to how he showed me his bitten fingernails.

“Then what happened?” I whisper.

He raps his fork on the table. “In four years of college, I never started. I became a utility player they used only when another guy needed a break.”

“Do you regret playing in college?”

“No…it’s just, I learned from it. That and…well, I learned that I can’t plan anything anymore.” He rubs his eyes and looks out the window, hesitating. A semi pulls into the parking lot. “I need to take it all as it comes.”

“Aren’t some plans important, though?” I ask, thinking of Vanderbilt, where I can start all over.

He shakes his head. “I live for now. Which is why I want to see you play again. I can tell how much you like it. What if you regret it later?”

I lick my lips. He’s right. But I’m not sure I want to reach out again.

That’s when Waitress Seductress Extraordinaire comes back and gets our order. Brian surprises me by ordering for us. “We’re sharing an order of Fries à la Appalachia,” he says, handing over the menus and turning his focus back to me. Le waitress stomps off.

I ask, “Why are they called that?”

“Because when they’ve got the fries stacked up they’re higher than a mountain range.”

I groan and touch my stomach.

“You’re funny,” he says, his eyes twinkling. He scrunches his bangs in his fist.

I pull my legs up under my butt and ask, “So do you know which gym class you’re teaching yet?”

“Right now I’m shadowing Coach Burns…but I’m going to take over Coach Lynn’s classes when she goes on maternity leave the last week of April.”

“You’re gonna be my gym teacher? You’d better not make us do step aerobics or play with the giant parachute or anything.”

“We’re definitely gonna play with the giant parachute…” He runs a hand over his head, looking around the diner. He smiles and focuses on me again. “Technically, I’ll only be your gym teacher for like two weeks. And then you graduate. And then I’m teaching driver’s ed this summer.”

“Whoa, that’s so cool,” I tease.

He laughs, but then grows serious again. “I never planned on becoming a teacher.”

“What did you plan on?”

“Going to the majors…And if not that, then maybe working for an MLB club. As a coach or trainer or something. That’s why I got a master’s, so I could at least work in the game…I might try to get a job doing field crew somewhere. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

I sip my tea and swallow. He doesn’t offer any further details about his career choices, so I change the subject. “So, what brought you back here?”

He hesitates and chooses a song to play on the jukebox. “Everywhere” by Tim McGraw. A great, depressing choice. Finally he whispers, “I wanted to be back with my parents for a while?” He says it like a question. Like he’s unsure of why he’s living with his parents? Like he’s unsure of why he’s admitting this to me?

Maybe I do need to Google him. Brian Hoffman is like an onion. I peel back one layer only to find a hundred denser layers full of secrets.

“Did you miss your parents?” I ask, missing my own mom like crazy.

He nods, finding my eyes. He looks younger than twenty-three right now. Did he wander after not making it to the major leagues? Is he lost?

“Do you like coaching at all?”

He looks at me over the top of his glass as he sips his beer. “I don’t have much interest in writing daily status reports for Dr. Salter on how the baseball team is doing. Shouldn’t our win-loss record be report enough? And you wouldn’t believe what the women talk about in the teachers’ lounge. I’ve learned all about breast pumps.” He shudders.