The Line Drive

two

Dane Sawyer

As I walk out of the library, I can't help but feel mildly amused by my interaction with Mackenzie. She's not what I expected when I had been eyeing her from a distance. She's very cute, with her light brown hair and hazel eyes, and her bare feet that she'd had folded in her chair. I could see her dancing outside in the grass like a hippy.

Watching her kiss her boyfriend had annoyed me and I didn't know why. I found plenty of girls with boyfriends cute, but it had never bothered me that they kissed before. Perhaps it was just that he'd only given her a peck. Someone as cute as her deserved a more involved kiss.

It occurs to me that I'm thinking about making out with a girl that I clearly just pissed off. I try to shake the thoughts from my head, but her angry face had just made me think she was even cuter. 

When I get home, I sit in the driveway for a minute, eyeing the house. There's six of us that managed to squeeze in this house. Six baseball players is a lot of baseball players. I know I can be douchey, but the level of douche in the house can be too much at times. I already know the boys are planning several parties for the next couple of weeks. We'd already had one, and somehow our dining room table had gotten destroyed. 

It was after that party that I had decided that my room needed an actual lock, because I walked back up to my room to find my girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend, fucking my roommate in my bed. 

Even just thinking back to the event I felt my vision going hazy. I'd never been closer to actually beating someone, no, correction, two someones in my entire life. 

I'd had to rearrange my room after Amy, my now ex, had fucked Grant, my still roommate, because all I could see when I walked in was them fucking on my bed. I had considered asking Noah, my best friend, to switch rooms with me. But his room didn't have its own bathroom, and mine did. 

Noah is sitting at the counter in our kitchen, his computer in front of him. Noah is actually quite smart, and unlike me, he's not thinking of going pro. He's my favorite roommate and team member because he's not dumb all of the time like most of them. 

"Hey, man." Noah looks up as I collapse on the chair next to him. 

"Hey." It's been a rough day. I failed my fifth computer science assignment, and spent most of office hours getting pitying glances from my teacher when I tried to ask questions. It's starting to get old. If I let my grade in that class drop too low, I'll be off the baseball team, which is no good for a pro career. I need to keep my grades up in order to stay on the team. And since our season doesn't technically start until the spring, I have a lot of time to fuck things up.

"You look like shit." Noah says in his typical manner.

"Thanks. That's really helpful." I begin pulling stuff out of my backpack so that I can work on homework before practice starts. The first thing I set down is the newspaper, which Noah immediately grabs. 

Noah flips it open to the second page, where he sees Mackenzie's cute face. He skims down her letter from the editor. "Good for her!" Noah actually sounds excited, and maybe a little bit proud.

"Huh?"

"I didn't realize she'd actually been chosen for editor-in-chief." Noah seems like he's talking to himself more than me, but I can't help my interest. 

"You know her?"

"Mack?" Noah looks at me as if I'm stupid. I kind of like the nickname Mack, but I don't think now is the best time to bring that up. "Yeah. She's been in a couple of classes with me. The girl is brilliant." 

"Brilliant." I repeat. Noah is majoring in physics, which I truly don't understand, but he seems to like it. No one on our baseball team gets it. But Noah seems to love the challenge of a college sport combined with one of the hardest majors at our school. Somehow he manages to do them both fairly well. "Well I met her today."

"How'd that go?"

"I think I pissed her off."

"That checks out. I don't think dumb jock is really her type." Noah gives me a wide smile. "Did you say something offensive?"

"Yeah. I told her that she could do better on her boyfriend choice."

"That does seem like a quick way to a woman's heart." Noah says sarcastically. 

We're quiet for a moment as I pull out my computer. When I open it, my computer science grades are still up. And Noah, being the nosiest person I've ever met, stares at them. 

"Oh man. You're doing shit at that class." Noah tells me.

"Tell me something I don't know."

"There's tutors to help you with that."

"I don't want a fucking tutor." The idea of asking someone for help makes my skin crawl. I'm smart enough to figure this shit out on my own. 

"Maybe it will suddenly magically click." Noah laughs and I want to punch him. "Mack is killer at that sort of thing though. She's taken that class." 

"How well do you know this girl?"

"Pretty well. We were partners on some assignments and stuff."

"You've never mentioned her before." I say, a little offended that he's kept someone as cute as Mackenzie from me. 

"She's too pure to be sullied by the baseball team." Noah tells me, a slight warning in his voice. "Plus you had a girlfriend." 

"You think I'd sully her?" I ask, mildly annoyed and totally ignoring the second part of his statement.

"Yes." Noah says without shame. "But I also think that she'd probably help you if you asked for it."

I'm not sure that I can bring myself to asking her for help, especially not after I pissed her off in the library. She'd probably just laugh at me and shove it in my face. 

"We'll see." I mutter.

"For your own sake, I hope you come around." Noah tells me, before turning back to his computer and pretending like I don't exist.