Rayston Point Road || Editing

Chapter Twelve

Despite my better judgement, when Leighton returned with the boys a couple hours later and asked me if I had any plans for the evening, I told her about the baseball game. Her initial reaction was the frown, and I knew that she was still concerned about me stirring up trouble with Isaac, but she tried to cover it quickly, seeming to relax even more when I tried to frame it as hanging out with Andie and a few other people I had met the same night. The idea of a crowd of other people relieved her, and she waved me off happily when I left the house just before seven.

When I pulled up to the baseball field, I followed the crowd of cars already parked and still arriving into an already crowded dirt lot, surprised at the amount of attending the game. The metal bleachers were already heavily packed, and others had pulled up fold-out chairs along the chain link fences. A combination of faces lined the field, mostly a mix of kids around my age and some older men and women, presumably family, making me question how friendly this game actually was, if it drew such a large crowd during the summer, and making me rethink just how serious Isaac had sounded when he said everyone would be there.

After parking towards the back of the lot in case I ended up wanting to bail, I dropped the sun visor down to use the mirror to swipe my long hair back from my neck, piling it into a sloppy bun at the top of my head to combat the raging heat that still existed even at 7:00 at night. I readjusted my bangs a little before pushing the visor back up and gathered my keys and phone in my hand to exit the car. As I slowly pushed the door shut, I started sweeping my eyes over the faces that I could see, searching for any familiar ones while simultaneously debating getting back in my car and driving away, until I heard somebody calling my name.

I had come up along the side of one of the long rows of bleachers, perfectly content to linger at its side until I decided if I wanted to stay or not, when Andie was suddenly half-standing out of her seat to my left, waving and smiling in my direction. I smiled and half-waved back, climbing onto the bleachers and shimmying past the hordes of people already seated, surprised to find a space for me on the silver metal bench.

"Isaac said he invited you!" Andie beamed as I sat next to her. "I was hoping you'd come!" Any other time, any other place, her over-excited, bubbly personality would have annoyed me, but every time I was around her I found myself thinking that she reminded me of a mix between Bailee and Lena, the only two people in the world I would tolerate the seemingly exaggerated but totally earnest cheery nature from, and the fact that I suddenly missed them both made me much more accepting of the way Andie leaned towards me as she spoke. I turned towards her, but my eyes focused just past her head, taking in the faces around us who were part of our group. Connor sat directly next to her, Jack and Lee beside him. On the row behind us, Izzy sat directly behind Andie and me, and hadn't stopped glaring at my since I climbed onto the bleachers, Vi and Mariana at her sides, clearly following in Izzy's footsteps in declaring me public enemy number one. I had known that Mac played baseball, but Alex wasn't seated with us, and neither was Diego.

"Mac, Alex, and Diego all play too, by the way," I realized Andie was saying, answering the questions I was asking myself in my head. I forced myself to turn my attention back to her and not the obvious daggers being aimed at my head, looking into Andie's bright blue eyes, framed tonight by thick black glasses, which surprisingly only made the blue stand out even more, instead of hiding the color away.

"Mac's the catcher," Andie said, pointing towards the team in gray pants and dark blue jerseys now warming up on the field, "Diego's first base, and Alex is shortstop," she pointed at each of the boys, and I tried my best to follow her finger and find their faces, less informed on the appropriate baseball vernacular than everyone else here seemed to be. "Isaac's the pitcher." My eyes landed on him immediately, watching as he wound his arm back and hurled a ball towards home plate, the sound it made as it crashed into Mac's glove making the crowd cheer even though the game hadn't even started. I kept watching him as he rolled his shoulders back and then held his glove out easily as Mac's return throw landed neatly in his outstretched hand. When he started to reposition himself as the first batter on the other team, clothed in white and yellow, stepped onto the field, his head turned marginally in our direction and he smiled, the briefest of grins that I knew curled the dimple in his cheek, before his head was straight and his expression was serious again as the opposing team's player readied themselves to bat.