Blocked Away | A TMF Fan-Fiction

Chapter Ten

Luke's P.O.V.

Luke had just finished swinging the last bat and "accidently" missed. He wasn't quite sure exactly why he had decided to strike out on purpose. It was just after hearing Zander complain about playing, and being called up to bat, the idea came into his head, and it just became clear to him that that was what he needed to do. God, I have it worse than I thought I did, Luke thought to himself.

"Strike three! That's three outs. Teams switch!"

Luke walked away from the batting plate, and back toward Zander and Hailey. When he made eye contact with Zander, he saw the most shocked look on Zander's face. Crap. Maybe that was a bad idea. That was practically a dead giveaway I like him, right? Luke quickly stopped worrying though, because when he looked more closely at Zander's face, he could've sworn he saw the faintest tint of pink on his cheeks. This temporarily sent Luke into overdrive, but he calmed himself before completely meeting up to Zander and Hailey.

"Did you do that for me?" Zander asked, having a slight in awe tone to his voice.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Luke lied, clearly playing dumb.

In response, Zander made this noise that was a combination of a laugh, and a scoff.

"Let's get out on the field," Hailey instructed, ending the small bit of banter Luke and Zander just had.

After getting out on the field, Luke's team catching, the rest of the game went by pretty fast. Luke felt bad for Zander at first though, because after everyone saw Zander's "divine athletic abilities," all of the batters immediately pegged him as a bad catcher, and a lot of balls were aimed in his direction. But, not that he was great or anything, Zander was actually a pretty decent catcher, and would catch around half of the balls thrown in his direction, so he was less targeted as the game went on. The game ended up being cut short due to the class period ending, and they just declared that the team with the most runs was the winner, which was not Luke's team.

Luke waited for Zander who was collecting his jacket. It only took Zander less than a minute to get to him though, "Nice to see you're not ditching me this time." Zander said the words in a way that clearly showed he wasn't bothered by the incident anymore, but Luke still felt a tang of guilt.

They chatted on the way to the English classroom.

"Sorry about losing the baseball game. Can't help but feel like it's kind of my fault, considering I'm the one who collapsed to the ground, and got themselves tagged," Zander apologized.

"Don't worry about it," Luke assured, "I'm kind of to blame too, considering I purposely struck out."

"So you admit it now," Zander smirked.

Luke chuckled, and lamely held his hands up, as a sign of surrender, "Yeah, I guess you caught me."

"So, how should we go about doing our presentation today?" Zander asked, changing the topic of conversation.

"Uh...what about we just read the slides we made?" Luke suggested.

"What about slide four, the conclusion? We both made that."

Luke wanted to ask Zander to read it, knowing he would do a far better job explaining it than him, but he felt guilty asking.

"What about I do it?" Zander offered.

"Yes, please," Luke agreed, relieved.

The teenagers arrived in the classroom, and took their seats next to one another. Luke and Zander sat silently, as there was a chatter amongst what seemed to be the rest of the classroom.