Garrett
I don't know why, but Mike loves to play video games super late at night. We sat in his room and played 2K for hours after we went to bed.
Let's just say that I'm not the best at 2K.
Mike beat me by at least 20 points in every game we played. After about 3 games, I was tired of getting beat. "Madden?" He scores another 3 on me with Jordan, and then takes the game out of his Play Station. "Sure."
He puts the Madden game in, and then takes his controller back to start the game. He chooses the 2014 Patriots, when according to him, "Brady was at his prime". He's not right, but that's a battle I don't really want to fight with him. "So, what do you have planned for the summer?" I look at Mike, mostly in awe that he can be so ignorant. "I'll probably be here for most of the summer," I tell him, and then he gets the "Oh, crap, I forgot" look on his face as he kicks the ball off to me. "Oh yeah. More 2K and Madden for me then." I laugh as I take the ball and make a 60 yard run before Mike's guys tackle me.
Faith is asleep on Mike's bed behind us, as she has been for a couple hours now. The first time I look back to see if she's still asleep, Mike slaps me on the back of the head. "Stop looking at my sister, you perv," he says. I turn my eyes to him. "So you, of all people, are telling me that I can't look at a girl?" He nods and watches the TV screen as I score the first touchdown of the game. "Exactly." I laugh at him as I kick the extra point. It's good.
"You pretend that I haven't seen the way that you look at Hailey Dawson."
His face turns red, even in the dark. "What are you talking about?" I grin and kick the ball off to him. "Bullcrap. You think she's cute," I taunt him. He's suddenly laser focused on his controller as he runs the ball only twenty yards before my defense stops him. He acts like he's going to slam the controller into the floor really hard, but slows his momentum down and barely taps it on the carpet. "No I don't." He's trying not to grin as he says this, so that's my first hint that he's lying. "I have her number," I tell him, and he tries to hide his smile from me. "Do you want it?" He shrugs. "I mean, sure."
When I give it to him, we completely forget about the Madden game.
He sends her a text telling her who he is.
"Bro she's typing," he says excitedly. The reply comes through.
"Dude," he says, and I look at him. "She asked for my snap."
We do a quiet celebration of this small victory for Mike. He replies with his username after a few seconds. Mike insists that you can't reply too fast or else you seem desperate.
He gets a snapchat notification about a minute after he gives her his username. It's a half-face selfie with the filter where the fire emoji is under the person's eyes. The caption says, "hi mike3". Mike's eyes widen in surprise as he panics over what to send back to her. "What do I say?"
"Just say what you think," Faith says from Mike's bed. Our heads snap up to see her sitting and watching us act like total idiots over some girl that Mike wants to date. "What do you mean?" Faith jumps down from Mike's bed and sits down beside us. "What did she send you?"
"A half-face picture with that one fire filter thingy." Faith grins.
"If that's the first thing she sends you, then she's definitely into you." Mike and I look at each other with stupid grins plastered on our faces.
"She is?" Faith nods. "Let me help you idiots out."
"Send her a half-face picture of you with an AirPod, and then caption it 'hey yourself' with a heart. But use the heart that you make with a three." Mike grabs his AirPods off of the TV stand and puts one in. "Ok, I'm sending it," he says, and pushes the send button. He's so excited to see what she says that he can't even read it when she sends something back. "I can't read it. What did she say?" Faith grabs his phone from him and reads the snap. "Mike, at this point, you should just stop." That's not a good sign. "What? Why?" She grins.
"I meant stop playing around. Ask her out, because if she's going to send you a snap like she just did, then she's trying to get you to ask her out." Mike looks at her with a stupid grin. "What'd she say?" Faith hands him his phone back. "I'm going for it," he says, and sends her something.
"LET'S GOOOOO!" Mike pumps his fist in the air a few times.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he says proudly.
"I am no longer the only single guy in the room."
Come to find out, Mike had invited Hailey over last night. When I answer the door without a shirt expecting it to be Linc or something and find Hailey, it goes as awkwardly as you can imagine.
"Umm, hi. Is Mike here?" I turn my back and yell at Mike. "Mike!" I don't even have to say anything else before he comes sprinting down the stairs to meet her at the door. He takes one look at me and gives me the "What the heck?" Look and then grins.
"Hey," he says, and she smiles at him. "I'm gonna go upstairs and leave you two to do whatever."
I walk upstairs and leave Mike and his girlfriend standing awkwardly by the door.
Faith was asleep when I left the room, so I guess I half expected her to still be asleep when I went back up.
Wrong.
She's snapping someone when I walk in. "It's Maria," she says, reading the look on my face.
"I put our pictures from Baja on my Instagram," she says, and I sit down beside her to look at them. "I think the sunset one is my favorite," I say, referring to the one with a silhouette of us walking on the beach holding hands. The sunset in the background makes it even cooler with the oranges and pinks in the sky. "Mine too." I move my hand over hers as we look at the pictures of us on the beaches and out to eat. I hear Mike and Hailey laughing in the room next door, which I guess is a good sign. "I'm sad," Faith says, and I wrap my arm around her. "Why?" She grins and looks down at her comforter. "I can't make fun of Mike for being single anymore." I playfully punch her on the arm. "I thought you were serious," I say, and she laughs at me.
Mike and his girlfriend come into Faith's room and Hailey grins. "I wanted to get to know you on the last days of school, but I never got the chance. I'm Hailey," she says, referring to Faith. Faith grins and stands up to go meet Mike's new girlfriend, leaving Mike and I to hang out for a little while.
"So?" I look at Mike expectantly.
"She's cute," he says, and I give him a fist bump. "Too bad your sister just stole her from you. They're probably going to be really good friends now." Mike sighs.
"I know, that's what I was afraid of," Mike says with a grin.
"Wanna go shoot hoops?" Mike shrugs and nods. "Why not?"
We go outside and grab a basketball each, shooting a layup from opposite sides to start.
"When you saw my sister, what did you think first?"
His question blindsides me to an extent that I didn't know was possible. After a second, I'm able to form a legitimate answer. "Um, I was jealous of you, because I thought she was your girl."
He shoots a three and runs after the rebound. "Why do you have to date my sister?" I stop dribbling and pick up my ball, holding it with one hand at my hip. "Look. I made myself a promise the day I asked her out. If she ever got in the way of our friendship, I'd just be friends with her instead." He shrugs. "That's fair."
I shoot a shot from the elbow and make it, but then I decide that I'm sick of shooting so I decide to do some ball handling instead. I work on crossovers between my legs and behind my back, then shoot layups at the end of each drill. "Do you just want to go up in the tree or something?" I shrug and put my ball down. "Sure." Mike and I run over to the trunk of the backyard tree to climb it. We climb to the very top of the tree and look out over the neighborhood. "It looks like a different place from up here," I say, and Mike just looks out over the streets and houses of our neighborhood. "It really does." We just sit there in an awkward silence for a few minutes, not really knowing what to say to each other. "I mean, I think it's pretty cool that you're here, but the terms you're here on aren't cool." I sigh and look down at the ground that's so far below us. "Yeah, I guess so. I've wanted a brother for a really long time, and this is probably the closest thing I'll ever get." He grins and pulls a leaf off of a small branch of the tree. "I hope you guys win today," I tell him.
"I forgot that we even played."
I laugh at him, even though I'm not sure why. I guess it's probably the fact that it's just such a Mike thing to say.
"Don't you have to be there in, like, an hour and a half?" He looks at his phone in his pocket and gets the "Oh crap" look on his face. "Shoot, man, you're right. Thanks," he says, climbing out of the tree with me right behind him.
He goes into his room to change into his baseball jersey while I go into Faith's room to find her and Hailey laughing about something on Instagram. "Mike's getting ready for his game," I say, not directed to either girl in particular. Hailey gets up from the middle of Faith's bedroom floor and gives Faith a high-five. "Tell him good luck," Hailey tells us, and Faith gives her a thumbs-up. "Will do."
Mike comes into Faith's room and looks at us suspiciously. "What did you do to my girlfriend to chase her away?"
"Uhh… We told her that you had baseball and she basically invited herself out." He rolls his eyes and rubs his temples. "Tell me what really happened." Faith and I look at each other, not sure what to tell him, but then she gets a mischievous smirk on her face and we decide to lie to him. "Fine. We told her that you pick your nose and eat it, and then she got really grossed out and left." His eyes widen, and, for a second, has a look of sheer terror on his face. "No you didn't. Sometimes I wonder how you have a girlfriend," Mike directs to me. "Hey!"
Mike runs downstairs to get into Michael's Tesla. The rest of us follow him after he puts his bag in the trunk. Mike sits between Faith and I with me on his left and Faith on his right. "If you don't win then I get one of your baseballs," Faith says. Mike shrugs. "Okay. I have a ton of them." Faith just grins. "No. I mean one of the baseballs." Mike looks at her like she just crash-landed in a spaceship from Mars. "I am not trusting you with a baseball signed by Aaron Judge. Never in a million years." Faith shrugs indifferently. "Why not? I wanted your Mike Trout one anyway." Mike smacks her on the arm. "I would trust you with the Aaron Judge ball before I'd trust you with the Mike Trout one. Are you serious?" Faith just grins.
Once we pull into the local ballpark, Mike gets his bat bag out of the trunk of the car. All five of us walk into the park together, but Mike turns for the dugout instead of the bleachers. "I might go say hi to some of the guys," I say.
"That's fine, Garrett." I start walking toward the dugout after Mike when I turn around. "Want to come with?" Faith looks to her parents for permission, and when they nod she runs after me. "I've been playing together with these guys since third grade."
"That's actually really cool. So you would come here every summer to play?" I nod as we get a few feet from the dugout. I pull the gate open and turn into the small wooden building. I look down at my Nike high tops and then look up at the nine guys in the dugout. "IT'S G-DOG!" All the guys go nuts when they notice me, crowding around me and jumping up and down. Faith's standing at the gate, seeing firsthand how a tight knit group of baseball boys act around each other. "Whose sister is that?" They notice Faith standing at the gate as Braydon makes this comment. "Mine. She's taken, back off." The guys look around at each other, trying to put the pieces together. "Since when did you have a sister?" Mike looks down at his cleats and sighs. "Basically, she showed up at the end of school on my doorstep at two in the morning. No, I'm not lying either," he explains, and the guys shrug and act like that's an everyday story that people tell.
"Wait. Who's she dating?" I swear, Gage…
I look down at my high tops again and try not to blush. "Have you heard, G-Dog?" I shrug and Mike kicks me. "Watch the spikes, man!" He grins.
"You don't want me to tell them, do you?" I give him a stare and then look back at Faith standing at the gate. "Wait," Mason says. "I see that look!" All the guys seem to put it together and they go nuts, leaving Faith standing awkwardly in the corner of the dugout. "Uh, so, yeah," I say, blushing, and Mike looks over my shoulder at Faith.
"Come meet the guys."
She walks over to us nervously and stands beside Mike. "Uh, we have Mason, Braydon, Gage, Caden, Logan, Zach, Luke, Corbin, and Joey. Faith says hi to the guys. "We don't play for another hour and a half, because the other team is going to be late. You guys can do whatever you want on the field for now," Coach tells us, so we all go out to home plate and get ready to race each other around the bases. "Come beat these guys in a race," I whisper to Faith, and she just grins. "Absolutely."
She wore a pair of Nike running shorts and one of Mike's baseball t-shirts. We line up at home and get ready to go. "Three, two, one, go!" We all take off, Faith and Mike edging the rest of us out by barely anything. We round first, and then second, and then third, and when we finish, Faith and Mike beat the rest of the pack by about five feet. "Who's the faster sibling?" Luke suggests that Mike and Faith race each other to see who is actually faster since they were so close in that race. "Sure. Mike, come on." He shrugs and lines up at home with Faith. "Ready, go!" They take off, Faith barely beating Mike to first. When they round second base, Faith's ahead by only a foot. They round third and it's clear that Mike's tired. He loses to Faith by five feet. "You suck, Mike. Your sister beat you?!"
"Shut up, Zach. You couldn't beat her either."
Instead of running more and tiring themselves out before the game, the guys decide to grab their gloves and play catch in the outfield.
Mike gives Faith his extra glove out of his bag, so she decides to play catch with me for a while. I've never seen how well she can throw a ball, so I guess I'm about to find out. I throw the ball to her without much force, but she throws it back to me twice as hard as I threw it to her. I barely catch it since I didn't see it coming, but somehow my glove finds it to prevent the ball from hitting me square in the face. "Dang. You can throw," I say, throwing it back to her. She grins. "I guess I'm always surprising people."
The other team finally gets here, so Faith and I walk back to the bleachers to sit down beside her parents. "I saw you crush those guys in a race," Michael says, and Faith grins. "They really weren't that fast for baseball players."
The game starts, and we're in the field first since we're the home team. The first batter gets Mike's fastball for his first pitch, but hits it right in the gap between right field and center field. Zach fields it cleanly and makes the force out at first. One down, two to go.
The next out happens when Mike catches a short pop-up that bounced off the bat. The pitch had been Mike's slider that he'd been working on all last summer.
When the other team finally gets out into the field, they're only up by five runs. That's not a big margin to cover in baseball.
•••
Mike's team ends up winning 15-7 after the seventh inning, and Mike is excited that he doesn't have to give up one of his signed baseballs to Faith. "Ha, ha, you don't get one!" She playfully punches him on the arm. "We'll see about that, Mike, we'll see about that."
We drive away from the ballpark, celebrating Mike's win.
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I have something planned for the next chapter, so there was kind of a weird ending to this one. Stay tuned for the next chapter!