Striking Out With the Star Pitcher

The high school hero offers to help his friend win the heart of the bad boy. But when he falls for her himself…?

It’s no more Mr. Nice Guy.

The Bad Boy...

Simone has a plan. Well, her friends have a plan. The self-proclaimed Lonely Hearts Club has found a way for the awkward movie-quoting art geek to get the attention of the brooding bad boy in the band. This plan? It involves…studying.

When they get their hands on a stack of old magazines filled with 'how to' articles, the answer is clear. If Simone can master the fine art of flirting, her crush won't stand a chance.

Mr. Nice Guy...

The school’s beloved starting pitcher might be popular, but the nerdy chick he’s been eating lunch with every day for years…? She won’t give him the time of day. Until he’s recruited by her friends to be her practice date, that is.

Everyone knows that Andrew is a good guy. A nice guy. So of course he agrees to be Simone’s stand-in crush. But then he starts crushing on her himself…

Now, all bets are off, because Andrew might be nice but he’s not that nice. And if playing dirty means stealing kisses, well…things are about to get messy.

Simone

My best friend bailed on lunch.

Again.

I sighed as I sank into my usual seat at the table in the middle of the cafeteria. At the other end, two guys from the football team were already hunkered over their lunch, and Ryan, the captain of the wrestling team was headed this way. And my best friend Jax, who typically sat right next to me...? Not here, even though his last class was closer to the cafeteria than mine.

He was probably off with his new girlfriend, Rose. 

Sure enough, my phone dinged with a text and I was treated to a selfie of Jax and Rose making stupid faces at the camera. “Sorry, S. Running late. Be there soon.”

I stared at the photo for much longer than necessary. Not because I was jealous or anything. I wasn’t. I hated that cliché where every nerdy girl was instantly in love with her hot best friend, because…why? He was there?

Didn’t make sense.

Plus, it was pathetic.

Also, I’d never once been attracted to Jax. But try telling that to my girl friends. Every time Jax and Rose made a scene with their PDA, which was often, I got all kinds of searching or pitying looks from the girls.

The worst part? No matter how much I protested and told them I was happy for Jax, it just ended up sounding like I was protesting too much.

But for the record, I was elated that Jax had finally found love. I was even happier that he’d found it with Rose, a girl I truly admired. Ever since they officially got together two weeks ago, she’d been going out of her way to be my friend, too, and make sure I never felt excluded.

I snuck a peek around me and saw Jax’s empty chair as the other guys who normally ate lunch here filled in the other seats. One of the football players glanced my way and I snapped my gaze back down to my phone like there was something interesting there and not just a photo of Jax making a goofy face and Rose sticking her tongue out over his shoulder.

See, this was the only issue I had with Jax’s new relationship—lunchtime had become a minefield. 

For the last few years, I’d sat with Jax at lunch and Jax had sat with his crowd—the cool crowd. The only reason I sat at this table filled with the school’s most popular guys was because Jax was my BFF and everyone knew it. It went without saying that I went where he went.

It was the only reason I was here, and the only reason I went to the cool parties. Without Jax at my side, I didn’t fit in here. 

Like, at all.

I was the lone loser in a sea of kings.

Speaking of kings… The empty seat to my right slid out and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Andrew sink down into his seat, a tray filled with something too healthy for me to comprehend sitting in front of him. 

“Hey, Simone,” he said, his voice so low it could only just be heard over the louder voices around us.

As always, Andrew was the only one to acknowledge my existence. The star pitcher of Lakeview High’s baseball team, Andrew was the nice one. I sort of bobbed my head in response to Andrew’s greeting, not bothering to look over. That would only encourage him. 

The only thing more awkward than having everyone ignore me was having Andrew talk to me out of pity.

It probably made me sound petty, but sometimes his niceness drove me nuts because I knew it was born out of charity. I’d bet money that he felt bad for me and my loser situation, and that was supremely irritating. I didn’t care that I was being ignored, so why did he?

The worst part with Andrew was that I couldn’t act annoyed with him because it was impossible to be mean to a guy like him. He had this whole easygoing charm about him—like Josh Lucas in Sweet Home Alabama or Ryan Gosling in just about anything. He didn’t have a Southern accent, necessarily, but he should have. His voice was low and he tended to draw his words out real slow like he had all the time in the world.

Between his niceness and his athletic prowess and his particular brand of charm, Andrew was probably the most beloved guy in this school. Arguably the most popular guy at this table, which was saying something since I was seated at alphahole headquarters.

Actually, that wasn’t fair. Much as I didn’t like the nerdy-girl-in-love-with-her-cool-best-friend trope, I don’t buy into the whole all-jocks-are-jerks cliché either. Some of these guys might have been nice. Maybe all of them were sweethearts, just…not to me.

It wasn’t like they ever picked on me, or anything. For the most part, they just didn’t see me.

I was invisible. Just like I was basically invisible to most of the student body population.

Partly my own fault, I supposed. I was an introvert to the nth degree and had always gone out of my to avoid being the center of attention. My body seemed happy to oblige in that department. I was short, with no killer body to speak of, just an average size with average looks. Brown hair, brown eyes, and the kind of semi-wavy hair that’s not curly but not stick straight. Just sort of…average.

So, no. None of these guys were tripping over themselves to sit next to me now that there was a vacancy in Jax’s usual seat.

Which was fine. It really was. I had no desire to be besties with any of these guys. It just made lunchtime incredibly awkward when Jax was running late.

My reusable lunch sack, which was filled with an apple and Oreos—a lunch of champions, obviously—sat in front of me but I couldn’t bring myself to open it. Not when Jax was still MIA and I had the world’s most awkward silence hanging around me.

To stay or to go? That was the question. To sit here much longer staring at a still-packed paisley lunch sack was not an option.

I glanced up at the door. Nope. No sign of Jax or Rose.

“I saw Jax headed this way after class.” Andrew’s voice beside me made me tense.

I glanced over to see him watching me with a hint of a smile, his gaze soft and his eyes this pale shade of blue that was almost gray. I blinked. Was he…?

His lips hitched up higher on one side.

Oh yeah. He was definitely reassuring me.

Gah! What had my life come to that the king jock was trying to make me feel better. I had other friends, thank you very much. It wasn’t like I was some leper and Jax was the only person who would sit next to me. I shifted away from Andrew. I only sat with Jax out of habit, that was all.

But Andrew’s pitying remark had me gripping my bag of food and reaching for the satchel I used in lieu of a backpack. “Yeah, I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” I mumbled. “But I’m just gonna, um…”

And then I was gone, sentence unfinished and my presence likely forgotten before I’d even walked away.