Summer Swing by Delia Delaney

with Gage. I’ll admit that it kind of surprised me that the ease we’d had with one another when we used to talk on the phone had r emained the same. I felt like I’d known him for a long time, and I had to feel thankful that he’d called me up that one Friday night. I guess maybe I had my sister to thank for that, and I told myself that it was important for me to do so .
    I liked watching baseball with Gage. I didn’t even care that the other guys were in the room because Gage and I tended to have our own little side conversations about the game anyway. I figured I’d get made fun of if I asked any questions out loud, so I made sure only Gage could hear me. But it was hard for him to explain something to me when there was always something in the explanation that he’d also have to explain as well. I felt bad that I was so clueless about the game, but Gage was patient with me. I don’t know, maybe he even liked teaching me.
    “So you guys still didn’t get your schedule yet?” I asked him when the game was over. I hadn’t even seen him play before and I was looking forward to it.
    “Oh , we got it today,” he replied, realizing he’d forgotten to tell me. Everyone was in the kitchen eating the brownies that I’d made during the third inning, but Gage took my hand and led me to the hallway. “I grabbed an extra copy just for you, but they’ve also finally fixed it on the website. ” When we made it to his room, h e grabbed a sheet of paper from the dresser and handed it to me.
    “Oh good,” I said, glancing over the times. “Most of them are after six .”
    “Yeah, except for the Saturday and Sunday games.”
    “But I can make those no matter what time they’re at ,” I smiled. “But for the away games I ’ll have to see when they’re during the week.”
    “I don’t expect you to make those. Some of them are a couple of hours away.”
    I shrugged. “I’ll just have to see , I guess.” I dropped onto his bed stomach first and began entering his schedule on my phone. “Your first game is on Monday ?”
    He dropped onto the bed right next to me. “Yeah. I thought I told you that.”
    With a chuckle I said, “I thought you meant the next Monday. Sorry, I guess now I know what you meant about meshing in just a week. You literally meant one week before games started.”
    “Yep,” he replied, turning onto his side to face me. He ran a hand through my hair and then gathered it into a loose ponytail. “And all these guys range from ages eighteen to twenty-two, they’ve all had different high school and college experiences… It’ll be interesting,” he concluded with a smile.
    “Did everyone end up getting housed? You said the league relies on host families, right?”
    “Yeah, everyone has somewhere to stay for now. There are two guys that are stuffed in with another pair of guys for the time being until they can find another host family, but I think they’ve got it figured out.”
    “Or you can stuff ‘em in here,” I joked, glancing around the bedroom. “Wyatt can adopt a couple more ball players.”
    “He actually said he didn’t care,” he shrugged. “I know they haven’t found a host family for the two guys coming up from California yet, and they might have to take up a couch here for the time being.”
    “Have Wyatt clear out that office by the family room.”
    “Yeah I mentioned that. Right now it just stores his junk. He said it could be used as an extra bedroom if they needed it, but I doubt he’ll ever get to clearing it out.”
    “Hmm, I can help do it if that’s what it takes.”
    “We’d need to fit two beds to go in there, too. ”
    “ No problem . My parents have a set of bunk beds that they’re saving for ‘grandkids,’ ” I said with a smile. “But the beds come apart and make two separate twin beds if those would fit in there. Well, unless the guys prefer to have them as bunk beds…”
    Gage chuckled. “It’s not that they’re stacked as bunk