As we circled together once the other girl had been chosen, gear was grabbed and we got ready to play. I looked at Kulti and said in a low voice, “I should have asked you before, but do you know how to play?”

From the expression on his face, you’d think I asked him if he knew what a yellow card was. Sheesh.

I held up my hands in a peace offering. “Just asking.” There was one more thing, in case he happened to be really good with a bat and a glove. “Look, this is for fun, all right? I don’t think they can handle your superhuman skills, so tone it down a little. Yes?”

His pleased little baby grin said everything, and he finally nodded once in acceptance. “Fine. We’re going to win anyway.”

“Duh.” Like anything else was even a possibility. I put my hand up and shoved his shoulder before I even realized what I was doing, and I froze. Then I snatched it back and frowned. “Ahh, sorry.”

Anddd this was awkward.

I don’t know what I was expecting him to do, but flashing a grin at me so wide I swear my heart stopped, wasn’t it. I’d seen him win championships on television before, of course he’d been smiling then but… what just came across his face so abruptly was beyond unexpected.

All I did was stare dumbly back at him for a moment, long enough to look like a complete idiot, before I forced myself to remember poop, and I grinned back at him.

“Sal! We don’t have all day, get your ass over here!” Simon called from somewhere behind me.

I met Kulti’s eyes once more, flashed him a smile like the one that had since melted from his face and made my way over to the rest of the group. Marc was looking back and forth between my coach’s headband and mine, the expression on his face smooth and curious. It wasn’t until he swallowed what looked like a grapefruit that I could tell he was dying on the inside, and when his eyes shot over to me, it was confirmed.

“I like to play shortstop,” Carlos, the team captain for the game, announced.

A couple other men spoke up and announced the positions they thought they were good at. This had me rolling my eyes because everyone thought they were good at the popular positions. It happened every single time. All you had to do was nod and smile and eventually things worked out fine. I wasn’t impatient, and I didn’t mind playing the positions no one else liked.

Carlos looked at the four of us: Marc, Kulti, another man I didn’t know and me. “You guys fine with playing outfield and second?”

I was only a little surprised when Kulti didn’t pipe up and voice his opinion, but when it was silently and unanimously agreed that we’d play whatever, those green-brown eyes met mine, and a smirk covered the lower half of his face.

Two seconds later, we were positioned across the field. I was in the outfield and so was he.

Approximately ten minutes later, Simon was screaming off the sidelines, “This is horse shit!” after I’d caught the third out, following Kulti’s first catch, and a second one that he’d sent flying to third base with time to spare. Who would have known he’d have an arm on him?

We switched to batting and not much changed. Kulti knocked the ball close to the fence to make it to third base on one run. I hit the ball far enough, allowing the player on first base to cross home. I ran fast enough and made it to second.

Thirty-five minutes after that, the other team captain was practically foaming at the mouth, yelling at our team captain about how they needed to pick different players for the next game. “They,” and he pointed at Kulti and me, who had surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, played like we’d been teammates for years, “can’t be on the same team together!”