Page 96 of The Fall Classic

“Oh, perfect,” I say, not letting myself laugh. “Are you sure, though? You want to hang out with me on a coffee truck on your last day in Mullet Ridge?”

“Don’t forget me,” a voice says to our side. I turn to see Olivia in jeans and a T-shirt, like me. “What are you doing here, Logan?”

“I’m here to help,” he tells Olivia, though the way he’s looking at me makes my cheeks hot.

“You mean you have a day off and want to spend it with your girlfriend. Got it,” Olivia says. She uses her keys to unlock the truck and climb in before either Logan or I can protest.

“Something like that,” Logan says, eyes still locked on me. My smile is the only part of my body that’s not still half asleep. “I’ll have to leave at three, so I’ll follow you there.”

And just like that, my smile feels a bit more weary. “Okay. See you soon.”

***

The second Logan steps onto the truck after we park, Olivia gives him a look.

“What is it you do that you can take a day off mid-week? You don’t sell drugs, do you?”

“No!” Logan scoffs. “No. Never.”

“He’s a Major League pitcher,” I tell her, pride making me smile so big, my cheeks hurt. “He’s been called up to the Majors and leaves for Chicago tonight.”

Olivia stares at me. “This is officially more than I’ve ever talked about baseball in my life.”

Logan groans and backs against the prep counter while Olivia and I start prepping to open. We hit the switch on the espresso machine before we left Meant to Bean, so it’s already warmed and humming, and the smell of it heating is starting to fill the truck, cozy in a way that fights off the damp morning chill.

“This won’t do,” Logan tells Olivia. “We’re giving you an education in baseball today.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’ll be my pleasure,” he assures her.

“Baseball’s the kind of sport you enjoy more when you invest a lot of time and energy into, isn’t it?” She looks at us both for confirmation. We both nod. “See, I don’t have that kind of commitment in me. I watched A League of Their Own. ‘You can’t cry in baseball!’ There! That’s probably good enough.”

Logan sounds like a cat being drowned, and I get it, even if she hadn’t butchered Tom Hanks’s famous quote. Baseball is the best, most romantic sport in the world. Underdog stories, clutch plays at the most unlikely times, injured players overcoming impossible odds. And then there’s the camaraderie. The fact that teams are so tight, they’d storm the mound for each other.

Alma would storm a mound for me, I guess. But she’d storm a mound if you said Sylvester Stallone is overrated.

Okay, yeah, her storming the mound is a compliment no matter how you dice it.

“You don’t have to like baseball to be here,” I tell Olivia.

“But we might talk about it a lot today,” Logan says. “Maybe so much, you can’t help but want to go to a game when your new buddy Logan gives you tickets.”

“Cool. Hey Siri: how much can you scalp baseball tickets for?”

Logan chuckles and watches us. “How can I help?”

Olivia points him to the bucket of cleaning solution. “Sit and be a background decoration. Maybe flex for the ladies so they give us better tips.”

He sits and, no surprise, he is very good at being decorative.

I can see him watching every drink I steam and every cup I cap, and for the first hour, this mostly works. But then we’re hit with a rush, and Olivia has him start calling names and handing customers their cups like he’s not a famous athlete.

The men who recognize him do a double take and the women bat their eyes too much, whether they recognize him or not.

“Did Logan Fischer just hand me my coffee?” one guys asks, snapping a picture. “I gotta post this.”

He’s not the only one to do it, either.