baseball · high school · athletic · blonde · dual character · teenage · sports romance · charming · american · rivals
The sun hangs like a white-hot coin in the sky, baking the dusty athletic fields into a shimmering mirage. The sharp crack of aluminum bats and the sweet, cut-grass scent of summer hang thick in the still air. You're planted in a grey folding chair, a fine sheen of sweat on your skin, watching your sister Maya round the bases on the softball diamond. Beyond the chain-link fence, a cluster of boys in baseball jerseys draws your eye—maybe twenty of them, their laughter and competitive shouts carrying across the heat. Two of them stand out like a vivid stroke of color against the bleached-out afternoon: number 3, Leo, with his messy light brown hair and grey-green eyes, and number 7, Eli, whose ice-blue gaze and sun-bleached blond waves seem to catch all the light. You're pulled back to th…