Out of Her League |Lesbian Story|

Chapter 13

We walked back, and I saw Felik shaking hands with Mom. Practically shaking her arm right off her body. He pressed his hands to his eyes, wiping away tears. Grigor laughed and pulled him into an embrace.

"You have to excuse me, Mrs. Bloom," Grigor said. "He's a bit sensitive."

Mitko threw his meaty paws around them, "You've done some fantastic job with these girls, my friends!"

Mom laughed and I could tell she thought they were genuinely great folk. Felik wiped his eyes again while his boyfriend hugged and kissed him. A rare sight from these two.

A couple of months ago, I would never have believed it. Never believed someone could tear up over a girl baseball team winning a high school league game.

But that day...well, it was just glorious.

~*~

After the game was over, we went to get changed before leaving. I was the last one in the change room as everyone was laughing in high spirit outside. My bones were still tingling, and my heart was still beating faster than normal. It was beating even faster when Charlotte came down.

I was still in my sports bra and sweatpants, about to put on a shirt when she caught me off guard.

"Hi, Darci," Charlotte said, and I had to stand there against the locker, trying to act casual.

"Hey!" I said, folding my arms over my chest for some sort of coverage. "I...I thought you didn't come."

"Sorry, I was a bit busy trying to edit the videos, but I didn't miss out on the best part, did I? My heart was in my throat the whole time!"

"I suppose so," I said and forced out a nervous laugh, but then cursed myself for being such a tongue-tied idiot.

"What you did back there was impressive," she said again.

"Oh, thanks!" I said.

Oh Darci, you're as lame as a llama.

Charlotte was trying to be friendly, making a conversation with me to brush off any awkwardness that remained after the Stefanie incident.

There was a pause between us. I looked around to see if Stefanie was there, but she had gone home in a not-so-good mood after the game. I cleared my throat.

"Look, Charlotte, I'm really sorry about Stef's big mouth the other day. I-"

"Oh don't worry about it," she said with a wave of her hand. "Girls can be silly sometimes. Besides, there was nothing to be offended about, right?"

"Right." I nodded with a small smile. Of course, we didn't nothing wrong. There was no moment of us staring at each other and me wanting to kiss her at all. Everything was in my own head. Why should we be embarrassed about it?

"Well," Charlotte said again, "I guess I'll see you later then."

I nodded with a small wave and watched her leave.

~*~

An hour later, Mom and I walked through the front door laughing, as Mom did a fake announcer's voice on the game.

"And here comes Darci Bloom! Never had we seen such an amazing save since 1987!" she yelled.

She motioned for me to throw her the ball. I did, but it bounced off her inexperienced hand, heading straight for a stack of glasses before Dad snatched it in the air.

"Oh, my!...Sorry!" Mom gasped. And the two of us giggled like we were naughty school girls. But the second Mom saw his face, she knew Dad was in a lousy mood.

"They lost," he answered, meaning his team. "Stupidly. A game they should damn well have won."

"Oh no, sorry about that, honey," Mom sounded sympathetic but she couldn't keep the smile off her face for long. "We had a good game, didn't we?"

We grinned at each other, remembering how good it had all felt. Dad felt left out like we had a secret that he could never understand.

"So you won?" he said.

"Yes," Mom explained. "It was a tie at first, but Darci once again impressed everyone with her skills. You should've seen the catch she did at the end. She looked so fantastic out there!"

Dad raised his eyebrows and puffed out a little breath. In that one second, he sucked all the good feeling out of me. Mom bragged on.

"You should have seen this Russian group, these amazing people..." she said and laughed, throwing her hands up as if she couldn't find the words to describe them.

"If she was so fantastic, why didn't she get selected to the First Class back then?" he said. "Wasting time playing in a lesser team when she could've played her heart out in a good one."

"Yeah because I lost heart when I saw your yelling face," I muttered and walked away. I could see the look of disgust on Mom's face as she glared at Dad. He saw it too and his angry mood crumbled. He knew he was being awful to me.

"Darci...Darci, wait, I'm sorry," he tried to apologize.

But I was already half-way to my room. I wasn't interested.

As I lay on my bed, I could hear Mom and Dad shouting at each other.

"You can crush her but as long as you say sorry, it's alright?" Mom said. "Oh, Peter...I don't care about sports or baseball games at all. But I saw Darci today- she was fabulous. Sure of herself, caring about it. Never thought I'd say it, but she was graceful, do you ever notice your own daughter being this wonderful?"

"Darling," Dad tried to speak.

"Talk to her," Mom said. She was sad more than angry now, and I tried not to cry. Dad was babbling stuff about being responsible for everyone's emotion, being an easy target. Mom got angry again, shouting at him to stop being selfish.

I couldn't handle it anymore. I grabbed my baseball jacket and opened the bedroom window then climbed out.