EIGHTEEN || D. SWING.

CHAPTER 21.

I started doing that thing where I play a song inside my head.

Feel the beat of the rhythm of the night! Dance until the morning light!

It'd been a whirlwind two months since I left Charlotte, and honestly? I was so glad it was summertime. Ever since the incident with Alana and Denise back in March, things had been tense around the Anderson house. Denise began to flat-out ignore me-wouldn't even take the time to insult me anymore but was sure to shoot me dirty looks whenever she could.

Joe was in and out of the house, mainly because he didn't wanna be around any of the drama. That, and he had decided that he was gonna join the police force after years of mulling over the idea. Plus, he had gotten himself a steady girlfriend-her name was Myra.

Dad spent most of his time in the garage, working on his retro cars when he wasn't preparing curriculum for his students. He and I occasionally had deep conversations, ones that oddly went way better than usual. Sometimes I'd join him in the garage and he'd show me a thing or two about cars, how to change a tire and all that. He was a bit distant sometimes, and he just seemed...I don't know. Tired. Sad, even.

Alana hadn't quite learned her lesson yet, but she wasn't bothering me nearly as much anymore. The night I lunged at her, my Dad managed to catch me and pull me up the stairs just in the nick of time. But she knew I was serious about kicking her ass over and over again until she got the memo that I wasn't playing with her anymore. I was too old to be getting bullied in my own house, and I wasn't having it anymore. She had her own set of problems anyway, because she had just recently dropped out of community college. Without telling anyone first.

And as for me? Well, guess who's team went to the College World Series? And actually won, at that! We won 6 to 5 against UCLA, and it was real shootout if you ask me. And what was even better, was the fact that I, Ashley Hailey, got MVP.

If this didn't make me the first woman to play in the MLB, I didn't know what would.

So, of course I was enjoying my life at the moment. Hell, I was even packing a picture of me with my MVP trophy so that way my Aunt and Uncle could put it up in the living room, and then K-Ci and JoJo would have to sit there and look at it everyday.

I made sure to pack more clothes than last time, more church dresses, makeup, shorts, bra and panties, the whole nine. I couldn't wait to get back home, especially because Mom had went back down just to see me again and all my cousins would be waiting and we'd have a huge dinner, then I could whoop everybody in UNO, and Dalvin would say I was hiding cards and demand a rematch. I was excited to go out with Naomi and go to Sweetwater, harass JoJo some more, possibly fight Cedric and Piggy, hangout with Laura and Tiffany again...and yeah, I was excited for DeVanté the most.

He'd kept his promise of calling me when he got the chance. Luckily, I had caught his call right before my Dad came to answer the phone, so after that we had to set up a game plan for if anyone just so happened to pick up the phone before I did.

We tended to have these long-winded conversations, usually going on into the early hours of the morning when one of us just finally let the other go or just fell asleep on the line. We talked about music, movies, life in general. I think I learned more about him over the phone versus when we were face to face. But then again, he probably felt the same way about me.

His middle name was Earle, mine was Marie. His favorite sport was boxing, mine was baseball. His musical ear was garnered more towards funk-I liked the melodic pop tunes. His favorite color was red, his favorite drink was water, and his favorite movie was anything with Robert De Niro or Al Pacino. My favorite color was yellow, I also liked water, and my favorite movie was Young Guns starring Emilio Estevez and Kiefer Sutherland.