"Ash, I really don't want to go out tonight," I said, making a face at the outfit my best friend and roommate was pulling out for me.
Ashley sighed. "Kennedy Simmons, you are going out tonight and that's the end of it. You're only twenty-three and you were just promoted! Enjoy your youth while you can."
I rolled my eyes at Ashley's lecture. "Yes. I got promoted. That's the exact reason I need to stay home! I cover all of the NL now! I need to watch baseball, Ashley. What if something happens and I'm not home to blog about it?" I worked for Barstool Sports. Up until then, I had only covered the Chicago Cubs. A guy from Boston had done his team as well as the rest of the MLB, but it had gotten to be too much, so they divided it up and gave him the American League and myself the National League. I should have been home watching games.
Ashley sighed. "Please, Kennedy," she whimpered. "You never go out. I'm sure it'll be okay just this one time. Please?"
I let out a sigh to show Ashley just how irritated I was, but held my hand out for the outfit anyway. Ashley quickly pushed the clothing into my hands and practically shoved me into the bathroom to change, probably afraid that I would change my mind if she gave me enough time to think about it.
Entering the bathroom, I slipped into the romper that she had given me. It was a black one that wrapped around and had a belt tie in the front. I paired it with a pair of nude, heeled sandals as well as the wishbone necklace that my parents had given me as a college graduation gift and a pair of studs that I thought looked cute. I slathered my lips in red lipstick and added shadows from my favorite YSL palette to my eyes. When I stepped out of the bathroom dressed and ready, Ashley just about had a heart attack.
"Oh, Kennedy!" she gushed, "You just look so good! Why don't you go out more often?"
I rolled my eyes at her antics but grabbed my black Michael Kors purse off of my dresser. "Let's go," I grumbled. I was going to hold up the irritated front for at least a little bit more. Maybe she would feel bad and buy me a drink when we made it to the club.
Absolutely giddy, Ashley followed me out of our apartment and locked the door behind her. She had called an Uber while I was finishing my makeup, so it was already sitting outside the building for us when we made our way down. Ashley told the driver the name of the club she wanted to go to, but I didn't quite catch which one it was. I was positive that it was some new, fancy club, though. Those were her favorite kind and whenever we went out together those are the ones that she picked.
The club couldn't have been too far away, because we were there within ten minutes. Ashley paid the driver (I was probably going to have to pay when she was blackout drunk on the way back) and we climbed out of the car. The club seemed nice enough. There were no noticeable prostitutes hanging out on the curb, anyway.
The inside of the club was absolutely packed. The amount of people gathered on the dance floor was much larger than I had expected. I turned to Ashley to see the girl with a broad smile on her face.
"Oh, we're just going to have so much fun tonight!" Ashley exclaimed, grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me over to the bar, where we took the first two seats that we spotted. The bartender came over relatively quickly, and each of us ordered a beer.
I chatted with Ashley for a while, but tried not to get too into the conversation. When we go out, Ashley usually gains the attention of some guy pretty quickly and goes off to dance with him, leaving me to sit alone at the bar. I was about halfway through my beer when the guy of the night approached and asked Ashley to dance with him.
Ashley shot me a look that said she was halfway sorry and left with the guy. I rolled my eyes at her but opened my phone to scroll through Twitter and hopefully catch up on some of the baseball that I was missing. I was reading up on how Jose Bautisa's homerun put the Blue Jays in the lead when someone who most definitely was not Ashley took a seat next to me at the bar.
"Beer, please," they told the bartender. I looked up to see a man that I most definitely recognized sitting next to me. He looked over at me in return but didn't say anything until he had the beer in his hand. "You don't look like you're having too much fun."
I let out a slight chuckle, "Yeah, you could say that. I'd rather be at home, but my now MIA friend decided we needed to go out tonight."
He laughed a little and stook out his hand, "Kris Bryant"
"I know," I said, shaking his hand. "I'm Kennedy Simmons."
Kris' eyebrows shot up as I introduced myself. He took a sip of his drink before speaking. "I've heard a lot about you, Kennedy."
"Oh, when I hear that from baseball players it's usually not a good thing," I laughed, taking a sip of my own beverage.
"Why wouldn't it be a good thing?" Kris asked, though I was positive he knew the reason. "I've heard you're hilarious."
"While I'm sure that I am quite hilarious, I usually gain a bit of a reputation for ripping players apart, I guess."
Kris laughed, his eyes sparkling. "That's great. I didn't think you would say that. You really are funny, you know."
"Why thank you," I smirked. "That's not what you heard about me, is it?"
"No," Kris chuckled, "I had heard that you don't exactly have a filter when it comes to your blog posts."
I shrugged. "Barstool fans want the truth," I said, "If that's not what I write, they get upset. If they're upset, Dave's upset." Dave Portnoy was the president of Barstool Sports, as well as my boss.
"Can I have your number?" Kris blurted out, though he did not look like he regretted the question even a little but.
I hesitated, "You know that even if we go out, I'll still have to write relatively unbiased stuff about you, right? And that sometimes that means being a little harsh?"
"Yeah, I know that," Kris told me.
I knew that I honestly probably shouldn't give him my number, but I really was having a pretty good time with him just then. For probably the first time in my life, I ignored my conscience as I answered, "Yeah, alright."
Kris handed me my phone and I typed my name and number in as he did the same thing on my phone. As we swapped phones back, he said, "Is it okay if I chill out here for a while? We came as kind of a team off-day outing, but everyone's found someone to dance with."
I smiled, "Yeah, I know the feeling. Of course you can stay. I can't promise I'll be all that interesting, though. I have to keep updated on the MLB notifications. I really should be working."
Kris' eyes lit up and I could practically see the lightbulb ding over his head. "I have an idea. Why don't we go back to my place?"
"Your idea is asking me to hook up with you?"
"No!" Kris looked as if he couldn't believe I didn't understand his fantastic idea. "We'll go back to my place and watch baseball! We both know it's what we'd rather be doing. My friends won't really care that I'm leaving, and your friend will think you had a good time when she forced you to go out tonight. It's a win-win, right?"
I had to admit, the idea of spending the rest of my night watching baseball on a couch was pretty nice. Spending time with Kris Bryant wasn't all that bad, either. "Alright," I answered, "Let's do it. I just have to find Ashley to let her know that I'm leaving." I polished off my beer and dove into the crowd to look for my friend.
I found Ashley in the middle of the crowd, dancing with the same guy that had approached her earlier. "Kennedy!" she exclaimed when she saw me approaching, "Did you come to dance?" She was a little more drunk than she had been when she left, but thankfully she wasn't that bad.
"No, I'm not dancing Ashley." A pout formed on her face and I hurried to continue before she could protest, "I found a guy, okay? I'm leaving. Can you get home yourself?"
Ashley's was excited at the thought of her plan for the night going well. "Of course I can get home by myself! Is he hot?"
I rolled my eyes at her and answered, "I'll be home sometime tomorrow, okay? If you're not back when I am, I'm sending out a search party." Ashley nodded and I retreated from the crowd.
Kris was still seated exactly where I left him, though he could have found his friends and made it back before me. "Did you find her?" he asked, standing up to meet me.
I nodded and said, "Yeah, but she thinks we're hooking up. I hope you're okay with that."
Kris let out a laugh and the two of us began to walk towards the club's exit. "Yeah, I'm okay with it," he said, "Are you staying the night then?"
"I guess so, yeah. Are you sure you don't mind?" To be honest, Kris was really hot and if he was planning on asking me out, I really didn't want to ruin any chances that I may have had.
"I'm positive," he answered. Kris hailed a taxi and the two of us climbed in, discussing everything and nothing at the same time as we rode the twenty minutes that it took to reach Kris' apartment.
His apartment is just about what you would expect to see out of a Major League Baseball player. It was much more extravagant than mine, looked like someone had been paid to decorate it, and still pretty messy.
As we walked into the living room, Kris seemed to have read my mind, because he said, "I'm so sorry about the mess. I don't usually have company that isn't the guys."
I laughed and looked around the room. There were some magazines lying around, a few gatorade bottles on the floor, and some icy hot on the coffee table. "No, it's fine. You should see mine, honestly."
Kris grabbed the remote off of a side table next to the couch and flipped to the MLB Network. "Make yourself at home," he told me, "I'm just going to change into some pajamas. Do you want me to bring you some back?"
"Yes please," I smiled, taking a seat on the couch. I took my phone out and placed my phone on the coffee table, checking Twitter almost immediately. Nothing all that exciting was happening on the National League Side of things, but over on the American League side Jose Bautista and Rougned Odor had gotten into a fight. Apparently, Odor had smashed Bautista's face in before Bautista had done anything. I loved it. These were the moments that I lived for.
I must have seemed pretty gleeful about it, because when Kris came back he said, "What's got you all happy like that?"
I looked up at him, the smile on my face probably purely evident. "Jose Bautista and Rougned Odor got into a fight."
I stood and walked to where he was standing behind the couch, showing him the picture that was going around Twitter. He laughed at the picture and gave me the clothes that were in his arms. "Do you mind if I look through these?" he asked, clearly meaning the tweets about the fight.
I shook my head, "No, go ahead. Where can I change?"
Kris looked up from my phone long enough to answer, "There's a bathroom down that hall, second door on the right."
I thanked him and headed over in the direction that he had told me. He had given me a pair of Nike sweatpants that were much too big on me and a University of San Diego Baseball shirt. Both items were extremely comfortable. I used the ponytail around my wrist to throw my hair into a bun and washed some of my makeup off with water and a paper towel.
I headed back into the living room and placed my folded clothes next to my purse, plopping down onto the couch next to Kris. He handed me back my phone with a grin and said, "That was hilarious. Also, we're now mutuals on all social media."
I knew that I should probably be at least a little upset that he had gone through my social media to do that, but the grin on his face was so adorable that I just rolled my eyes and leaned back to focus on the game that was on the TV.
I tried to tweet some funny things every once in a while, as well as create a little bit of valuable baseball analysis, but it was kind of hard to concentrate with Kris next to me on the couch. By the third inning, our thighs were touching. In the fifth I found myself leaning against him. When the seventh inning rolled around, his arm was around me and I was pretty sure that we could qualify as cuddling. I mean, I wasn't complaining, but I don't think I produced very good content.
As the game neared it's end, I found myself dozing off a bit. At one point, I looked up at Kris to see him completely asleep against me. I stayed awake for what was probably five more minutes before I, too, was sound asleep.
A/N:
Unedited.
Whooooo! First chapter is done! This is a bit shorter than I intend for the rest to be, and the whole thing is definitely a work in progress, but I'm pretty happy with this start. I hope you guys are too! Thank you for reading!
-Abby