Third Strike Smitten

Every sports columnist in the Pacific Northwest will tell you I'm the cocky ace pitcher of the Portland Lagers.What they don't know is that I've been barely holding it together for years. On the outside, I'm the grumpy pitcher with a chip on my shoulder. On the inside, I'm one bad inning away from believing I'm not good enough to wear this jersey at all.Yeah. Anxiety and I have been teammates for a long time.The only person who's managed to get inside my head is the cute redhead heckling me from behind home plate.Isla Fallon is relentless, sarcastic, and entirely too good at making me smile when I should be spiraling.Lucky for me, she's also the new flight attendant on our team charter, so when the front office starts whispering about trading me because of my attitude, fake dating the woman who's been roasting me from the stands suddenly seems like a pretty solid PR strategy.But between the kisses for the cameras and the conversations nobody else gets to hear, she sees me.And I see her too.She's been running from her fears for years, and I understand why. The problem is, I'm falling for her, and with the season coming to an end, I'm not sure I'm enough to make her stay.This wasn't how the season was supposed to go and I'm certainly out of my league here, but if I've learned anything in this career, it's that games are never won in the first inning.Sometimes the entire game comes down to the final pitch.