Love & Baseball Part One

I fell in love with a baseball player in college.

Jon pitched for our college baseball team. His dad and brother were major leaguers and he lived across the hall from me in our dorm. I took one look, deemed him a jock and ignored him for the bulk of the school year. Despite not talking to each other much, I somehow was invited to hang out with him and a group of people I knew from school. I said yes, thinking I'd back out at the last second. Instead everyone else bailed and it turned out just to be the two of us. I remember thinking "what the hell am I going to talk to this guy about?"

Turns out we had a lot to talk about. Jon turned out to be smart, funny and perceptive. He was into music and (gasp!) books. He could rival me on movie quotes, had ideas about politics and also happened to be incredibly hot. 6'3 and 200 pounds of baseball player muscle with dark brown hair and blue eyes. I may have been a bookworm, but I sure as hell wasn't blind. We became good friends over the summer and would often stay at each others houses until the wee hours of the morning sprawled out on the floor talking and listening to music.

Jon would tell me about his baseball practice, my eyes would glaze over and we would quickly switch to something else. I had ZERO interest in baseball. I was an English major for crying out loud. I was into poetry and literature and many other way more important things. I had never been into jocks. But as the summer progressed, I was slowly starting to get into jocks ... and one in particular.

Jon would go home to Colorado a couple weeks before school started and I went to visit a friend in Northern California. That separation left me a lot of time to wonder how things would be. Was our friendship just a summer thing, born out of a need to keep one foot in college life? Did he have any interest in me? Could I really be interested in him?

I looked for Jon and his ever present baseball cap when we moved back into the dorms. Pretty soon we picked up right where we left off--late nights in each others dorm rooms, cracking up over inside jokes, listening to music we had found during our short time away from each other. One night I ended up falling asleep in his room and woke up with his legs and arms entwined with mine. I could feel him looking at me, but so many thoughts were running through my mind. Did I want to potentially ruin this friendship? Could he really be into me? Did I really like him?

I eventually did open my eyes, but they only stayed open for a moment. Jon kissed me--soft and lingering at first and then months of spending hours together without touching got the better of both of us. I closed my eyes and fell. I fell into those eyes, those lips and those huge arms. I fell into our sweet, unexpected friendship. I fell into us whispering and giggling about how long we had both wanted to kiss the other. I fell into those hands in my hair and on my back, into rolling around and cracking up one minute to passionate kisses the next. I fell hard.

Our friendship was still very much there but then this bonus of being able to reach over and grab him any time I wanted was intoxicating. We still stayed up late, but this time it was full of conversations peppered with kisses and wrestling, our goodbyes took a half hour, every time he'd try and leave he'd start to walk out the door and would then turn back around for more of the kissing. Oh that kissing. The kind you do when you're 19 and have nowhere to be. I could think of nothing else, it was bliss. Until that one evening.

I don't know how I knew, but something was wrong. I could feel it in my gut. I tried to talk myself out of it, but my body just knew. I was so sick to my stomach with such a sense of dread and pain and angst and yet nothing of note had happened. I called a couple of my girlfriends into the room and said it aloud, it was the only thing I could think of to do. "I don't know how I know, but I just know he's with another girl. I can feel it." I worried they'd think I was crazy.

They sat next to me, held my hands and said "we wanted to see if he would tell you first."

To be continued ...