Pitching to Win (Over the Fence #1) (9 page)

“You probably think I’m just over-exaggerating. ‘How could a rich, popular jock like you ever feel like that?’” He laughs cruelly at himself.

I stay silent, willing him to go on.

“My father…...he’s this baseball legend. Set tons of records, played for the best, most notorious team in the world. He’s in the Hall of Fame, he has gotten everything he ever wanted. Except for me that is….the son who can never, ever do anything right.”

I squeeze his hand, feeling the pain radiate off of him. I want to take him into my arms, but can sense his need to get this out.

“All my life, the man I was supposed to look up to, who was supposed to love me more than anything, he treated me like shit. Do you know that if someone tells you over and over again just how not good enough you are, you start to believe it? Well, that’s what he did. Nothing is ever good enough. I pitched three perfect games in high school…..in high school! Do you know how hard that is?! Do you know what he said to me after my last one? I came off the field, looking, finally, for some words of encouragement. He told me that my last four pitches of the game registered under 90 miles per hour, and that I needed to work on that on the unlikely chance my sorry ass was ever going to make it to the majors.”

I move across the blanket and prop myself up on one shoulder. With my fingers, I begin to run lazy circles up and down his arm, trying to comfort him.

I can’t believe what he was telling me. Him, not feel worthy? He had everything. It had never occurred to me that we were more alike than I’d ever imagined.

“I try so hard, you know? I try to get good grades, stay a part of the ‘in-crowd’, and most of all, I try really fucking hard to be the best damn pitcher anyone has ever seen. And I don’t just try. I grind myself into the pavement day in and day out to make those things happen.” Owen pauses, shaking his head as if he’s trying to work out some idea stuck in there. “He laid into me again tonight when I got home. Called me lazy. I just want to drop him sometimes, just lay his ass out. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if I just disappeared altogether…”

This last statement shocked me. I didn’t know Owen well enough to know if that was serious, but I knew how it felt to think everything would be better if you were gone. I’d struggled with those thoughts. I didn’t want to call them suicidal, because I personally know I would never take my own life, but I knew what it was like to struggle with them.

“Fuck him,” I spit. The sudden thought of this handsome, gifted man doubting himself so severely pisses me off. “Fuck him, Owen. If that’s how he wants to treat his son, who is so incredibly talented, smart, funny and so many other things, then fuck him. You don’t owe him shit. You have worked hard for everything you have.”

He sits up then, a mixture of awe and sadness in his perfect blue eyes. He lunges for me, scooping me up into his lap and engulfing me with his big body.

“But what if, when I get to the top, all they see me as is Carl Axel’s son?” he whispers into my neck.

I run my hands up and down his back over his shirt, wishing I could rub out the lingering doubt and fear inside him. “It’s your choice, and your choice only, how they see you. Don’t resort to living in his shadow.”

“You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever known.” Owen brings his hands up to my face then, circling it and looking deep into my eyes. My heart starts to spasm. I know in this moment, I am in trouble.

Because if I wasn’t in danger of being lead down the path, I was now. My heart wasn’t in danger of giving itself to him, because it had already given itself up to him.

Moving his lips towards mine, he kisses me sweetly, reverently. Owen steals my breath, kissing me so tenderly that I forget to take air in.

Stopping the kiss, he rests his forehead against mine. “I want to take you somewhere next weekend. Will you come with me?”

“Where?” I can barely think to try and register a sentence.

“The Outer Banks….my parents have a house there. I want to have you all to myself before I leave for summer league in two weeks.”

I couldn’t have said no if I tried. No matter how many warning bells were going off in my head. He’d just opened up, way up, and I found myself wanting to spill my deepest secrets and fears to him as well.

“Of course I’ll go.”

O
wen drops
me back off past midnight. We might have gotten carried away and lost track of time after I’d agreed to take a trip with him. I couldn’t seem to keep my head on straight whenever that boy got within 20 feet of my body.

Walking into the house, I freeze when I hear a thud come from the kitchen. I stop, my heart suddenly in my throat, afraid it might be more than a bump in the night. I hastily grab an umbrella from beside the door, holding it over my shoulder like a baseball bat, ready to strike.

Creeping around the corner, I yelp like a mad woman when my dad appears through the archway to the kitchen.

“Jesus, dad, you scared the crap out of me.” I drop the umbrella with a thud and place my hand over my chest to calm my rapidly beating heart. Little good that would have done to stop a potential intruder.

“Where the hell have you been? When I’m at work, not to mention when it’s the middle of the night, I expect you to be at home.” he launches into a monotone tirade. I can feel the blood in my face start to rise, prickling along my skin. “I trust you to be responsible, Minka. You have demonstrated you are anything but that.”

I can’t even find it within myself to be furious. Was this a fucking joke? “Sorry I didn’t get the carrier pigeon you sent over alerting me to the fact this was the one night you’d be home for the month. I’ll make sure to jot that on my calendar next time.”

I start walking towards my room, the elation I’d felt from my night with Owen quickly fading due to my father’s presence.

“Answer me, young lady. Who dropped you off? You know your curfew is 11 p.m., meaning you’re two hours late. One o'clock in the morning is not acceptable, Minka.”

I was done. Not only had he ruined my night, but now he was trying to be some sort of fake parent? Give me a break.

“Not acceptable? Let’s have a reality check here, shall we, dad? I have been caring for myself nearly my entire life; cooking my own meals, making sure I got to school, checking my own homework, and tucking myself in. I don’t do drugs, I’m not a teenage mother, and I haven’t marked my body with piercings or tattoos. I drink on occasion, but not to excess, and I never drive under the influence. I pull a 4.0 GPA, am enrolled in college courses and overall am a pretty desirable child to have. A lot of parents would be beaming with pride to have a daughter like me. But then again, you’d have to be home to notice any of that. You’d have to give two shits about your kid and her safety and happiness to have any say in how I live my life. So no,
father
, I don’t have to answer your questions. I don’t have to answer to you when you feel like throwing the slim amount of parental authority you have around, and I don’t have to do it any other day of the week either. Now, go do what we  both know you really want, and sleep at the station.”

With that, I slam my door in his face. I heave in mouthfuls of air, feeling a cataclysmic void rip open in the middle of my chest after vomiting the emotions I’d held down for so long. My eyes burn with unshed tears, and my throat has gone hoarse.

I can’t believe I’ve finally snapped after all of these years, hurling the brutally honest thoughts I’d always buried deep inside.

Silence resounded from the other side of the door, confirming that he had in fact packed up and headed off to the station. He couldn’t even be enough of a parent to punish me for talking back.

I
’d barely seen
Minka this week, she was so busy with her summer courses and I with baseball. We barely had time for a text hello. The only contact we’d had was a heavy makeout session in my car one night after I’d stopped by her house after practice.

I’m headed to Miles’ to use his gym for strength training.  Mostly because I can’t stand being in my own house, no matter how state-of-the-art my father kept his gym. We haven’t spoken since I’d stormed out five days ago. I was taking Minka’s advice. Fuck him.

Just remembering the fierce look in her eyes as she spewed her diatribe about my shit of a father made something inside my chest feel like I’d just finished a round of wind sprints.

She understood me more than anyone I’d ever met, and I’d meant it when I told her she was the most amazing person I knew. It didn’t matter that I’d only known about her for a little under two months. She was stuck in my head. And even though it was definitely too soon, I began to think she was stuck in my heart too.

The idea that I could have had her long ago if I’d gotten my stupid head out of my ass wasn’t lost on me. I felt like shit that I’d been too obsessed with myself in high school to notice her. It also wasn’t lost on me that she was hiding something. Jesus, she’d started shaking the minute she realized where my car was headed. If and when she opened up to me, I was finding and killing whoever had made her that scared, that ashamed, that she couldn’t even come within 50 feet of a place where kids were supposed to feel safe.

I pull up to the gates of Farris’ estate. Yes, I said estate.

While my family was rich, and had enough money so that none of us would probably ever have to work again, we were no Farriston. The Farriston’s had more money than God.

I plug in the code to call up to the house, needing Miles to buzz me in. I ring once…nothing. I ring a second time. Nothing. The third time I ring, Theresa, their live-in housekeeper, comes on the intercom.

“Who is it, please?”

“Hola Theresa, it’s Owen. Can you buzz me in?”

“Oh, Senor Owen. Of course!”

The gate buzzes and then slowly opens as I ease my truck past the ornate wrought-iron fence. Theresa has been with the Farriston’s for as long as I had been friends with Miles. I gathered that she was more of a parent to him than either of his biological assholes had ever been.

Parking in the porte-cochère, yes, they have a fucking valet-style car park, I walk into the castle that Miles grew up in. My house is nice, downright Mansion if you asked most Americans, but Farris made my family look like we were on welfare.

Theresa was nowhere to be found, and Miles hadn’t even come to the door to greet me.

“God, fuck you, you stupid fucking prick! Pick up the goddamn shotgun!”

Well, that can’t be fucking good. I make my way towards the basement, the fact that I can hear Miles shouting from my place in the marble foyer not registering as a good thing.

I descend the basement stairs, peering my head around the corner as soon as the half wall clears from my view. Ok, not in here. I can’t see Miles in the main basement room, which was a cross between a pool hall and an upscale bar.

Walking back towards our usual hangout spot, I finally hear him shouting again. “Fuckwad, what don’t you understand about covering my back?”

I enter the little hallway which houses two rooms. On one side, the kick ass gym. Miles has all of the latest exercise equipment, even though no one in the house besides him uses it. His mother’s probably working out with the trainer’s equipment rather than this stuff, if you know what I mean.

On the other side of the hall, a door stands ajar to the room I can definitely now hear shooting noises coming out of. I push it open to see Miles sitting in day old sweats on the humongous sectional.

The media room is less of a media room and more like a personal Best Buy store. Any electronic you’d ever want to play with can be found in here. Old-school Pinball and Tetris machines stand in one corner, on the same wall as the most elaborate stereo system I’d ever laid eyes on. On the other wall, floor to ceiling shelves are filled with any movie you would ever want to watch.

The entire back wall of the room was a cinema-style projector screen. It was Miles’ favorite thing about this room, and was currently being utilized.

“You’re going on missions without me? I’m hurt!” I mock cry, feigning disbelief. Farris startles at the sound of my voice and pauses his war game.

“What the hell are you doing here? Who let you in?” he scowls.

What crawled up his ass and died? “Nice to see you too, sunshine. I came over to lift, remember?” I point at my body, which sports the appropriate workout attire.

“Well I’m not in the mood.” Miles turns his attention back to the game, slinging his headset over his ears and hitting play. “You can see yourself out.”

What the fuck? “Dude, what is wrong with you?” I shove at his shoulder from where I stand behind the couch.

Farris ignores me, opting to spray a hellfire of bullets down on the enemy. Two or three more minutes pass like this, me standing there in confused shock, him playing video games as if he was completely alone.

So what did I do? I broke Guy Code 101. I pulled the plug out of the wall.

“WHAT THE FUCK?” Miles screams as he watches the screen suddenly go black. When he whirls around to see me with chord in hand, he actually chucks the controller at my face.

I dodge it, so it strikes the wall instead, denting some of the plaster.

“Now look what you fucking made me do, asswipe.” he grumbles, the fight seemingly leaving his body.

“Bro, are you okay?” I walk to where he sits and awkwardly drop to the couch next to him. Even though we have been friends almost our entire lives, Farris and I don’t talk feelings. We never had.

“Olivia dumped me.” I see the tick in his jaw as he looks away from me, clearly trying to hide his upset.

“Jeez man…uh I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t really sorry, I was glad he was rid of that leech. But it didn’t mean I wanted my friend to hurt.

“Whatever. Stupid bitch was cheating on me for months.” I hear his voice break. Fuck. I really did hate that girl.

“Fuck her, man. You don’t deserve that. She wasn’t even worth your time. Good fucking riddance.”

I’m not good at this brotherly love shit. But it was high time we tried, to start supporting each other emotionally. Miles was some of the only family I had.

“Yeah….maybe you’re right.” he doesn’t sound convinced. “At least I can score all the pussy I want when we get back to school.” he smiles, but it isn’t a genuine Farris smile. His goofy grins usually light up his entire fucking face. This one wouldn’t even make a puppy wag its tail.

“And what a bright side that is.” I throw him my best conspiratorial smile.

“Let’s get started this weekend. I’ll tell Merry to throw a Field Party. Guarantee I’ll be balls deep in the back of my truck by midnight…”

Shit. I really didn’t want to rain on his parade even more with my suddenly prosperous love life.

“I can’t this weekend.”

“Why not? We don’t have any clinics or camps until next week.”

“Well….” I really don’t want to break it to him this way, but I didn’t see any way around it. “I’m taking Minka to my beach house for the weekend.”

I cringe a little as the words leave my mouth. I really don’t want to look up and see the look on his face.

When I meet his eyes, he’s scowling.

“Really? The minute I get my ass kicked to the curb, Mr. Perpetually Carefree & Single takes it upon himself to bag a high school wifey? Fuck you, Axel.” he grumbles, lifting himself off the couch and walking to the mini-fridge next to the Pinball machine.

He reaches inside and pulls out a dark-looking beer, cracking the can and taking a long, hard swig.

“Bro, it’s like 10 a.m.” I eye him cautiously.

“No time like the present, dude.”

He finishes the can in three long chugs and goes in for another. I’d seen enough.

“Whatever, dude. When you feel like talking and not being a dick, call me. I’m always here for you, even if you want to act like a melodramatic pussy.”

With that, I walk out of the room and make my way out of the Farriston mansion. Place always felt more like a prison to me.

F
eeling
my bi’s and lat’s cry out in agony, I go hard through my last rep, killing myself to push the 250 pounds to full extension.

Grunting, I drop the weight bar back into its place above my head, thanking God that workout is over.

I’d pushed myself harder than I should have, but after my argument with Miles, and with the knowledge I’d be taking a few days off, I needed it. If I was going to make the majors, I had to be in the best shape of my life. Giving my arms some extra muscle was an added bonus.

It turns out I didn’t have to fear running into dad at our home gym, he was away at some speaking engagement for the weekend. Hilarious. Whoever paid to see my father make a motivational speech was better off dunking their head in a vat of bullshit.

I grab a towel from the steam rack mom installed down here and make my way to the kitchen. I needed a protein shake.

Walking into the upstairs hallway, I already hear the blender going. Smiling, I make my way into the kitchen. Mom stands at the enormous island, dropping things into the state-of-the-art blender dad had given her as a birthday present. I will say, for being such a prick, my father sure did have a soft spot for his wife.

“How did you know?” I smile at my mom. She really was my saving grace.

“Ah, you resided inside my belly, I am all knowing when it come to my baby.” she grins.

“Ew, mom, that’s totally gross.” I run my hand behind my sweat drenched neck, suddenly my appetite waning.

“I’m just joking with you, caro. But, I am your mother. And I do know everything about you. Which is also how I know you have been avoiding coming home for the last month.” She raises an eyebrow, giving me a pointed stare. Basically, she’s telling me to spill all my secrets before she uses her voodoo mother magic.

“Couldn’t we just talk about something else? The weather, your next hair appointment?” I send her my puppy dog look, my best attempt to curtail this disaster of a conversation.

Instead, she swats me upside the head.

“Spill you little bugger. Or no smoothie for you. And I added extra peanut butter…” she moves the glasses away from where I sit at the counter.

“Ok, ok!” I was a sucker for her chocolate peanut butter smoothie. “Well, its no secret that your husband is a douchebag, so I guess that’s why.”

“Do not speak about your father like that!” She shakes her head, grinding the contents of the blender one last time. “He is looking out for you. He just wants you to do well, caro. But, we’ve spoken about his behavior. I think it might be good for you and him to sit down.”

She pours the thick smoothie into large glasses, and my mouth begins to water.

But, then I felt it. Anger. Creeping up into my pours. She always took up for him.

“Not happening, mom. I’ve heard, my entire life, about how much of a failure I am. About how much I don’t measure up. I don’t need to sit down with the bastard to be berated for another 45 minutes. Tell him he can write me a note. Or better yet, text me. I can delete that faster.”

“Ay, caro, you only see the smaller picture. Sometimes we need to step outside our own box to put ourselves into someone else’s shoes.”

My mother, the beautiful, elegant, smart woman that she was…had never, ever grasped the Americanized versions of cliches.

“Besides, I think he will have some things to say to you that might surprise you.” She pushes my smoothie glass across the counter and takes a tiny, bird-like sip of her own. “But let’s get to the real reason you haven’t been here. Who is the woman?”

I nearly shoot smoothie out of my nose. I swear to God, my mother is psychic. And has voodoo powers.

“Wha…how…how did you know?” There was no point in trying to cover up my relationship, whatever it was, with Minka. First off, my mom would have seen right through it. And second, I didn’t want to hide Minka from anything or anyone in my life. I was damn proud that she even let me talk to her, let alone do the other things I had. Okay, no thinking about Minka’s body in the presence of my mother was officially off limits.

“Oh you’re so cute, caro. I told you, I know everything. And…Maria also called and asked if it was okay to stock the beach house with liquor. You didn’t think you were going to just call her and not have it come back to me, right?”

Shit. I hadn’t thought about Maria, the caretaker at our Outer Banks house, saying anything to my mother. Busted.

“Yeah…I should have known better. Should have asked her to lie.” I give her my angel smile, and can see some of the fake scowl melt off her face. “But, you’re right. There is a girl. And she’s amazing.”

A beat of silence goes by as I tip the glass up to my face and suck down some of the delicious smoothie. Damn, I hoped there was more in the blender.

“So, that’s all you’re going to say….?” She blinks at me, waiting for more. Jesus, women are such gossips.

“What else do you want to know, jeez…”

“Oh I don’t know, her name, where she lives, what she likes—”

“Her birthdate, social security number, family status.” I finish, smiling into my cup when she tried to swat me upside the head again. “Okay. Her name is Minka Braxton. She lives here. She’s smart, athletic, beautiful…”

“Ahh, he is his father’s son. You and him, always suckers for the beautiful ones.” She laughs, staring at the ceiling as if my taste in women is just all too funny. “You really like this beautiful girl?”

“Yeah, I really do.” I smile. Just thinking about Minka and everything I have planned for us this weekend makes my heart feel too big in my chest.

“I think its great. You haven’t talked about a girl since that awful Allison in high school. If she makes you smile all goofy like this, she must be worthy of my perfect boy.” She touches my cheek, and I swear I see her eyes glistening with unshed tears.