Hardball (31 page)

I was tired. Tired of all the limits I’d put on myself. Tired of the box I’d built around my heart. I wanted to change but didn’t know how.

Padding into the kitchen, gunk in my eyes and sleep in my veins, I found Dad already up. I loved him. I loved him more than my heart could even fit. The way he bent in front of the fridge so slowly, careful not to twist his joints, made me doubt what I’d decided during the walk across the house.

“Dad,” I said.

“Good morning.”

“Would you be mad if I moved out?”

He stood cautiously, closed the refrigerator, and leaned on it. “Mad?”

“Disappointed. Or whatever. Maybe the question is, ‘How would you feel if I moved out?’ But not far. As close as I could afford.”

He laughed quietly. “I’ve been meaning to ask you the same thing.”

I hadn’t even considered the idea. This was Mom and Dad’s house. This was my home base. My life was in this single-story O-shaped modernist masterpiece, and even if I was gone, it had to be here.

“You can’t—” I stopped myself at the apostrophe. “Where will you go?”

“Somewhere smaller. I’m feeling all right with the new pills, but the steps aren’t good in the long run. And this is really your house.”

“What? No! It’s yours.”

He waved me off, which he’d done a million times before without annoying me. That morning, however, I was in no mood.

“You made sure Mom got this house, and when she was gone, you’re the one who paid the mortgage and made it a home,” I said.

“I only stayed so you had some consistency when your mother died. And now it’s just a habit. Honestly, I don’t even like it.”

I had to swallow that hard. It was a complete turnaround. I had to sit down. “You don’t like it?”

“I like the older style. And the neighborhood? Too many nosy old ladies. And I can’t walk to the grocery store. I’m not going to be able to drive much longer, peanut.”

I hadn’t even wondered if I liked the house. It was the house I had grown up in, and when I left to live with Carl, the fact that it was there, and Dad was in it, was a comfort I took for granted.

“You should go if you’re not happy here.” I said it as if I was talking to myself, and in a way, I was.

Dad put his hand on my shoulder. “I am happy here. I
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thinking of you doing your homework in the courtyard. Reading on that couch. I watched you for hours. You were the reason I was here, and lately I’ve been thinking I made you my reason too long.”

“I thought you stayed because of Mom.”

“For a few years, sure. I was a lonely grouch when I met your mother. After you came, I was a man with a family. My empty heart was full. You gave me everything. I stayed in this house to thank you.”

I gulped back denials because I was the one who should have been thanking him. He’d built his life around me because it was what I needed. He’d taught me the purest form of love, but had I learned it? I choked back a sob.

“Believe me,” I said, looking up at him, “I’m trying not to say I owe you the thanks. But being your daughter was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

He patted my shoulder again then squeezed it. I put my arms around him and laid my cheek against his chest.

Dash hadn’t answered the text, and I was glad. He needed to rest. He’d been tired and upset about his performance over spring training. One great game wasn’t going to change that. He needed constant injections of confidence.

I was his serum.

I sat on the edge of the bed. My room looked over the vegetable garden that volunteered to grow on its own every year. I’d crawled out of that window every night when I was fourteen until Dad put a bell on the outside and I was busted. The walls had been painted twice. Dark blue over pink when I went to high school, and two coats of primer and white over that when I started college. I’d studied here, eaten here, fucked here.

I could move from this house to Dash’s place in the hills. I could demand he and I get a new place. I could stay in this house. I could get an apartment. I could stand on my head and spit nickels. It didn’t matter.

What mattered?

Someone needed me. A human being I cared about. The way Dad needed Mom and he needed me. The house didn’t matter. The ring didn’t matter. What mattered was the evolution of a relationship.

My bio dad hadn’t evolved. He’d needed my mother at a certain stage in his life, and when that changed, he didn’t go with it, because in the end, he didn’t know how to love her.

If Dash needed me to give him confidence now, that didn’t mean he’d need the same thing next year or in ten years or after his retirement. I needed to be willing to give him what he needed and evolve later.

I feared he wouldn’t be able to evolve, but wasn’t that always the fear? No matter who I was with, we’d need to evolve. Wouldn’t children, middle age, old age change us and change our needs?

I was going to be a zombie today, but a zombie with a completely changed attitude. No dream had come to change my outlook. No little spirit whispered in my ear.

No. Just a little rest for the brain.

Dash Wallace was the only man in the world I wanted.

I was going to be there for him one hundred percent. I was going to let him know that every day, every minute, until he put his heart back into us. If he needed me to walk the bases around every major league field in the United States, I’d do it. He’d own my summer and a chunk of my autumn. His rushed proposal wasn’t going to stop me from loving him with everything I had. I could refuse it and still love him. I could put a ring around my heart.

I took a deep breath and committed myself to him.

Long haul. He was my responsibility.

Dash

I couldn’t sleep. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb for the night and juggled three balls ten different ways. I was a fuckup. Everything was fucked up. Wrong. And those phrases just replayed as I tried to distract myself with the rhythm of the balls. You’re a fuckup. You’re a fuckup. She hates you now she thinks you only want her for luck do you love her do you even love her such a fuckup a fucking her is the best thing that ever happened to me with her body around mine she’s mine no one else can fuck up you fucked up you fucked up…

When my arms hurt, I ran up and down my newly dug-out stairs in the dark, and I stopped when I tripped and thought I’d sprained my ankle.

My greatest fear wasn’t a strikeout or even a string of them. I worried about making errors, but they were small potatoes when I thought about the other thing.

An injury. A career-ending injury.

I needed her. I didn’t feel safe on the field. I didn’t know how I knew it, but there was no question. She was all my luck in one little body. She was kind and beautiful and, yes, sexy as hell, but that was gravy.

I shook off the twisted ankle and stretched out on my bed for two hours, drifting in and out of anxiety-laced sleep.

She was right. That was the thing that kept me up. I’d been trying to slap a glass jar over a butterfly. That was bullshit. It was hurtful and stupid and bullshit. She saw right through it. Of course she did. And I’d just fucked it all up by panicking.

At six o’clock¸ the DND shut itself off, and I heard the chorus of texts coming in from the kitchen. I went out to see what was so important.

Good night

I love you

Then a line where time had passed, and the last few came in real time.

Listen. I’ve thought about it

I don’t think we should get married. I’m sorry. There’s no reason

Not now. Not so soon

Maybe someday

You’re right

She
was
right. I’d been stupid and impulsive.

The messages continued as if she wasn’t even waiting for a reply.

But the now. Let’s have the now. Let’s do this together

If you need me, I’m there for you

I want to be clear. I WANT to be there for every game I can. I will do everything. I’ll take red-eye flights and lose sleep if you need me to

I’ll walk the bases with you, Dash. I don’t need a ring to do it

Was she done? I had so much to say, but I didn’t want to interrupt her.

I’ll walk the bases with you

Nothing more came. The little rolling dots that told me when she was typing had stopped. It was my turn. I had to tell her what she meant to me. I had to use big words and gestures. Infinitely big words. I constructed the speech in my mind before I tapped the glass, and I went for it. I said it big, and I said it loud. The relief, the love, the joy. I thought I was going to explode into a two-word sonnet.

Thank you

I didn’t have any more words. Everything I felt was right there. But what did she need? I had to think of that, and I brushed away the gratitude to find clarity.

For forgiving me. Thank you. I own the world with you by my side

Vivian

Nothing changed, but everything changed. Dash came to get me that afternoon, and though the stadium was too populated for him to fuck me in the dugout, he made do in the best way possible. He parked in a far off corner and fingered me in the car like a teenager, then he walked me around the bases, tagging each one. He introduced me to the grounds crew and kissed me at home plate.