Page 43 of Silver Lining Love

“You got this,” I whispered the encouragement beneath my breath as I watched Michael get into his hitting stance.

“What?” Whitney asked beside me as she bounced Benji on her lap.

“Nothing.” I shook my head and leaned my elbows on my knees.

“Are you okay, Wyatt?” Alice tugged on my shirt sleeve.

No. I wasn’t. I’d never felt this nervous in my life.

“Yep,” I assured her as I pulled down the lid of her baseball cap. She giggled and the sound took the edge off of the tension rolling through me.

Logically, I knew that it wasn’t the end of the world if he struck out, but I felt like it would be for him. How had my parents gone through this with nine kids?

They must have been so desensitized by the time my sister was playing soccer and T-ball. There was no way they could sustain this sort of intensity.

The first pitch was thrown, and Michael swung on it.

“Strike!” the umpire yelled.

Damn. He shouldn’t have swung at that. If he hadn’t, it would have been a ball. He was nervous. That was the only explanation because he had attuned natural instincts when it came to what to swing at.

The pitcher wound up again, this time when the ball flew toward home plate but cut to land just out of the strike zone, Michael didn’t swing.

“Ball,” the umpire said as he motioned with his left hand.

On the next pitch, Michael swung and connected. The ball flew high and to the right. It was a foul ball.

I rubbed my hands together. He had two strikes, so this next pitch was it. I held my breath as the pitcher took his stance again. These were just kids, but there was more adrenalin rushing through me than when JJ, my little brother, pitched in the World Series.

There was something seriously wrong with me.

The ball left the pitcher’s hand, and I heard the crack of the bat hitting it. I watched as it shot up, up, up, up. It was still in the air when the first runner came home. It fell over the chain link fence as the second runner crossed home plate and the parents gathered in the bleachers erupted at the grand slam.

I stood and cheered as I watched the runner that was on first come home followed closely by Michael. I clapped and yelled as the team celebrated before lining up to shake the other team’s hands.

I was still beaming when I heard Alice say, “I gotta go potty.”

“Can you wait till we get home? The game’s over,” Whitney asked, most likely trying to avoid another trip to the less-than-sanitary public bathrooms.

Alice shook her head as she did the pee-pee dance.

I reached out to take Benji so Whitney could take her.

“Thanks.” Whitney grinned tightly as she passed him over and moved awkwardly so that our hands didn’t brush one another’s.

All evening I’d been trying to tell myself that her standoffishness was all in my imagination. But after that handoff, I knew for sure that she was deliberately attempting to keep her distance from me. When we arrived at the ballpark, she’d insisted Alice sit between us. And she’d flinched when I’d brushed her hair back when it was hanging dangerously close to dipping into the cheese on the nachos she shared with Alice.

People had different levels of comfort when it comes to PDA, so there was a chance that was what the issue was, but I didn’t think that was actually the situation. I had a feeling it had more to do with us taking our relationship to an intimate level the night before.

There was a wall up between us that had never been there before today. This obviously wasn’t the time or place to speak to her, but after the kids went to bed tonight, I was definitely going to find out what was going on.

“Wyatt, hi!”

I turned and saw Trina walking down the bleachers with her arms outstretched. I adjusted Benji as she wrapped her arms around my neck so he wouldn’t become the meat in a hug sandwich. My family were big huggers, and so was everyone in Wishing Well, but in D.C., especially in the circles I ran in, which were mainly people from work, there wasn’t a lot of hugging.

“Hi.” I patted her back with one hand as she squeezed her arms around my neck before dropping her hands down to her sides. “And who is this cutie?”

“This is Benji.”

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