Page 4 of First Base

“What?” I asked as we continued toward the player parking lot, thoughts of Maggie still hanging around the corners of my mind.

I had been nervous when I first arrived at Renaissance Field. I was expecting the entire team to hate me from my previous history. But luckily, Jamil and Adam had taken me under their wing, and as soon as the team realized that they had accepted me, the rest fell into line. I was immensely thankful to them for that and for their friendship. They were the type of guys that I should have surrounded myself with earlier in my career, rather than the guys that used their name and image for a flashy lifestyle.

“I saw the way you just looked at Maggie Redford,” Jamil continued. “I’m sorry to tell you that you have absolutely no chance with that woman. She’s locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. Women are not my priority right now.”

Jamil slung an arm around my shoulder and pulled me in closer. “I hear you, man. We may actually have a real shot at the playoffs this year. Especially since Adam over here has been throwing lasers this off-season.”

Adam rolled his eyes at Jamil’s comment but flashed me a smile. He had quickly become one of my favorite people on the team for his laid-back personality and dad-like tendencies. He was the first person to introduce himself to me at an early team event. It was like he had adopted me as his son. Adam was getting toward the end of his career and typically avoided any antics that happened among our teammates, sticking to the role of mentor.

“Keep your mind focused on the season and you’ll be fine,” he told me.

“Are you going to go out with us?” Jamil asked as we all stopped in the middle of the parking lot.

“I don’t know.” I rubbed the back of my neck, my hands messing with the longer strands of hair. “I’ve got to be careful with being seen out like that. I’m on a short leash with the Cougars, and I don’t have an agent to bail me out anymore.”

“You’re still going to rock without an agent?” Jamil’s eyes widened.

“I can’t bring myself to get another one after what happened before,” I told him.

“Well, if you change your mind and want to do something, the family and I are having a movie night tonight. I can shoot you our address if you decide you want to stay in.” Adam started to back away toward his extended SUV made specifically for hauling around multiple little monsters.

“Thanks, man,” I called after him.

“We’re not going to do anything crazy, I promise. It’s the only night during the season I will actually go out.” Jamil started walking toward his car. “I better see you there!”

I shook my head at him as I watched him hop into his sports car. He rolled his window down before he pulled out of the parking lot and pointed at me. “I’m serious!”

“Send me the address,” I called after him. He’d better be telling the truth that they weren’t going to do anything crazy. The second bottle service started or women with little-to-no clothing came near, I was gone.

My car was one of the last ones in the parking lot, and as I started to make my way toward it, ready to go home and take a long shower, my phone went off. I dug it out of my pocket, expecting it to be Jamil sending me the address to the club tonight, but I saw something else that I wished I hadn’t seen.

Dad: Make sure you work on your hands drifting at practice. We can’t have you keep missing the inside half of the plate. The Cougars will bench you faster than San Diego did.

My jaw clenched as I read the text. I didn’t bother responding. I locked the screen and tossed the phone on the passenger seat next to me. My dad had started sending me text messages about my hitting form after San Diego dropped me. It was his way of showing his disapproval for the decisions I had made that led to my dismissal from the team. All of the work that I had done in the off-season to still be desirable enough for a team to pick me up after everything that had happened with San Diego didn’t seem to matter to my dad. The only thing he could focus on was the fact that I had let alcohol and women distract me from our previous shared goal.

When those texts started, all I could think about was when I was a kid and how excited I would be to dissect my practices with him when I got home. After every game in high school, the two of us would chat over dinner about different at bats or plays I made in the field. It never felt overbearing then. At that time, we both had a shared vision for my future success. When my professional baseball career was almost lost, it seemed like my dad didn’t know what to do with me or how to talk to me. It was as if we only had baseball as a commonality. My camaraderie with him felt almost like a phantom limb, the pain always there, reminding me of something that I had lost. I was beginning to wonder if professional baseball wasn’t our shared dream anymore, but only his.

Even with how I felt, there was still a massive part of me that wanted this season to end well, to give my dad something to be proud of again. If I didn’t, I was worried I’d always be a failure in his eyes, and the thought of that made my chest tight, like a million pounds of pressure had been put on top of me.

My mind flashed back to Maggie and her brilliant emerald eyes. If there wasn’t so much weighing on this season for me, she would have been the type of girl that I would have wanted to get to know. The type of girl that I probably needed. But right now, she was a risk I couldn’t afford. A distraction that I didn’t want.

However, I knew as much as the next guy that if I focused solely on this season for the entirety of it, I would be burned out before the All-Star break. That was the very reason why I saved the address that Jamil sent me into my favorites. An under-control night out would give my brain something else to think about besides every swing I took at practice today. My phone buzzed in the seat next to me again, and I saw my dad’s name flash across the screen on my dash, notifying me that he had sent another text. I backed out of the parking lot, leaving the phone facedown next to me.

Maggie

The breath I had been holding slowly passed through my lips once I was safely outside the stadium, waiting for the bus. A heavy weight seemed to press into my chest as I battled with the overwhelming emotions that wanted to restrict every part of me.

The moment that I had looked in Tommy Mikals’s eyes and felt those same sparks I had the first time I met Luke, it was like my entire world had been tilted off its axis. As if all of the carefully constructed walls I had put in place for the past four years to protect my heart had started to crumble, and that terrified me.

It had been almost four years of sorting anything that reminded me of Luke into a folder that I had shoved to the recesses of my mind. I had gone this far without having to revisit any of those feelings I had placed inside that folder. But the moment that Tommy had looked at me like I was interesting, like I was someone who was worth knowing, those feelings I had shoved away with the intention of never revisiting came pushing their way back to the front of my mind. Which was exactly why I decided I would be avoiding Tommy for the rest of the season. He was a distraction that I didn’t need.

My breath was still coming in rapidly, and the breathing routine my therapist taught me came to mind. After the accident, my parents had made me start sessions. I wouldn’t talk to them about what had happened, and all they wanted was for me to talk to somebody. Simply sitting in that room with the therapist had been one of the hardest things I had ever done. It made me feel weak, like I wasn’t mentally strong enough to cope by myself. But after a few sessions, I realized that talking with a professional displayed my strength more than not coping on my own.

I went through the familiar steps of counting my breaths, using the realty ad across from me as my anchor point. After a couple rounds, I was able to fully function again. In my mind, the safest thing to do was to keep Tommy at a distance. There was no denying I found him attractive. I couldn’t force my body to think otherwise, but I could minimize all interaction with him with the hope of never seeing him look at me like he did today. I didn’t deserve to be looked at like I was someone worth knowing. If Tommy knew the truth about how broken I was, that look would have been one of pity and not interest.

The bus pulled up in front of me, and I swiped my card, smiling at Renarda, the driver, as I did.

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