Page 77 of Walk Off

Epilogue

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Celia

The crowd was wildly cheering and chanting as the Arizona Dragons took the field for the first game of the regular season. Celia was seated beside Jasmine, who just might be cheering the loudest.

“What do you think about your first game so far?” she asked her daughter.

Jasmine continued to clap. “This isn’t my first game, Mom. I went to all the spring training games.”

“But this is your first game in a big stadium with all these people.”

“It’s kinda like the soccer games I went to.”

She wasn’t wrong. They were very similar. The biggest difference was the temperature. At the end of March in Valley Falls, they’d still be wearing winter coats. Not in Arizona. The weather was warm enough that they could wear shorts almost year round.

A definite perk to their move.

As suspected, Jasmine had been completely on board with them moving to be closer to Kyle. They’d packed a few bags of important things and flown with him back to Arizona the morning he left. Jasmine was enrolled in school immediately, and Celia had been added to the local middle school as a long term substitute, filling in wherever she was needed. Most of their belongings were packed up and shipped to Arizona within days. They left a lot of furniture in the apartment because Kyle wanted them to be able to go back and forth whenever they wanted to visit family and friends.

A part of him still hated that she’d been the one to give up her life just so he could have his.

She tried explaining over and over again that what he didn't understand was that she wouldn’t have a life if he wasn’t in it.

Each day, he understood that a little more.

They’d had a month of family dinners and walks in the park and falling asleep in each other's arms. That was all about to change now that the season had started. She would miss him when he traveled, but knew it wasn't going to last forever. Some day, he’d be finished with baseball and they’d have all the time in the world together.

Until then, she’d cheer him on, no matter what.

As Kyle came up to bat in the bottom of the first, he turned and looked up into the stand where she and Jasmine were sitting. He made a heart with his hands, something his daughter had taught him.

“Mom, did you see that?” Jasmine tugged on her arm. “He did the heart I showed him.”

“I saw, sweetie.”

Celia knew he couldn’t see her or hear her, but that didn't stop her from waving and yelling his name loudly. His first pitch was a strike and his second was a ball. She had her fingers crossed under her chin as the pitcher wound up for the third pitch. When the ball reached the plate, Kyle swung his bat and the crack of the ball against the wood had everyone on their feet.

The ball flew out of the stadium in right field for a home run.

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