Page 103 of Trip Through Your Wires

“Yeah?” I grin.

“Hell yeah.” He sticks his fist out and I bump mine to it. “Let’s do it.”

“Well fucking A,” Marcus looks up. “Looks like we have something to celebrate.”

“Hell yeah we do!” Cruz claps. “I’ll go upstairs and order the pizza. Jake, you grab the beer.”

Cruz runs up the stairs to order the pizza, and I do the same to grab a six pack from the kitchen. When done, I jog back down the stairs, and when Cruz returns, we meet in the game room.

“So what do you think?” Marcus asks, reaching for the pool sticks hanging from the rack on the wall. “A game of cutthroat?”

He grabs one and tosses it to me. I grab it and he does the same with Cruz, who grabs it and twirls it in front of him like he’s Luke Skywalker.

“Sounds good,” he sticks out his stick like it’s a lightsaber. “You won last time Marcus, so you break.”

Marcus removes the rack from the balls in the center of the table, as I reach for the cube of chalk on the table and rub it over the tip of my stick. Cruz does the same and when done, passes it to Marcus.

When he’s done, he heads over to the table and prepares to break. With a smooth, practiced motion, he pulls the pool stick back, then thrusts it forward. The cue ball connects with a sharp crack against the racked set, sending them scattering across the table in a burst of color.

As we wait for the pizza to arrive, Cruz and I fill Marcus in on the Rockies and he updates us on his own scouting calls.

“So, now that we have covered the baseball side of things,” Cruz prepares to take a shot. “What are you going to do about Jenica?”

After lining up, he pulls his stick back once, twice, and on the third time thrusts it forward. The cue ball hits his target, sending it sailing into a corner pocket.

“What do you mean?” I ask, watching as he lines up his next shot.

“Well,” he shoots and misses, then lifts his chin at Marcus for him to go. “I know how I feel when I don’t get to see my girl. And clearly Marcus is willing to go the distance for his. So I want to know, what are you going to do for yours, now that you know we’re headed to Colorado?”

I’ve been asking myself that very question since that day in Coach’s office when he presented us with the offer. “I have an idea,” I admit.

“Yeah?” He looks at me, a little surprised.

“Mm-hmm,” I nod.

The past few days I’d been thinking through ways to get Jenica up to Highland permanently. With a contract pending, I’d have the money to pay for her school but I knew she would never accept the offer. She was determined to do it on her own and I wanted to honor that. But I could help make reaching her dreams easier, couldn’t I?

“Well, think fast brother,” Cruz watches as Marcus takes his shot. “The future is just around the corner, and you don’t want to miss out on the best thing to ever happen to you. And I’m not talking about the Rockies.”

As the night wears on and our laughter increases, I can’t help but feel a twinge of nostalgia. When it was the four of us, nights like this were common. Now, they’re fleeting. By this time next year, we will be living different lives, and the time we have to spend with friends and families will be sacred.

The first year playing pro ball would be an adjustment. The pace of a regular season was non-stop April to December, and having someone to share it with would help keep some semblance of balance. For Marcus, that someone may be TBD at the moment, but for Cruz it was Ellery.

From the moment they got back together, their plan was set. Ellery’s decision to move wherever Cruz was recruited made sense to them as a couple, as well as her own goals of finishing school. When he moved, she would transfer and enroll in whatever college was close by and continue her classes. But moving to a new school was easy to do when money was no object. For Jenica, there was more at stake.

I respected Jenica and would always support her, but I also knew there were limitations on the help she was willing to receive. This meant any plan I might have needed to consider factors that Cruz and Ellery did not. But if Jenica did it on her own, if her talent could play a part in us being together…

“Jenica played ball,” I say after we’ve hung up our pool sticks and laying around on the sectional in front of the big screen TV.

Marcus sits up slightly. “Ball as in…”

“Softball,” I clarify. “She was a pitcher.”

The way Cruz’s eyes widen tells me this is one secret Ellery did not share with him. “Are you kidding me?”

“No, Cabron, I’m not. And she was good. Like D1 level good. She was being scouted as a freshman and could have gone anywhere she wanted.”

“So why didn’t she?”

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