Page 28 of Totally Opposed

“You seriously were just hungry?” I ask, but she ignores me to eat, a purr rumbling from her as she devours the bowl of food almost as fast as I placed it.

I check on the damage to the door, rubbing my shoulder where the sting still vibrates through the muscles. I’ve been off Kyle’s routine for a while now, and my throwing speed is back to what it used to be, but that hit still hurt.

“Well, you did make a bit of a mess in here now, didn’t you?” Gramps says, coming out into the room fully dressed.

“I’m sorry again, the cat, she.”

He waves a hand in my direction and goes to the window.

“I’ll have to feed her first next time. Well, since you are here anyway. How about some coffee?”

“Sure, that would be great, cheers.”

“No problem, pot’s in the kitchen,” he replies, and he sits down at the window. Precious is done with her food and hops up onto his lap, curling up immediately into a ball and falling asleep.

“Umm, sure, okay. How do you take it?”

“Creamer and two sugars, oh, and grab the biscuits, the chocolate ones.”

“For breakfast?”

“I had my lucky charms for breakfast at five. Are you only just getting your butt out of bed?”

“The baseball game today doesn’t start until four thirty,” I call back, and he scoffs.

“Baseball, pfft, that’s not baseball.”

“What would you call it, then?” I ask, and he doesn’t reply.

I bring back the coffee and biscuits and put them down on the table beside his chair by the window. Looking up, I spot what could be the edge of the arena where we play.

“It might not be the type of baseball you grew up watching, but it’s the baseball I love,” I say, sitting down on his couch. Precious takes this opportunity to leap from his lap and makes herself comfortable at my side, resting her head over my thigh.

“No baseball player in my day would be caught dancing around on the field like a clown in the middle of a game.”

“Clowning is fun. Didn’t you ever go to the circus as a kid?”

“I did, and it wasn’t baseball.”

I laugh. “Yeah, it wasn’t, but it was fun. And you liked it. So maybe you could like baseball that has a bit of that fun worked into it?”

He doesn’t reply, simply takes a sip from his coffee and frowns at Precious, who is now purring away.

“I play one of the OG teams tonight, then Alan’s team will play the other one. You should come to check it out. But I need to be going. We have warm-ups and I still haven’t eaten. Umm, sorry again about the door. I will pop over later and fix it up.”

He shakes his head.

“I’ll call the super to do it. That lock obviously needed replacing anyway if a scrapper like you could bust through. Best be off with ya, then.”

I head out and immediately text my cousin.

RYAN: I was just tricked by a cat into committing a felony.

TEDDY: Please tell me you were carrying an ice cream cone in your back pocket!

RYAN: What? No way that is a felony.

TEDDY: Yep, in Georgia it is.

---