Page 90 of Our Hearts Knew Better

We end this call so Clarissa can get some more sleep and so I can most likely stare at the ceiling as I try to do the same, with no decision made there, saying ourlove yous and making a promise to talk again when it’s day.

My pulse is slower and my eyes completely dry when I close myself back in the room, so I ease into bed, watching Adam remain still as I lie back beneath the sheet.

I press the back of my hand to his shoulder, the heat from his body a cold comfort.

It’s quick, and as I pull away, I feel two things: him shifting around and the slide of his fingers through mine.

And as our hands fall entwined between us, another tear slips out onto my pillow as I close my eyes toward the window.

Benched

Levi

Adam’s off work and he’s not answering his phone, so when I get off, I venture and find him at the last place I’d expect him to be, which happens to be the first place I thought of.

Almost every cage is filled, some with lone batters and some with groups, the pitching machines firing ball after ball.

Thatcrackwill always take me back, but those memories for me stop after high school. They were never a dream that became a nightmare. I can imagine that’s how these memories are for Adam now, but in my venturing, I was reminded by our more recent memories reeling off in my head, with a surge of adrenaline as I changed my route like there was a sudden emergency, that Adam now fishes for ways to torture himself.

He’s on a bench at one of the last rows of nets, watching—glaringdown a lone batter, oblivious to everything but what he sees inside his head as that kid swings his bat, the kid oblivious to the apparent targeted attention on his back.

I keep a weather eye on Adam’s movements as I slide in next to him, attempting not to spook him, and in turn, spook the kid.

He locks up with a lurch, eyeing me with the same stare when I caught him cheating off my math quiz in middle school. Both of us aced the quiz and celebrated, two cages over from this one.

But there’s a murkiness to his features, like he might swing at me.

He exhales, unrolling his tension muscle by muscle as he focuses back on the kid doing the swinging.

“Don’t do this to yourself,” I implore him, leaning back as he’s leaned forward, that way wherever my eyes drift, I can keep my sights on him.

“I didn’t,” he carps, his voice scraping like he’s been swallowing rocks.

I sigh out toward the kid as this next ball arches backward into the net and pat my fist twice against Adam’s leg, almost wanting to do the same to myself, but harder and on the nose, for not knowing how to help him fix this part of his life.

“He’s the best one here.” Adam gestures to the kid, whocracks another ball that would’ve been a homerun. “And no sign of stopping. He’s gonna make it big.”

I check that the kid’s holding the formal batting stance, from his feet, his bends, his hands, and his eyes on the pitching machine. But he also carries a light weight and a sort of goofy grin.

“Or he could be doing it for fun,” I offer, borrowing some of his light weight to pass on to Adam, for him to remember and bring some past life back to him, when baseball was like entertainment before he discovered his talent and the sport became a destination instead of a journey. When it wasn’t a dead end with no place to turn around.

“He’s not like you,” Adam responds with a huffed laugh, the sound, real or not, a homerun in itself. “He’s committed.”

“I was committed,” I toss back, feigning offense as a tease.

But my hit is captured mid-air and my run skids to a halt, as Adam’s face sobers in the next moment. “You played for me. Because I asked you to.”

The history—too layered to peel back with what’s been stacked on him—in those words hangs like bait, a hook that’ll prick us both at even the lightest touch. A colorful question I have myself that I can’t ask.

One request that’s pierced to my marrow.

Let me have my girl.

My claim on her, the half of her heart I know is still mine, says,take her, and as I line up with Adam, instead, to prod his arm, it feels like I’m dragging myself. “How about you get up, for me? We get out of here…”

He lets out a huff absent of mirth as he breaks our line, leans back. “I’m not gonna burn the place down.”

I shake my head toward the floor with a muttered, “I’m not thinking you are.”

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