Page 65 of The Art of Catching Feelings

“It’s cool,” he said. “You’re probably right. We don’t need to—we’ll always be at the same hotel. Au up?text would be redundant.”

He started to open the door, and she stopped him with her hand on his forearm, blurting out the question before she could think any better of it. “Why did you delete all the pictures off your Instagram?”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I just—Layla was asking. Because she wanted to tag you in some stuff.”

He stared down at her, and she almost kept rambling, unsure if he was even following what she was trying to say. But then he cleared his throat. “Social media is a distraction,” he said. “I needed to focus.”

And with that, he left.

TWENTY-EIGHT

“You’re still in your head,” Chris’ dad said, reaching to grab the bat out of his hand. He got into his stance, demonstrating a slight hesitation before taking a big swing. “You see that? The hitch? You’ve still got a hitch.”

Chris had about fifty different responses to that. He was a thirty-two-year-old man. He’d been playing in the major leagues for eight years. He’d been hittingbetterthe last few games. There was an entire coaching staff whose job it was to advise him on his swing; they were aware of the “hitch” and had been working with him on it. A hitch wasn’t always a bad thing. Lots of power hitters had a hitch. Pujols had had a hitch. And regardless, Chris wasn’t a Little Leaguer who needed his dad to teach him how to coil.

But of course, his dadhadbeen the one to teach him everything he knew about baseball. It was the reason Chris, who was right-handed, batted left. His dad was a leftie and it had been easier for him to demonstrate that way, so that was how Chris had learned.

His brother Tim had batted better from the right, actually, had been a viable switch-hitter all through high school. For some reason, Chris had never gotten the hang of batting from that side, even when it should’ve been more natural for him.

“It’s a mental game,” his dad said now, taking another swing. “You know that. It’smental. You gotta stop thinking, let your body do what it knows how to do.”

If Chris had it in him to respond tothat, he would’ve asked how exactly his dad recommended he just “stop thinking.” He would’ve asked if that’s what he’d done, if that’s how he got through his days without thinking about Tim at all. But instead Chris just pulled the collar of his shirt up to wipe sweat off his chin, stepping out of the box in the makeshift batting cage his dad had constructed in his backyard.

“I’m going to grab a Gatorade from the fridge,” he said. “Want anything?”

“Nah,” his dad said, still taking another big hack with the bat at an invisible ball. He tapped the bat in the dirt, getting set again. “Actually, get me a beer.”

The screen door leading onto the back porch squeaked a bit, the door with its own hitch before it closed all the way, and Chris made a note to fix that. His major league salary had bought this house, and that salary had also funded the back addition on it including this porch and the batting cage. He had no issues giving his father anything he wanted, money-wise. The man had raised him, had shaped him into the man and baseball player he was. He’d give him the last shirt off his back if he needed it.

But it was becoming increasingly difficult to feel like he was giving his father anything else that he wanted. Chris felt like he couldn’t be as devoted a son; couldn’t be as good a ballplayer; had obviously failed at being a brother.

There was a magnet on the fridge with the team’s schedule on it, and Chris paused in front of it, finding that day’s date on the calendar. He lived his life from series to series, week to week. Sometimes his dad was more on top of what he’d be doing a month from now than he was. It would be six days until the next road series.

Six days until he could be with Daphne again.

He couldn’t deny it had stung when she didn’t even want to exchange numbers. Admittedly, he’d never done a friends-with-benefits type thing before, but didn’t that mean they could at least be friends? Friends texted each other sometimes. If he wanted to see if it was a good time to head over, if he wanted to check if he should order any food to bring with him, if he left something behind in her room. If he saw something that reminded him of her or that he thought might make her laugh.

Chris was still staring at the magnet, his eyes unfocused, when his dad came up behind him. “It’s one of those old-fashioned fridges with a handle you pull with your hands,” he said, reaching around to open the fridge and extracting their drinks.

“Sorry,” Chris said. “I got…” He didn’t want to saydistracted. It would give his dad more fodder for the same broken record he’d already been playing all day.

Chris took a big gulp of the Gatorade, feeling the cool liquid slide down his throat without really tasting it. “Do you remember when Tim cut my hair that time?” he asked his dad. “I was what—three? Four?”

His dad used a bottle opener stuck to the side of the fridge to pop the top off his beer, taking a sip without making eye contact with Chris.

“We were playing with some kids down the street,” Chris said. “They were chasing me. And Tim said if we cut my hair they wouldn’t recognize me, that it would be a perfect disguise. That seemed so brilliant to me at the time. I thought, how lucky am I to have a big brother who knows how to hide me.”

“He was messing with you,” his dad said gruffly. “He did that when you were kids.”

It was true. Chris could remember lots of times when Tim had played some trick on him, gotten him to believe that he wasplaying a video game no-handed when it was a recording, made him freak out that there was a frog in his bed when it was a toy. But that wasn’t how he remembered this particular incident. It had really felt like it was him and his big brother against those kids, against the world. He would’ve done anything Tim said.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m still hiding,” he said.

His dad grunted, tipping his beer bottle toward Chris. “You just gotta find your drive for the game again,” he said. “It’s gotten you this far. It can take you the rest of the way.”

But that was the problem, Chris thought. The rest of the waywhere? To what?

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