Page 2 of Fielder's Choice

“Life dealt you a shitty hand recently,” Cole says. “But maybe this is your chance to start fresh. Maybe this is what you need to move forward. To be the best dad you can be to your child.”

“Maybe. At least I have time to figure out what I’m doing, right? Got a whole seven months or so until the baby is here.”

Maybe if I keep telling myself that I’ll figure out how to do this, I can make myself believe it.

one

Olive

“Iamcourageous.Iam loved. I am not my trauma.”

The words I’ve repeated to myself again and again for the past five years.

Some days, I believe them.

Some days, they feel hollow.

Today is the latter.

“Again, Olive,” my therapist says.

I’ve been seeing my therapist, Corinne Holland, for five years. I should’ve started seeing her sooner—my “trauma” started a year earlier. But I was seventeen and scared to open up.

I feared what people would think of me when they discovered what happened. I thought everyone would have the same reaction as my so-called friends.

But that year of waiting fucked up the rest of my life, taking things from me that I’ll never be able to get back.

It’s still hard to come to terms with that.

“I am courageous. I am loved. I am not my trauma.”

“Don’t ever forget that, Olive,” Corinne smiles. “You are so much more than what you’ve been through.”

“I’ve been getting better about that,” I admit. “Some days are still hard.”

“Unfortunately, you’re always going to have days like that. There will be times when all the memories come flooding back from triggers you didn’t expect. Those are the times when your support system is the most important.”

“I know,” I breathe. “My mom has been getting good at figuring out when I’m feeling like that. If she can’t help me, she’ll have my dad, sister, or brother help.”

“How has the past month been with you being back at the studio?”

The studio.

The studio I refused to step foot in for almost six years.

Finch Ballet Company, owned by my mother, Eileen Finch. She spent ten years as a ballerina in the New York City Ballet before opening the studio when she was twenty-eight so she and my dad could focus on starting a family.

My sister, Violet, was born a year later, and my brother, Harvey, was born two years after that.

I was the surprise baby eight years after Harvey was born.

I’m also the only one of us kids who had the same interest in ballet as our mother. I was dancing around the studio from the moment I could walk. My mother trained me well, and I had a promising future as a ballerina, following in her footsteps.

Until I was seventeen.

Thenithappened, and I shut down.

I became a recluse, hiding out in my bedroom and not talking to anyone, even my own family. I dropped out of high school. I spent all of my time alone, keeping everything to myself.

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