Page 63 of All Too Well
Everett chuckles. “I played baseball, but I threw out my shoulder three times during college.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
“It was, but the worst was the last time. I was a catcher, and if you can’t throw, you can’t do a lot of things.”
I do my best to school my features, because what the hell does throwing have to do with being a catcher? The job description is right there—catch.
“It sounds like a career ender,” I bluff, as though I have a clue about sports.
“It was and it wasn’t. I thinkIwas the reason it ended.”
“Why is that?” I ask.
Everett leans back and sighs. “I was in love with the sport. It was my wife, mistress, and only love. I didn’t care about anything else other than making it to the majors. Baseball is ... it’s hard to explain, but it can be the most amazing thing, and it can also destroy you. Most guys never see the MLB. They spend their best years fighting in the minors for a chance to bebrought up. Sure, there are those stories we see, but it’s not the norm. It was actually Hazel who helped. She sat me down after my last surgery and asked one question: Is this pain worth the possible price?”
“Good question.”
He nods. “Right. Immediately I was like, of fucking course it is. No one could tell me that baseball wasn’t worth every ache and pain I felt. Three days later, the doctor explained how I’d have loss of motion or strength for at least six months, and he didn’t think playing ball was going to be possible for at least a year. I knew at that moment there was no amount of work that was going to put me back in the running for playing professionally. I had a year left of college, and my coach allowed me to stay on the roster, so I kept my full ride, and I applied for vet school.”
His story is definitely not what I expected. “If someone had told me my junior year of college that my dream of being a journalist was no longer an option, I don’t know that I would’ve had the foresight to change gears so quickly.”
Hazel approaches with the bottle of aloe. “Don’t let him fool you. He didn’t handle it well. He went through a ridiculous party phase, drank himself to sleep for weeks.”
“She was there,” Everett adds on. “I wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for Hazel.”
I smile. It’s so clear the two of them deeply care about each other. “Friendships often save us when we’re at our lowest.” I try so hard not to let my mind drift to Lachlan and how hard it was after our rift, and while I don’t know Hazel or Everett well, I do know genuine kinship when I see it. “I don’t know why you two are upset with each other, but as an outsider, I would beg you both to take a good hard look and ask yourselves, if something happened to the other tomorrow, would this reason seem silly or worth the strain?”
Hazel looks to him and he grins at her. “Come on, Hazel, forgive me.”
She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “You were forgiven weeks ago. I just like seeing you sweat it out.”
He turns to me. “See what I deal with?”
“Yes, because you’re a walk in the park?”
“I’m like sunshine and rainbows.”
Hazel scoffs. “More like storm clouds and tornadoes.”
“All right,” I say, breaking it up before it becomes a hurricane. “I’m glad you’re both talking. Is Hazel why you came back to town?”
Everett shifts, and I wonder whether I hit a sore spot. “Partially. I grew up here, and my family moved when I went to college. After I finished school and became a veterinarian, I planned to stay in Texas, but the town needed help, and Hazel convinced me to give it a few months, and it’s been five years.”
“Can I ask one more thing about baseball?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Why did you deserve a full ride to college, because you could play sports, over someone else who planned to be a vet all along?”
He clears his throat and takes a second. “I didn’t. I just could play ball.”
thirteen
Lachlan
Today is the day.
It’s the day where I am going to annihilate these little college kids and show them that age is nothing but a number.
