Page 1 of Lines We Cross
1
Max
Wasn’t every day you had to move back in with your mom and dad a broken man.
I flicked a glance in my rearview mirror, my eye catching on the cardboard boxes flapping in the wind as I zoomed down the highway. I hadn’t packed up my entire house, as evidenced by the lack of furniture, just everything that would fit in my truck. An interesting load for a guy who was only going home for a short visit. A simple suitcase would have sufficed, yet anyone looking at the packed bed would think I was moving.
Even the thought made me shudder.
I’d come home to Nickel Bay on occasion throughout the last twelve years, enjoying all the small-town charm my hometown had to offer, and knowing I was headed back out on the road immediately after.
I hit a particularly large pothole, jostling my knee and sending a shooting pain all the way to the ends of my hair. My mind loved playing professional baseball for the San Francisco Niners, but my body said otherwise these days.
I was at a crossroads. Not literally on this little road trip, but certainly metaphorically. I’d taken a rough hit two weeks ago as a Slider came into the base like his pants were on fire and only my glove could put out the flames. I needed immediate surgery on the torn tendons and the prognosis was grim. But what my coach didn’t know didn’t hurt him. I’d find a way to rehab and be back at it by the end of the season.
The innocent steering wheel took a blow from the palm of my hand. The anger was back, a slow simmering heat that settled in my gut like it intended to stick around awhile. Thirty years old, at the top of my game, and taken out by a slide into third. This couldn’t be the end of my career. I wouldn’t let it.
My exit was just ahead, a small road that intersected the highway and meandered like an old lady puttering through her garden, no particular destination in mind. I made my turn and slowed my speed, taking in all the familiar landmarks, soothing my anger with scenes from my childhood. The dilapidated red barn perpetually on the edge of being swallowed by the dry brush growing around it. The hairpin curve where Jimmy lost control of his truck back in high school and rolled it, taking out the guardrail and very nearly ending his life. And finally, the Welcome to Nickel Bay sign, sporting a new coat of slate blue paint and the picture of a lighthouse shining like a homing beacon.
My chest ached and I found myself smiling. I hit a button and all the windows rolled down, letting in the balmy air and hitting me in the face with a smell I recognized soul deep.
Home.
Familiar houses came into view, slight differences in their appearance over the course of the years, but remarkably the same. Another turn and the baseball field stretched out before me and something clicked into place in my chest. I’d spent thousands of hours on that field, honing my skills and earning myself a spot on a farm team right out of high school. It looked smaller than I remembered, the backstop fence rustier than memory served.
All too soon, I was zooming by the football field. The exact spot where I kissed Skylar Rae after graduation drew my eye as if there was a spotlight shining down from the heavens to illuminate the blades of grass that had witnessed the fleeting moments I’d let go of all inhibitions to go after what I wanted. Harder to bat those memories away when you were looking at the field where it all happened, the feel of her lips and the smell of her apple-scented lotion stirring something better left alone. That was the past and I should leave it there.
I ripped my gaze away and focused straight ahead, seeing the main drag through town coming into view. I hit the stop sign and made the slight bend left, slowing down to a crawl on Nickel Bay Road, needing the time to take in the changes to our little downtown area, but also looking to dodge under the local police radar. In years past, they’d been known to pull over out-of-towners and prodigal sons alike just for the fun of it. A warning of sorts—this was Nickel Bay and you better just bend to our rules the second you breathed our air.
Unfamiliar storefronts hit like a sledgehammer of guilt. I hadn’t been back for a couple years, the stints between visits getting longer and longer. Mom and Dad nagged me constantly to come home more often, but there was always something calling me away. When I told Mom three days ago I planned to come home and stay awhile she hung up on me. Crazy woman thought I was playing a joke on her and didn’t take kindly to it.
I chuckled out loud in my quiet truck. No one was around to hear me cracking up all by myself as I cruised down the street. Mid morning on a Tuesday was not the normal time for everyone to be out and about in Nickel Bay. The fishermen were long gone, the kids off to school, and the mothers were probably all at the grocery store or dashing inside shops running errands.
The next stop sign had me turning left again and getting closer to home as the road sloped down. As soon as the old house came into view, I hit the brakes right there in the middle of the road and leaned over my steering wheel to take it all in. The guilt amplified and turned nostalgic. Memories rushed through my brain, the sharpness of them having dulled with extensive time away. I hadn’t been home to pull the memories out and rehash them over a dinner table with loved ones or over a bonfire with friends. The memories had gotten dusty over time, stuck in the back of my brain, no longer fresh and vibrant. I wondered if any more time had passed if I would have remembered them at all.
I ran a hand down my face, scraping against the week-old beard and feeling older than I had in a long time. I was only a boy when I left at eighteen, but I was coming home a man. And a broken one at that.
I put the truck in gear and pulled into the driveway, careful to exit the vehicle with my knee in mind. It lay strapped in an immobilizer and was therefore almost impossible to move. Like a lead weight two-by-four I had to swing around and hope for the best. Add in the constant pain and it became downright vexing.
I laughed again, shaking my head at both thinking the word “vexing” like a country bumpkin within minutes of hitting Nickel Bay town limits, and laughing out loud to the jokes in my head. Without a baseball to swing or a ball to throw, I was losing my marbles remarkably fast.
“Max?” A shrill voice had me turning quickly and wincing when I put too much of my weight on my bad knee.
Mom stood there on the little porch, her hands clasped under her chin and her eyes suspiciously wet. A smile tugged at my lips. I may not want to be back home under the circumstances, but I was damn happy to see my family again.
“Hey, Mom,” I called back, limping my way to the porch. If I could have hid the limp from my parents, I would have to save their worry, but immobilizers were impossible.
She rushed down the steps and hugged me, careful to stay away from my leg, already fussing over me like a mother hen. She straightened my shirt and swiped at my cheek.
“Oh, look at you. You said it wasn’t a big surgery. But yet here you are in a full leg cast and coming home to visit. You be straight with me, young man. What’s going on?”
She put her hands on her ample hips, her blonde hair now completely gray and short in a spunky hairstyle I’d never seen before. She’d been blonde as far back as I could remember, even though I knew most of it came from a bottle. Life had gone on without me. The change in my own mother was startling.
“Well, hello to you too, Mom. How about we get into the house before we start reminiscing, huh?” I put my arm around her and tugged her into my side, looking down into those eyes that twinkled when I teased her.
“Oh, you little devil. Get in here and we’ll have your father get your boxes put in the garage. That man could use the exercise, but you didn’t hear it from me.”
Mom bounded up the stairs, her endless energy a frequent topic in our household. Her family was from Russia, and though Mom had mostly grown up in California, she still had an accent on certain words. She also claimed her robust health came from her Russian ancestors. We thought it came from all the matchmaking she attempted on the good citizens of Nickel Bay.
