Page 3 of Lines We Cross
Dad heaved out of his recliner to standing. “Come on. Let’s get you unpacked.”
* * *
With a home-cooked meal sitting in my belly, I almost felt a sense of calm wash over me. I said almost because no amount of Mom’s home cooking could make me forget about Coach waiting for my phone call with a return date.
I was used to feeling pressure. Every day on that baseball field and every day in preparation for being on the field came with a mix of fun and stress. Baseball, God willing, would always bring me joy, but playing professionally brought its own set of responsibilities. Coaches were always watching you play, tallying your stats, logging practices and workouts, fans expected signings and press conferences. And the social life. Man, did the social aspect really highlight the ebb and flow between fun and stress.
I’d been to enough parties to last me a lifetime. Women throwing themselves at me, investors promising all kinds of zeroes on the checks under the table in exchange for using my image, rabid fans posting their sly cell phone pictures on social media when I was unaware of their presence. It all wore you down. Made you jaded.
But despite all the downside, the upside far outweighed all the crap. I couldn’t wait to get back out on that baseball diamond and throw the ball around. The feel of the leather and lace beneath my fingertips. The scent of the freshly cut grass. Moving my body like the powerful machine it was and feeling on top of my game.
The problem was I couldn’t see a way for that to happen.
The doctor had told me I had a twenty-five percent chance of making it back on the field. Twenty-freaking-five percent chance. I’d lived and breathed baseball my whole thirty years on this planet and now all that was in jeopardy.
Seemed like a curse. A life sentence.
What kind of life could I have without baseball?
I flopped back on my bed in my old bedroom. Mom hadn’t changed a thing since I lived here as a kid, except for cleaning up and dusting my trophies every now and then. The mind trip added to the pressure around my skull. Being home brought back its own demons. Things I needed to face. People I needed to face. And especially the one person not here anymore.
Emerson.
Thoughts of Emerson brought up memories of the five of us. The Nickel Heads. My band of brothers. Emerson, Ryder, Heath, Jase, and me. Ruling our high school and making a pact on graduation day: to remain brothers for life. The second half of the pact I hadn’t taken seriously, but now that I was here, I remembered it with startling clarity.
A surge of hope pushed back my dark thoughts and had me sitting up. My phone was somewhere in the mess I’d dumped on the floor to be sorted through later. I dug around until I had it in my hand, ignoring the social media notifications and text messages that had come in since I put it on silent early this morning. Nothing I couldn’t get to later.
I pulled up a text thread that had gone silent over the years.
A huge grin tugged at my face and I took delight in blowing that bad boy up.
Max:Time to make good on our promises, boys. Meet me in Nickel Bay. Don’t make me chase you down. I got time on my hands and more energy than I know what to do with.
I lay back on the bed and pillowed my hands under my head, waiting for the responses to roll in.
Time to face the past.
Time to right some wrongs.
2
Skylar
“Ice that ankle again tomorrow, Marni, and for goodness’ sake, stay home from the gym this week.”
I waived to my last patient of the day, locking the front door to my clinic behind her. Marni was your typical health nut middle-aged mother who thought she was still twenty. Hit the fitness classes at the gym after dropping the kids off at school and then went on a rigorous hike, all in the same day without even stretching beforehand. It had caught up to her finally and we were trying to undue years of damage that could have been prevented. People like Marni, along with our high school athletes, kept me in a nice-paying job, so I didn’t complain.
I made my rounds, wiping down equipment with the antibacterial spray, even though I was sure my assistant already did it all before she left for the day. A boss’s job was never done, not when said boss required perfection in everything.
When people got sloppy, that’s when mistakes were made. Work hard and you shall be rewarded. All mottos I lived by and believed in wholeheartedly.
When the streetlights flickered on, I put the rag and spray away, shutting off lights and grabbing my things from the tiny office in the back. My personal space might be small, but I’d made it cozy with pale blue walls, thick carpet, and a desk made from real driftwood. It was an office I could be proud of.
Just like every evening, I took a quick glance over the schedule for the next day, familiarizing myself with which clients were coming in and what I needed to be prepared for. I didn’t get on the map of high-end physical therapy clinics on the West Coast that got consistent results by being complacent.
A simple name, marked down for ten o’clock the next day, in black ink had my knees buckling, a reaction I didn’t particularly care for. My ergonomically sound chair caught me in its perfectly aligned embrace.
Max Duke.
