Page 88 of Wild Pitch
Out of an abundance of caution, the team physicians decree that everyone who’s down with the cold should stay home for a week to ensure that we fully recover, and don’t pass this along to the rest of the team.
It’s great. I haven’t had this much free time in years. Even during the offseason I’m too busy training to catch up on TV shows or whatever. I now know the name of every season winner of The Great British Baking Show. In theory, I should also be able to bake a very flaky pastry, but I don’t want to try. My expansive but empty kitchen feels sadder than ever, and I’ve been avoiding it with all my might. Just go in, quickly heat up leftover soup, and dash to my couch to keep watching the show.
Or to text Hope.
In my defense, she’s also been bored out of her mind now that she’s read her kinesthesia books and gone through every photo album at her dad’s place.
We FaceTimed once more, a couple of nights ago. Even though she sounded a lot more congested than the first day, and her features were more haggard, her eyes were as bright as two jewels as she told me about her mom.
“She had a total thing for skirts,” she said, openly amazed. “In every single picture she’s wearing one. The only exception was shorts at the beach in Margarita during their honeymoon.”
“What’s Margarita?” I asked, pronouncing it in such a Texan way that it made her laugh.
Once her amusement subsided, she said, “It’s an island in my parents’ home country. But anyway, seeing her pictures…” She trailed off to bite her lips, and I really struggled with focusing on her next words. “It just made me wonder how I would’ve turned out if she’d raised me.”
I remember having to sit up at that point, concluding that maybe lying down on my bed while talking on camera with the woman I have a thing for is probably not wise. At least going by the very red blooded reaction of my body to just seeing her bite her lip.
Fortunately, my brain replayed her words and they annoyed me enough to snap me out of the haze. “Why is there some implication that you turned out wrong?”
“No—well.” She shrugged, not noticing that the collar of her oversized T-shirt slipped off her shoulder. I did notice. “I might’ve just turned out girlier, is all. Then maybe the whole dating thing wouldn’t have been so hard.”
“Listen to me, Hope. There’s nothing wrong with you not being girly.”
“But—”
“Nuh uh. Don’t make me mansplain how wrong men are.”
That made her smile, which, with her hair wildly spread over her pillow, the bare little shoulder, the pink nose—shit, it did something to me.
A few more minutes of conversation followed and then we hung up for the night. And that was it. For over a day.
The problem is that she stopped responding to my texts two days ago and either she’s grown bored of me, or something’shappened. I’m annoyed at being so professional that I don’t have her roommates’s numbers to check in. I’m sure it’d look weird if I ask her boss for her digits. And if I ask Lucky and he does have it, I may blow a fuse.
So I wait for a whole day until today, my first day back to the facilities for light training. I speed walk across the parking lot and the building like it’s also going to accelerate time until I can find out if she’s okay.
“Welcome back,” someone from the back office says as I walk in, carrying my duffel bag.
“Thanks, Joe. Everything good with you?”
“Yeah, also survived the cold.”
“Good, good. Well I hope you have a good day.” Mentally I wince at my inability to be more eloquent, but I’m really in a hurry here.
“Take it easy, man. We really need you this season.”
That trips me up—literally. I manage to not faceplant by sheer athleticism alone. But dude’s already walking away, taking words that were usually said to Ben Williams with him.
“Huh,” I mutter. Shaking my head, I set course for the training area to see if I catch sighting of a certain Latina.
The second I walk into the locker room, I’m greeted with, “Hey man!”
“Welcome back.”
“Missed your pretty face, Starr.”
“I didn’t. Your face annoys me.”
The latter comes from Logan Kim, so I ignore him.
