Makes me smile.
I pick out a schedule of classes for the fall semester, filling in the sheet with my choices. It’s more of a symbol than anything because I’ll have to do it all online. When I write the date at the top, it makes me pause. I’m eighteen. An adult. I wonder if it’s why I feel different, or if I feel different because I’m about to change my future.
He’ll disappoint you.
Mom’s words hover in the back of my head. That’s fear talking. Her fear. Okay, and maybe mine. But today is special for more than just my birthday. Today is also Garrett’s last lesson with Kyle Masters. I can stop worrying about him miraculously getting his arm back.
A moment comes to me from a few nights ago. A moment I know I’ll replay a million times. We were at Garrett’s. We were sitting so close I could only see pieces of his face. The soft skin beneath his eye. The bumpy curve along the inner part of his ear. The stray hairs at the end of his eyebrow.
We’d been kissing. Soft, light kisses that had no end and no beginning. Kisses like breaths…like breathing…like heartbeats. When he pulled back for air, there was a long minute when we just looked at each other. Everything I felt swelled inside of me—so many feelings I didn’t know what to do with them.
“I love you, Josie.”
I closed my eyes, still not comfortable hearing the words.
“Hey,” he said, his thumb brushing across my lips. “I’m not going away just because you close your eyes.”
Maybe that was the moment I started to believe that he really wasn’t going anywhere.
I haven’t said the words to him, but I almost did then. I’m not sure what stopped me—maybe I’m as superstitious as a ballplayer. If I said the words, what if it jinxed us? Which makes as much sense as thinking a blue Gatorade will help you hit home runs. So today is the day.
Today is the day for a lot of things.
The clouds have burned off and it’s sunny when I start the walk to school. It seems like a million flowers have bloomed overnight, or maybe I never bothered to really look. Today the world feels different. I’ve got the schedule in my hand and I want to show it to Garrett first thing. Then we’ll hug and he’ll kiss me and there will be a rainbow overhead and a choir of unicorns will sing Hallelujah. I laugh to myself. Ciera and the other kids wouldn’t doubt it for a second.
Garrett has never told me what kind of exercises Masters has him doing, but I’m guessing quick-hand and bucket drills. So I’m surprised when I reach school property and hear the crack of a ball hitting a bat. Is Garrett throwing live pitches to a hitter? Has he progressed more than I thought? More than I let myself think?
My heart in my throat, I cross the parking lot. It’s empty except for Garrett’s black Hyundai and a white sedan I’m guessing belongs to Masters. They’re on the far practice field, and I have to walk past the main field to reach them. Fences are in my way. Then the dugout. But I can hear the bat.
He promised to tell me if he was making progress. He promised.
I round the last corner, and the field is in clear view. I stop, my mouth falling open in shock.
Kyle Masters is standing on the mound. He’s feeding balls into a pitching machine set up beside him. The guy in the batter’s box, the guy in gray baseball pants and a black tee, wearing batting gloves and a helmet, the guy grinding his foot in and sinking into his stance, is Garrett Reeves.
My boyfriend.
He isn’t trying to make it back as a pitcher. He’s trying to make it back as a hitter.
Chapter Forty
I watch, frozen, as a ball shoots out of the machine and curves over the middle of the plate. Garrett swings—and misses.
Automatically, I scan the field. My baseball brain is still working while the rest of me is stunned. I note the balls scattered across the field. Most of them were either hit shallow or lie in foul territory. The largest number of balls is piled up along the backstop, meaning Garrett never made contact. My eyes narrow as I watch him prepare for another ball. Wide stance. Weight loaded onto the back leg.
Another swing and another miss.
Good! I’m sickened by how glad I am. The other emotion gaining strength by the second is anger. He lied to me. Let me think he was trying to pitch again. Let me worry about the damage he was doing to his arm. And all that time he’s been working on his hitting? My pulse beats hard and fast, staccato punches of fear matched by a pounding in my head. The chances he could make it back as a pitcher were never good.
But as a hitter?
It’s an easier path to the game for him. Most pitchers start out as hitters, but once you get to high school, coaches take the bat out of your hand and you focus only on throwing. Pitchers only, they’re called. Like Garrett. That doesn’t mean he didn’t know how to hit. Or he couldn’t hit.
He whiffs a third ball. Barely gets a piece of a fourth.
He’s missing. He can’t hit the curve.
My breath calms as I study him more closely. My father might be a self-centered ass, but he was also a damn good hitter. And now, he’s a damn good hitting coach for a minor league team. In one way or another, his skill with a bat
