The restaurant was a halfway point between the university in Lexington and my childhood home in Louisville. The drive was about an hour for each of us, but Dad was a busy man, as he so often liked to remind me. So shaving off time by meeting in the middle helped the occasional dinners actually take place.
This was how it had always been with my dad, and even more so after Mom died from cancer when I was ten years old. He raised me mainly with help from babysitters, but at least he hadn’t cast me aside. And he definitely could’ve because we weren’t related by blood. But he’d promised my mom he’d take care of me—and I’d realized soon after how much he regretted it. We were never close, but he’s been in my life since I was three, so really, he was the only father figure I knew. Some role model. He was constantly working and made tons of fake promises that I continued to fall for throughout adolescence. By senior year of high school, I’d turned rather bitter about the whole arrangement, even though I pretty much had free rein of my life—something any teen would want, right? Instead, I’d dreamed about what everyone else had.
But I couldn’t complain. Much. I was healthy, had a good education and a college scholarship. I had taken to baseball early on, and my last memories of Mom were of her sitting in the stands during Little League games. My stepdad would make it sometimes too, most likely to please her, but after she passed, the different teams I’d belonged to provided the only real sense of kinship I had. So I continued playing, if only to cling to some sense of normalcy. Plus, I was pretty darned good at it, even if sometimes I was my own worst enemy on the field.
My phone buzzed with a text, and I looked down, fully expecting it to be my stepdad canceling on me. But it was from Coach. Well, specifically, from his son, Kellan, who was the Pirates’ bat boy, a.k.a. unofficial clubhouse manager.
First team meeting of the season Monday at 3 in the clubhouse.
I’d anticipated the news. It was January, after all, and the season started end of February.
Cool. See you soon.
I usually had a snarky retort for Kellan, but I’d come to like the guy. Even went to bat for him in a vote to keep him on board last season after he’d confessed to screwing around with our team captain, Brady Donovan.
That had taken some guts. The kind I didn’t possess, so I fell pretty short where those two were concerned. I found their relationship both sweet and nauseating. Who the hell wanted to spend that much time together? I’d never felt that way about anybody. Though my friend Jasmine—guess that’s what she’d become—told me I was too busy sabotaging everything in an effort to protect myself.
One time we’d stayed up all night, talking about everything—well, almost everything. No way I’d put myself out there for someone I barely knew. But she’d broken through my defenses by recounting her own shoddy family situation, and we’d clicked. I wasn’t friends with many girls that I hadn’t already screwed around with, but she didn’t want anything from me, and that was refreshing.
And she might’ve had a point about this sabotaging thing. I certainly didn’t have many reliable people in my life.
Speaking of which. I grabbed a chip and shoved it in my mouth, vowing to only wait five more minutes. Some part of me thought I was doing this for Mom because Dad had loved her and given us a decent life, and it was hard to shake that sense of obligation, even eleven years later.
As I watched two men who looked pretty chummy enter the restaurant and sit at a table near me, I thought about the upcoming team meeting and being in the same space with Girard again. My chest felt tight. I hadn’t seen him since before the holidays, and I figured the distance would do me good. Help me get my head on straight. When Jasmine had told me she was bisexual, it intrigued me, making me wonder all kinds of things about myself. And Girard. Who happened to have a girlfriend.
Yeah, last season had proven quite an interesting one. We’d made it to the third bracket in the regionals—the lead-up to the big NCAA Division II World Series tournament that took place at the end of the season. I’d pitched pretty well, not that my stepdad would ever know if he hadn’t heard it from me. I’d give him a D for effort, but here I was again, waiting for him.
Just as I had that thought, Dad breezed through the door and sat down in the booth across from me. “Sorry I’m late.”
Story of his life. I no longer told him it was okay because when you stacked them all up, it wasn’t. I signaled to the server so we could finally order and get this obligatory family dinner over with.
Dad always went for the same thing anyway. Chicken soft tacos. Said they were better than at the places he frequented in Louisville with clients. Maybe that was why he tried to make a standing appointment here with me every couple of months. For the tacos rather than the company.
“How’s school?” he asked once the server had walked away to refill my soda and grab Dad a drink as well.
“Pretty good.” We’d just started back for the winter semester and, honestly, it was hard to believe I only had half a year left of college. Soon enough I’d have my degree in computer science, and I’d be looking for an IT job, so I wanted to enjoy this last stint of freedom, playing a sport I loved. I had no dreams of being drafted or asked to try out for any team, not like other diehard players. I was a good pitcher, even had some great moments, but we were a dime a dozen and plenty were better than me. Still, I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity if one ever arose. The idea of fading into oblivion after being part of a team sport for so much of my life made my stomach pinch uncomfortably, but hey, welcome to adulthood. Somehow, I’d figure it all out. Always had.
“Need any money?” Dad asked as he crunched down on a chip.
“No, I’m good,” I replied, knowing he’d be happy to pull out his wallet and throw more bills my way. It made him feel useful and maybe like he was doing me a favor, and I should’ve felt lucky that I’d never really struggled financially. But it also left a bitter taste in my mouth. “Baseball officially begins next week.”
“That’s nice,” he said distractedly, glancing at a text on his phone as the server placed our drinks in front of us.
“Yeah, it’ll be good to pick back up.” Though the dynamic of the team would be different again. Players graduated or got drafted and occasionally players became ineligible, so it sometimes took the first portion of the season to get the chemistry right despite our preliminary practices in the fall.
“It’s your last season. Better make it a good one.” He lifted his soda in a toast, and I awkwardly clanked his glass. No pressure or anything. Likely, though, he was just throwing out some random sentiment because he figured it was the right thing to say, not even realizing how the words might ring true.
“Still seeing Nina?” I asked as he smiled down at the screen. Obviously, he was, that much was evident. He’d dated regularly, aside from the time after Mom died—or maybe just hadn’t brought anyone around. But he’d been as devastated about her passing as me. He didn’t know I’d heard him sobbing the night after the funeral. I’d wanted to go to him, or for him to come to me to comfort and hold me. But that wasn’t the kind of relationship we had. Thankfully, his parents had been kind to me and made me feel less alone afterward. But they lived in Florida in a retirement community, and it wasn’t like they were blood relatives. Mom had never been close to her family, and I’d never met my biological father, so Dad had been the only one to claim me as his own. Which was another reason I showed up to these stupid dinners.