Jumping from my office chair, I sprint down the corridors and through the halls. I probably look like a mad woman, rushing to put out a fire that isn’t an emergency to anyone else but myself.
When I enter the Pistons’ southern facilities lobby, I’m swept up in a crowd of people. Players signing autographs. Employees bustling about, making sure everyone has what they need before they depart. It should be hard to find him, but it isn’t.
We’ve become like magnets, Sinclair and I. I can always spot him straight away; his presence is as known to me as my own breath.
Our eyes lock, mine violet and his blue. I want to go to him, tell him everything I’m thinking and express how much I want to … what? Stay together? Keep in touch? Beg him not to leave and just stay so we can figure this out?
I don’t get any of those options, though.
Because I watch as it happens. He opens his perfect mouth and then shuts it. Then his eyes go out, like the light they’ve held for me was just snuffed.
Sinclair raises a hand. In goodbye or cutting me off from whatever I was about to do, I’m not sure.
This is how we end it, though, I’m sure of that.
He’s dumping me. In the middle of a crowded lobby, without a single word.
Well, we’d have to be an actual couple for him to dump me.
That night, I’ll go home and cry into my pillow. And a month after he leaves, I’ll get the biggest surprise of my life.
17
Sinclair
She doesn’t ask me to stay. She doesn’t ask me to keep in touch.
In fact, I leave Florida without much closure from Frankie at all.
I could tell, in the lobby of the building with all of those people around us, that she was coming to talk about it. To finally have it out, have us answer once and for all what we were and how we continued it.
When it came down to it, I was a coward. I wanted to leave it, this perfect spring training fling that blossomed into something it was never supposed to be. I wanted to remember her and I as a spectacular shooting star, riding high on the best part of what we were to each other before it all burned out.
Because it would. I’d seen it happen time and time again. Especially to me. Even if I’d never been in love, everything I ever touched went to shit.
After her apartment that night, when she told me about her secret that brought us closer together than I’d ever thought possible, I’d made love to her. Real, true love. What we did that night was more intimate and sealing than any emotion I’d ever felt.
And it scared the shit out of me.
I didn’t want to, but I knew it would happen. I knew I would shut down, that I’d find some way to escape talking about it. Because I had no idea how to do this, not for real. And Frankie … fuck, Frankie is perfect. With all she’s overcome, how secure she is in her recovery and determined she is in her job? I’m nowhere near that. I’d only end up disappointing her.
So we didn’t talk about it. I actively tried not to bring it up. After all, we were never great at talking about our emotions.
Actually, we were when we weren’t overcomplicating it. I’ve told her things about me that I’ve never told another person. She dove deep into her backstory on how she recovered and got into the healthiest mindset of her life. Her talking about her own addiction helped me discover things about my own. Sharing that common bond, it brought us closer together. I fell for her in a way I’ve never, and will never fall for another woman.
But when it came to talking about our emotions where the other person is concerned, we’re cowards. Both trying to stick to the narrative that this was casual.
So I took the easy way out. I shrugged her off; I didn’t even have the balls to give her a proper goodbye. I’m an asshole. It’s as if my leaving Florida has turned me back into the rich, spoiled bastard I’ve always been. Frankie and I both saw the end of spring training coming like a nail in the coffin, the end of whatever it is that was happening between us.
So like everything else in my life, I bottle it up. I don’t talk about it. I wave goodbye to her on my final day at the facility, a lingering look the last interaction we have, and I board a plane home to Pennsylvania.
I have her number. She has mine. Either of us could have called, could have bridged the gap and gotten closure, or proposed long-distance or something. But she doesn’t. I don’t either. With each passing day, my heart splits down the middle a little further and a little further, creating a chasm.
For months, all I think about is Francesca Kade and wonder whether she’s thinking about me.
And wonder if I will ever grow the fuck up and go after the woman I love.
18
Frankie
Five Months Later
Packton, Pennsylvania sure is a far cry from Fort Myers, Florida.
It’s the thought running through my head as I pull up to the stadium in my beat-up Camry, which is now even more beat up from the days’ long drive I took to get up here.
Move up here, I should say.
Because you’re officially looking at the new assistant strength coach for the Packton Pistons. No more triple A, no more spring training. No, I’m in the big leagues now.
One of the full-time coaches went out on paternity leave and decided not to return in favor of spending more time with his family and running his own solo coaching business. And I like to think that Colleen Callahan thought of me. So, the open position due to a baby being born went to me. Which is ironic and hilarious, all things considered.
There is no Jorge at the front when I get checked in and no familiar faces as I walk through the massive front of the stadium. These halls are hallowed, and it feels more like I’m in the Colosseum than a baseball stadium. There is no game today, but since we’re in the midst of the playoffs, people bustle around setting up projects I’m not even aware of.
Finally, I make it down to the lower levels, where the weight room and my office are housed. I’m walking through the bowels of the stadium, mesmerized by the plain concrete walls. I haven’t even gotten to the major league field yet, stood in its center, and looked up at the sky, and I’m already in awe.
My hand is on the swell of my bump, palming it and rubbing my thumb over it.
“This is the big show, little boy,” I whisper, just in case anyone passes me in this hallway and thinks I’m insane for talking to myself.
I’ve been talking to my baby since the moment I found out I was pregnant four months ago. I don’t have many people in this world, and this little guy is about to be my whole universe. It was a shock. Initially crying hysterically, wondering what to do and how to alter my life, my reactions ran the gamut.
But then I’d gone to my first appointment. They squirted the cold jelly on my stomach and a whooshing noise and then an image had gone up on the black-and-white screen. And then there he was. My baby. His little heartbeat flickering on the monitor. At that moment, an utter sense of calm washed over me. From that point forward, I was his mother. There were no if, ands, or buts about it.
Me and him against the world.
Of course, there was another party involved. One who hadn’t bothered to call me in five months. Not even a text. I know we left things casually, or awkwardly, if you counted that wave. We mutually decided not to pursue more. But part of me always wondered why? Why had he brushed me off? Why hadn’t he wanted to talk, even to get closure?