I turned my gaze forward, focusing on the street in front of me instead of the candy store on the corner. There were too many memories of going in there and buying Big Chew Gum with Declan and heading to the baseball fields at the park. I couldn’t handle that this morning.
I took a large bite of the burrito and watched an elderly woman slowly cross the intersection. I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed Zeke, my agent.
The ringing phone echoed through the speakers as I waited for him to answer. He picked up on the third ring. “Gunner.” The background was filled with noise and lots of chatter until I heard a click and then it was just him. “What’d the doctor say?”
“I’m on my way to pick up my mom and then go to the doctor’s office. It doesn’t matter what they say though. I know what I want. Get me on the Austin Rattlers.”
“They don’t need a center fielder. They have one.”
“I’ll play right or left. I don’t care. Hell, I’ll be their designated hitter. Get me on that team. I need to be as close to my mom as I can this season.”
“She’s going to beat this, Gunner.”
I hit my fist against the steering wheel and raced through the intersection as the light turned green. I hadn’t even allowed the thought of her not beating this to pass through my head. “I know that, but I need to be here as much as I can. Austin is thirty minutes away. I can get to the stadium in forty-five minutes from my mom’s house. I want to be in Austin.”
He sighed. A rhythmic tapping started in the background. He hit his pen against anything he could when he was thinking. “You’ll have to take less money.”
“Like I give a fuck. It’ll still be enough to live on, still be more than I could probably spend.”
“It’ll be less than what some other teams would pay. Significantly less. Millions less.”
“I. Don’t. Care.” I enunciated each word carefully. “Find a way, man. I need to play closer to home. Please. I know they have a center fielder, but I’m better. I’ll ride the pine though. I’ll play backup.”
“You’re too good for that.”
If Mom knew I was having this conversation, she’d have my hide. This was the reason she hadn’t told me in the first place. We’d worked hard to get to this point. My fucking dream was right in front of me on a silver platter, mine for the taking. Every door was open for me. I’d gone into this off-season thinking I’d take it, but now I needed something different.
Every moment of my life had been leading up to this.
“I work to be as good as I am. I train and try to be better every day.” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and flicked the blinker with my other hand. “I worked this hard to have choices. You told me I would have my pick of teams this fall. My pick is the Rattlers. No one else. I need to be closer to home.”
Zeke sighed. “I’ll make some calls.”
“Thanks.” I hung up the phone as I swung into Mom’s driveway. She stood on the tiny porch of her tiny house. I’d have to duck my head to make it through the doorway and could barely turn a circle in her kitchen, but she’d loved every minute of living here.
When I’d entered the Major League, the first thing I’d wanted to do, when money was deposited into my account, was set Mom up in a nice house, have her retire, and let her live the rest of her days comfortably doing whatever she wanted to do.
She flat out refused and wouldn’t budge. She wouldn’t even let me buy this tiny house for her. She’d done it herself.
I got out of the truck and walked around the hood to open the door for her. She patted my cheek as she passed me. “I knew I did something right with you.”
“You did everything right.”
“What’s that smell?” she asked as she got situated in her seat. I shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side.
“Delilah gave me a couple of breakfast burritos and coffee. She says hi.”
I put my arm on the seats and turned my head to back out of the driveway, and I pulled onto the street to head out of town toward Austin. At the insistence of Mom’s general doctor, she went to see an oncologist in the city.
I looked at her out of the corner of my eye since she hadn’t answered me. She was turned toward me as fully as she could with the seatbelt restraining her and grinning like a damn lunatic. “What?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Delilah, huh? She’s the pretty girl from the inn, right? Have you been spending time with her?”
I shook my head, rolled my eyes, and groaned. I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face though. “No. I ran into her this morning. She and her son live close, I guess, and she saw me walking out this morning. Offered me a ride on the golf cart and then offered us breakfast.”
“She has a son?”
“Yeah.”
My mom clapped her hands. “Oh, if you fall in love with her, I could see you happy and with a little family. Nothing would make me happier. I do have cancer, you know. I just want to see you happy.”
I slammed on the brakes, coming to a halt at a yellow light, and turned toward her. “Are you seriously pulling the cancer card on me right now?”
She shrugged, unwrapping the burrito. “It’s got to come with some perks.”
“How can you joke about this?”
She looked up and reached across the console, cupping the side of my face. “Oh, my boy. This is when you should joke. Life is always going to throw its sickest curveball at you. You know this. Being able to laugh in the face of the heartache is the equivalent of hitting a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth during game seven of the World Series. Never stop laughing, even when it’s hard.”
My shoulders stiffened with tension as we pulled into the doctor’s office parking lot. Mom leaped from the truck as soon as I parked, but my movements were much slower as I put my feet on the ground.
I opened the front door for Mom and followed her inside the lobby. She quietly spoke with the receptionist as I looked around the space, inspecting every corner, nook, and cranny. The lobby was half full as women sat in chairs waiting for their names to be called. A few had scarves around their heads.
Will Mom lose her hair?
I turned my attention toward her and tried to inspect the thickness of it. Was it the same? Had it already started happening?
I ran a hand over my face and plopped down onto a couch. A man with his hand on the knee of the woman next to him nodded at me and gave me a grim, sardonic smile.
I nodded once and turned my gaze toward the window. Fall was turning the leaves bright red and yellow. I liked fall, but I always longed for the spring, when a baseball field was at its brightest.
Mom sat next to me. “Since we’re squeezed in between patients, I’m not sure how long Dr. Michaels will be able to give us, but you’ll be able to meet him.”
I cleared my throat and swallowed. My fingers played a fast rhythm against my knee. “How’s the wait when you come?”
“Not too bad, but sometimes it can be a bit. Dr. Michaels is highly sought after, so his days are full.”
“Are you Gunner Gentry?” I broke my gaze from Mom and turned toward the young voice. A little boy with an Austin Rattlers T-shirt stood in front of me with wide eyes.