He stared at me for a beat before nodding. “You know, I get it. Of all people, I get it. But what if she’s the right girl and you let her go? You know how hard it is to find a chick who understands this lifestyle?”
It wasn’t like I hadn’t considered it before. The thought had entered my head on more than one occasion, but I usually filed it away for later. Much later. Baseball and the draft now. Christina and relationships later.
“I can’t think about that right now. I have to focus one hundred percent on the game. If she’s the one girl in the world I’m supposed to be with, then we’ll end up together, right?” It was some hokey, fate-like bullshit, but it was what I had to tell myself to move on and let go.
You always thought you had more chances with the sport you loved, more time to get better or to have a great season to prove them all wrong, but you didn’t. Time ran out for each one of us, and my time was currently sprinting toward the finish line.
“I want to argue with you, but look at me”—he waved an arm around us in a circle—“no girls in sight.”
That was why I had chosen to talk to Chance about this topic—because he not only understood it, but he also lived it. By choice.
“You plan on avoiding girls your whole life?”
He gave me a one-armed shrug. “You try growing up with Jack and Cassie Carter and tell me how excited you would be to meet girls after hearing all their horror stories.”
“Your mom’s hot as fuck,” I said before thinking twice, and his face twisted.
“Don’t say that shit.” He bristled.
“I wasn’t finished,” I teased, but he interrupted what I was about to say next and stopped me cold.
“Speaking of moms,” he started, and I felt my entire body tighten, “you never talk about yours.”
“ ’Cause she’s not around. Nothing to say.”
Chance’s expression shifted. “Is she dead?” he asked point-blank, and a guttural laugh escaped from somewhere deep within me.
“No, man. She’s not dead. My parents split up when I was ten. She met some rich guy online and moved across the country to be with him. She told me that a boy needs his father and took off. I used to see her a couple of times a year, but now, I don’t see her at all.”
It had hurt so bad at first, when my mom bailed. I remembered crying myself to sleep at night for weeks, wanting her to come back home. After a while, I’d learned to live without her, but it was to my own detriment. I knew that I was dysfunctional when it came to relationships since I’d never had a healthy one to learn and grow from. I had no idea how to do it right.
When I looked back, it wasn’t that my mom was even all that maternal in the first place, but she was still the only mom I’d ever known. A boy might need their dad, but we needed our moms too.
“And your dad never remarried or anything?”
I shook my head once. “Nah. I think she hurt him real bad when she left, but he never talked to me about it. I mean, I was a ten-year-old kid; of course, he wasn’t going to spill his guts to me. But soon after she was gone, he started burying himself in work. I couldn’t even be pissed because he started making a lot of money, and I never wanted for anything again.”
The second I said those words, I realized how familiar the concept was. I tended to do the same thing when I wanted to avoid overthinking about shit—buried myself in baseball and girls I had no feelings for.
“And the most ironic part was that my mom had apparently wanted more from my dad. Like, she wanted him to be more driven, more ambitious. Basically, she wanted him to have more money. And the second she left, that’s exactly what he did.”
“Karma?” Chance asked.
“Or something like it,” I said with a shrug.
“Did you guys stay in the same house?”
“Yeah. Can you believe that?” I asked, my tone a little incredulous. “Once I was older and realized what had happened between them, I tried to get my dad to sell. I told him we needed to move out of the memories and into someplace new, but he always said no and shut me down. End of discussion,” I said, swiping my hand through the air.
Chance stayed silent, and I had no idea what he was thinking. My mind spun as I started thinking about why my dad would want to stay in a place that caused him pain. We never talked about it.
“Your dad’s an electrician, right? I think I heard you say that once to Mac or someone.”
“Yeah,” I answered before subconsciously bracing myself for what might come next even though I should have known better. Chance wasn’t the kind of guy who would make fun of someone’s occupation.
Even though everyone else always seemed to talk shit or look down on blue-collar workers, I never truly understood why. Those were the jobs that were always needed, that people needed other people to handle for them. Not to mention the fact that my dad had brought in well over six figures every year since he started his own company, and we had a good life.
“How does he feel about baseball as a career? I mean, does he want you to go pro, or does he want you to take over the business?”
Chance and I were talking more about our family dynamics than we ever had before. Maybe it was the fact that Christina had come in and ripped open a part of my heart I’d thought was closed, or maybe it was a full moon or high tide or some shit. Who the hell knew?
“My dad,” I started to say before pausing.
My dad, as loyal and supportive as he was, always told me to make sure I had a backup plan. A plan B. The one thing he had done was pound me with stats about the number of baseball players in the country versus the percentage of them who actually got drafted into the minor leagues.
He acted as if I hadn’t already known this information. Every ballplayer knew that the reality of going pro was slim, but that never stopped us. We didn’t care if there was a one in a million chance of getting to play professional baseball; we still would go for it. That was the thing about dreams—you refused to give up on them, even when other people told you they couldn’t come true.
“Um, he loves watching me play, but he thinks it’s a pipe dream. He never says those actual words, but I can tell by the other things he says.”
“That sucks.” Chance grimaced.
“Yeah. Well, we all can’t have Jack Carter for a father,” I said, and Chance stood there, looking at me, clearly unsure of what to say.
“Having him for a dad hasn’t sucked,” he said quietly.
“Now, back to what I was saying about your mom before you interrupted me like a dickhead.” A cautious grin appeared on his face, and I continued, “Your parents met here. At this school.” I pointed down at the grass at our feet. “And here we are, on a girl strike.”
“What the hell is your point?”
I looked around the yard again before searching the house for her. Christina stood inside there with her friends.
“I don’t know. We can’t all be Mac, I guess,” I said as we both saw him still attached to some random chick’s face.
Chance exhaled a dramatic and loud breath. “Go talk to her already. You guys clearly have unfinished business. So, go figure out exactly what it is.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. It was like I had been waiting for his permission or some shit … someone to tell me it was okay to want her.