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“It’s hard to say. They look good right now, and with Max’s arm and Luca’s bat, they probably have a shot at clinching a playoff spot but it’s too early to tell.” I don’t know if I’m trying to convince Sam or myself. There’s a lot of truth in what I said – itistoo early to know, but there’s still at least the glimmer of a chance. “Now we just wait and see.”
“I guess so.” Sam shoves his hands back in his pockets and glances up the street and then at the house behind me. “If you and Elise need anything, let me know.”
“We will. Thanks, Sam. And hey, I know Max was supposed to help at the adoption event on Saturday morning, so I will be there in his place before I go into work.”
“Thanks, Sutton. See you then.”
Fortifying myself with a deep breath, I pick up my bag and walk up the driveway to the house, slipping my key in the lock and pushing open the heavy wooden door. The house is silent but for the whisper of the television in the back room where I find Elise on the couch watchingOn The Fieldand their coverage of today’s games and trades. She turns to me with puffy red eyes and tear streaked cheeks and when I sit down beside her and wrap her in my arms I let myself cry again.
“Did you get to talk to him before he left?” Elise sniffles against my shoulder, arms still wrapped around me.
“Yeah,” I respond with a humorless laugh. “I made a little bit of a scene in the clubhouse. We were mostly alone, thankfully. And then he wrote me a note and passed it through Nico. That somehow hurt worse than what he said before he left.”
“What did he say?” Elise jolts to a sitting position, fire burning in her eyes. “If he broke up with you, I swear to –”
“No! No,” I calm her down as best I can. “He told me he loves me. Which I already knew, and I love him too, but at that moment ‘I love you’ was the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
“What did the note say?”
I take the small piece of paper from my pocket and carefully unfold it, passing it to Elise who gently takes it from me.
“WWMD?” She says, a mischievous glint in her eye.
“What would…Maxwell…do?”
“He’d take this to the nearest tattoo parlor.”
“No way,” I immediately protest, scooting away and putting distance between us. “No needles.”
“I’m just saying, it’s how we Harrison’s process the big emotions and life events.”
“You too?” I gasp as Elise starts to lift her hooded sweatshirt over her head, revealing the tank top underneath andvibrantly inked shoulders that I’ve only gotten brief glimpses of before tonight. Her right shoulder looks like a paint splattered galaxy with stars and constellations fading across her chest into what appears to be…formulas of some kind? “What is all of it?”
“I’m not as sentimental as my brother…” she trails off as we both laugh, “so mine don’t have as much meaning as his.”
Pointing to her right shoulder she says, “I like the night sky….” And trailing a finger across her chest to her left shoulder and the jumble of numbers and letters that I recognize but can’t make sense of, “...and I’m a physicist. This is the formula for gravity. I got it when my divorce was finalized.”
“I thought you weren’t sentimental.”
“I’m not, these are both acts of rebellion against a husband that didn’t want a wife, but rather someone he could control. Gravity can’t be controlled.”
The more I get to know Elise, the more I stand in awe of her strength and resilience. She credits Max for getting her out of the situation she was in, but she had to do a lot of work on her end to make it happen, and that is a testament to the woman sitting in front of me.
“I was going to go Saturday, but my usual place takes walk-ins. We could go on your next day off.”
“You’re serious aren’t you?”
Elise grins.
Elise is lounging in a chair at the back of the parlor, feet crossed at the ankles, looking relaxed as she chats with the artist who is deftly inking the quick sketch that Elisedrew out before we left. She turned a baseball into a comet, the tail of which is the equation for velocity. She said it makes sense since her brother is a pitcher. She’s having it added to the galaxy on her right shoulder.
Meanwhile I flinched when Antonette, my artist, prepped my arm with the rubbing alcohol. She warned me that the location I picked for my tattoo might hurt and that I should probably pick a new place for it, but I’m determined. And too afraid that if I change my mind I’ll chicken out. So once the inside of my forearm is prepped, I squeeze my eyes shut and Antonette gets to work.
“Elise,” I call out as I catch my breath and Antonette takes a break after the first half of the tattoo. “Convince me that I’m not going to regret this.”
“I’d say it’s too late for that,” she calls back from her chair. “But no, I don’t think you’ll regret it. Even if my brother is an idiot and you dump him, it’s still a good reminder.”
She’s right. It is a good reminder. A reminder to live boldly and without fear. Something I have a feeling Elise has been trying to do more of herself. Something I’ve been trying to do since joining professional baseball.
