AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Too soon. Sorry.”
“Max,” Sutton’s voice is small, weary, almost as if she’s crying, and I wish more than anything that I could just hold her. “I really am glad you’re okay.”
“I am. Iwill be.” Honestly, I’m surprised this is the first time I’ve landed myself an injury like this. I’ve been pitching since I was eighteen and now I’m pushing forty, it was only a matter of time, and as the game changes and evolves I’ve had to do the same as a pitcher. My mechanics have changed over the years, my velocity has had its – literal – ups and downs, and this is the price I pay for changing with the game. “I’ll be even better when the season ends.”
After ending the call with Sutton, I pull up a streaming service to watch the end of the Olympians’ game, a shutout at the hands of the Pittsburgh Bridges. Pittsburgh has taken the last two games from the Olympians and will go in tomorrow looking to sweep, which is what needs to happen in this apartment.
Living with Luca for the last few days has been an eye opening experience. In the clubhouse and on road trips he’s put together and appears to be tidy, but in the apartment there’s a fifteen foot blast radius of laundry, shoes, and personal belongings. We don’t have a lot in this apartment – a bed in each room, a sofa, and a table with two chairs – which is fine, because we spend the majority of our time at the stadium, but everywhere I look I can see where Luca has been. I do my best to contain myself and my few things to my room, this temporary home until the end of the season, or sooner if this elbow doesn’t heal.
I’ve prepared myself for that possibility.
I’ve prepared myself to end this season, my career of nearly twenty years, in a way that I couldn’t control. It’s not what I wanted. It’s not how I planned to go out, but baseball – as has been proven over the last few days – will break your heart every time. You can’t plan it. You can’t control it. Because even if you know what pitch is coming, you still have to swing. I swung. And I missed. Which was the story of my high school days, and why my coach put a ball in my hand and told me to pitch.
I stunk.
But I was sixteen and I was still learning. And I’ve been learning ever since.
It didn’t matter that I was at the bottom of my draft class because I’d been drafted, and that’s all that mattered to me at the time. I put in the work to climb through the ranks, to prove myself, and earn my place in the big leagues. If this is how it ends, there’s nothing I can do about it.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Coach Davis,” the door to the apartment bursts open and Luca walks in with arms laden with bags, the smell of food follows him into the room, “it’s that we wallow with comfort food. Tonight, my friend, calls for comfort food.”
Luca puts one whole bag in the freezer before spreading the contents of the others on the small dining table in our makeshift dining “room”.
“Honey garlic, General Tso’s, sweet and sour,” he opens each container with a flourish. “As well as shrimp fried rice, white rice, and your choice of chicken or shrimp eggroll.”
“Sutton would have probably preferred that you learned something about hitting from her, but right now, I’m not complaining.”
“I learned that, too,” he tosses a smirk in my direction. Ihaven’t seen this look from him since we got here, and it’s good to see him back to his somewhat usual self. “But you need this more than you need me telling you that you do something funny with your back foot when you swing and that’s why you hit so many foul balls.”
“Shut up,” I can’t help but laugh. “I don’t hit anymore.”
“And we’re all the better for it.”
With our comfort food we also find a movie to watch – a baseball movie that ends with both of us sniffling and wiping away tears as the screen fades to black.
“That one gets me every time,” Luca says as he sits back down beside me and passes me a pint of ice cream. “When the sisters reunite in the museum and they all sing the song? Thereiscrying in baseball.”
“Or,” I sniff back tears of my own, “when the army messenger shows up just before the game.”
“Not to equate the gravity of that scene with your trade, but how are you and Sutton and holding up? That timing was awful.”
“We’re okay.” I answer, giving my words some thought. “But man, I miss her.”
“Yeah…” he says, eyes on the television as the credits continue to roll. “I know that feeling.”
“You want to talk about it?” I venture to ask and am surprised when he says yes.
“I was an idiot in college,” he slumps into the couch and leans his head against the back, closing his eyes as he turns his face toward the ceiling. “I proposed to the girl I loved just before I was drafted.”
“That doesn’t sound stupid,” I tell him, not sure how to comfort the man beside me but knowing that he needs…something. “That sounds…romantic.”
“ I wanted it to be. We went to our favorite restaurant, hadour favorite meal and the fanciest dessert I could afford at the time. And when I asked her the question…” His face falls and the air in the room changes. “She said no.”
“Luca, I’m sorry.”
“The next day, I left for the baseball draft.”
“And what about her?”
