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Allison had spoken about how much I’d changed Camden, but the truth was, he’d changed me too. So much of who I used to be was molding around him, and yet, it felt like nothing changed at all sometimes.
The universe had put us together. I liked that. If there was a such thing as a plan, he and I being together was certainly part of it.
I dozed off not long after, and when I woke up, I was being carried to bed. Camden had come home, smelling faintly like whiskey and smoke, and yet it didn’t bother me one bit. He laid me down gently on the bed and pulled down the covers to let me inside. A few minutes later, he curled around me, and I sighed, sinking off to a deep, happy sleep.
23
CAMDEN
“You ready?”
“As ever.”
“All right, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I grinned. “Bring it.”
The baseball zoomed at me at over ninety miles an hour. Graham may have lost the ability to play on a regular basis, but occasionally the man could still bring back a remnant of who he used to be. It was exhilarating for us as kids, and now as grown men, to face off against what we knew was a major league arm, but it usually meant one thing for us.
Failure.
“Outside, ball one,” Mark said from behind the plate after the ball smacked hard into his glove.
This was the way we had played as kids. One of us pitched for three innings, one caught during the same time frame, also acting as umpire. One of us would take the outfield, one would hang out around second base. It was chaos. There was almost never an actual play on the ball. There was no way one outfielder could make a play and throw to the one infielder and make a tag.
But it was fun anyway.
Oftentimes, I would be the second pitcher, being the only other one of us who was any good at that position. When we were in high school, I’d played as well, pitching on our varsity squad as a sophomore and junior. Senior year I ended up messing up my ankle on my drive leg right before the season and missed out on the whole year.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t playing for any other reason at that point other than to hang out with Graham and watch what was already becoming a special career from the inside.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Graham said as he held out the glove for the return throw.
“Nope,” Mark said. “Outside. By a hair, but outside.”
“All right,” Graham said, kicking the dirt on the mound of our old high school and peering down at Mark as he set up behind the plate. “Try this one.”
He went into his motion, left leg kicking out and sweeping around, then planting hard on the mound, his whole body jolting into movement like a rubber band being snapped. The ball screamed out of his hand, and I uncorked my own body, taking a big hack at it. Maybe I would hit it. Maybe I wouldn’t. But I was damn sure going to give it a try.
The crack of the bat was glorious, a perfect sound that immediately elicited memories of summers and beer and hotdogs and freshly cut grass.
“Shit!” Ryan said as he backed up toward the wall.
The ball was soaring through the air, and I flipped my bat dramatically as I skipped toward first, watching it fly. It landed just shy of the wall, deep in right field, and I turned on the jets as I rounded first. Victor went into short right for the cutoff throw as I rounded second, and I could hear them shouting. I hit the third base bag with zero intention of slowing down. I heard the smack of Victor’s glove as Ryan got the ball back into play.
I didn’t look. I dove. Landing hard on the dirt, I slid, and Mark’s glove slammed into my ass just too late as I crossed the plate.
“Safe!” Graham shouted. “Son of a bitch, he was safe!”
I lay there, laughing in exhaustion as I tried desperately to catch my breath. I hadn’t run the bases that hard since I was seventeen, and even then, an inside the park home run was enough to wear me out. At thirty-five, it was far, far worse. And yet, I couldn’t stop laughing.
“Holy shit, dude,” Mark said, sitting down heavily beside me, laughing himself. “You have a wedding to go to. Why are you going so hard?”
“Oh, man,” I said. “Everything hurts.”
“I bet,” Graham said. I looked up and saw the other two join us as well. Everyone was crowded around me.
“Dude, that was nuts,” Ryan said. “I thought for sure we were going to get you out. I was really proud of that cutoff throw.”
