AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Grinning, he grabs my hand and holds it against the leather console. “After attending a charity event where a ton of little ones were running around, she told me it was obvious I adored kids. I was worried—nah, worried doesn’t quite describe what I was feeling.” He widens his eyes. “I was freaking out that she had gotten the rules twisted.”
“Rules?”
“No overnights, no attachments.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Don’t judge. All of them were as career-focused as me.”
I can’t help but laugh out a big fat lie. “I’m not judging.”
“She told me that I was a settling-down type and that I should find a woman who would be my best friend and marry her.” He glances over at me. “How do you feel about that?”
Don’t feel, don’t think, don’t, don’t, don’t.
“I think your best friend, Nora, is too young to get married.”
He pulls my hand up and kisses the back of it while silently laughing. “I’ve missed you, Whit, missed us, this, so damn much.”
“I missed you, too, but we’re older now, and a lot has happened. I’m not the same person I used to be and?—”
He cuts me off with a laugh. “I can see you’ve changed. You’re all grown up. You’re Major League Whitley. You’re a MIL?—”
I cover his mouth. “Don’t you dare.”
The rest of the ride home was quiet. Quiet in the way that allowed the voices in my head to scream lies about how your dreams were always the same as his and how things could work out. I just hope those screams were unheard by Pope because the rational and logical part of me knows that it would never work.
I’m not the naive little girl who thought, one day, that boy would love me and he’d love me forever. He’s a major league baseball player. He has women around him who follow “rules” that the boy he once was would have never dreamed of setting.
John Paul carried Nora inside, up the stairs, grabbed her pajamas as I changed her out of her sweatshirt and little jeans, and tucked her in with me.
Outside in the hall with the door closed behind us, he whispered, “You think you could sneak out and come hang by the firepit? I’ll burn you some marshmallows.”
“I need to get some sleep. But thank you for tonight.”
He licked his lips, wetting them as he looked me over. “Understood.” He nodded toward the stairs and winked. “I could really use a shower anyway.”
I pretended I didn’t understand what he was alluding to, but I’m not sure he bought it because the temperature in the house rose ten degrees due to the heat that was being thrown from my face. He walked down the stairs, chuckling.
I stood at the top, listening to him talk to Popa B and Gram for long enough that I was sure I’d fall asleep.
Sleep wasn’t coming easy, especially after I received a text.
John Gregory Paul:
Goodnight. Sleep well, Whitley. X, JP
I held the phone to my chest and realized that Pope must have had everything transferred from the old phone to the one he upgraded when he decided to keep her number, because I can’t imagine he’d have put his full name in the Contacts.
Something I’ve had to work on all my life is not letting the way I perceive others’ feelings about me mold me into who I am. This has caused me to become acutely self-aware. I know that I have a deep need to understand things, including different people’s perspectives, and often spend way too much time contemplating why they feel or act the way they do. The day Bianca Paul told me that she felt sorry for my mother because she was missing out on the greatest gift a mother was given—the ability to watch me grow into an amazing and beautiful woman—was the day I adopted that same belief. This was also the day I got my period and felt like I couldn’t talk to Gram about it and the day Bianca took me into the city to have me fitted for my first bra, which, looking back, I know was way overdue.
This need to understand people sometimes causes me to have a tendency to dig deeper into things that might not be my business at all. And sometimes, like right now, I can’t rest until I find the answers. Right now, I have an overwhelming desire to know just what’s on this phone.
I tap in the code he gave me—1259—and make sure to avoid the Messages app because I don’t want him to know I read his good night message, but I do hit the Photos app.
My eyes immediately fill with tears when I see photos of Pope and Bianca. The way that he looked at her with such love and grief in those last few days is beautiful in the saddest way. I keep scrolling and see pictures of them at a few games she was able to attend before she got sick, and the pride in her eyes is exactly like it always was when she looked or even spoke of him. The most captivating thing about them was he looked at her in that same way. He was so proud of his mother and who she was. He loved her in a way you just don’t see many people loving a parent.
I scroll through and keep looking at the beauty that was Pope and his mother’s relationship, the same one I hope to build with Nora. I find pictures of Bianca at my college graduation, and the pride in her eyes for me is nearly the same. The high school graduation party in the empty lot beside their home, under a giant tent, two weeks before he left, one she and Pope had demanded would be both mine and his even though I didn’t really want one. The close-ups of him and me and ones of him looking at me when I was talking with Gram or one of the church ladies—and those, they are plentiful. And so are the ones of me watching him, one in which my lower lip is caught between my teeth. How embarrassing is it that she not only saw but captured that moment? Very, very embarrassing, so much so that I scroll back and increase the size of the ones where he’s looking at me to see if I can catch something as telling, but all I see is how proud he seemed of me. Then I see the one of us wearing our ball uniforms, and the number on both of our jerseys, 22.
