“Well, that’s who I was calling to talk to, so how convenient.”
It was so easy to laugh with him, almost embarrassingly so. I turned the camera so it had more of Junior’s face in frame.
“Hey buddy, how was the can of fish tonight?”
Junior, predictably, said nothing, though did look at Barry on my phone’s screen.
“If he tells you I didn’t feed him, he’s lying.”
“Shhh, I’m talking to Junior,” Barry said, then lowered his voice. “Is she telling the truth, Junior? Did she leave you starving?”
“He’s purring in response, so take that as you will.”
“Okay, buddy, put your little sister on the phone. I don’t want her forgetting what her dad sounds like when he’s out of town,” Barry said. I was glad he couldn’t see the cheesy grin spread on my face as I moved the phone to point at my belly.
I hoped he wouldn’t mention that I was wearing one of his hoodies I pulled from his stuff.
“I can’t see her,” Barry whispered. I laughed loud enough that Junior shuffled off my side and to the foot of the bed before I pulled the sweater up to reveal some of my stomach. “There she is, hi little baby.”
The baby, predictably, said nothing, but Barry went on anyway, telling her he bet she was growing strong and smart—like her mom—and that he thought she was his good luck charm because he won the hockey game thinking about her.
“Okay, I love you, now put your mom back on,” Barry concluded, and I pretended that my heart wasn’t literally in a gooey puddle at all of this. I blamed the hormones.
I threw my leg over the pregnancy pillow and positioned the phone back in front of my face. “What can I do for you, Mr. Wright?”
“Please, Mr. Wright is my father. And all my brothers.”
“Sometimes online your fans call you BW33 but that doesn’t roll off the tongue, does it?”
“My fans,” Barry mused, and I rolled my eyes. “You been looking me up?”
“Jeremy sends me everything even tangentially related to you, so it’s against my will.”
“Right, right.” Barry smiled fondly through the screen, and despite my best efforts, I’m sure I looked just the same.
“Are you nervous to play Columbus again?”
“A little. First game back at the stadium is a bit nerve-racking. You don’t know if the fans will cheer or boo or meet you with indifference.”
“No way,” I said. “Jeremy said that people were hosting vigils for you after your trade. They’re obsessed with you. They’ll cheer and probably try to kidnap you back to the team.”
“Maybe,” Barry said and sunk lower onto his bed. He rolled over, and it was almost like we were facing each other. “I’ll meet up with some old friends, which I’m excited about.”
“Do you miss them?” I asked, then clarified, “The team, and the friends. Were you sad to leave?”
He thought about it a long while, just his breaths getting picked up by the microphone.
“I was,” he said finally. “Everyone’s always saying like ‘it’s a business, it’s not personal,’ but when you work somewhere for so many years, of course you get attached and of course it feels a bit personal. I was sad to leave.”
“Jeremy said you were captain.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you miss it?”
He thought about this, too, and I waited. I watched him chew on the inside of his lower lip, his jaw slightly ticcing as he did. “It’s an honor to be captain, I loved it. The mentoring and leadership weren’t a burden to me, but I took it harder when we lost.”
“Jeremy wants them to make you captain here, but I think they should let O’Neil keep it.”
