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I let go of my mug and fold my arms on the table. “Not really. Not in particular, at least.”
“Not … in particular.” He grunts. He loves—loves—repeating something I just said, then grunting. It’s his favorite fucking thing to do. He takes a page from the book of passive aggression where he earned a Degree in General Dickery.
My dad used to be my number one fan.
Don’t judge him too harshly for the prickish way he’s about to treat me. Really, he’s a compassionate man deep down.
Way deep down.
I sigh and turn my head, but still not quite facing him. “There something you want to say, Dad?”
Only the soft clicking and tapping of computer keys meets my ears.
“No, really,” I encourage him, speaking evenly. “You got the floor to yourself. But get it out fast because I’ve got a bud’s master bathroom to save.”
He grunts—which my mother does not kindly translate for me this time—and then I hear him shift in the office chair, which squeaks in protest under his weight. “Saving bathrooms? Is that your new … destiny? Is that your stellar backup plan?”
“Backup plan to what?” I counter. “To not quite making it to the major leagues? To my injury? To the end of my running legs?”
“Bullshit,” mutters my father, too unemotional in his anger to even raise his voice when he curses. “Your legs were fine. They healed just fine. You can run from here to Canada if you wanted. You chose not to.”
I’m out of my chair and facing him as fast as a blink. “The hell are you implying?”
“Wasn’t an implication. Was a direct statement.” His deadpan eyes, set over two bags and a mile of wrinkles, don’t even lift from his computer screen when his thin lips part to form his next words: “You gave up.”
He said those words the first night I got home after quitting the team. He said those words then and earned himself a front row seat to my ugly side.
And now he’s said them again. “Gave up …?” I snort and shake my head. “We’re really gonna go through this again?”
“You got two legs, two fine legs, and you gave up.”
What makes arguing with my father all the more infuriating is how his voice never raises. He never yells. He lets everyone else lose their minds arguing with him, then sits back and enjoys his sweet, deadpan victory while continuing to drone on and on in his tireless, effortless monotone.
“You think that’s how this works?” I ask him, throwing my hands up. “Really? Coach just … keeps me on the team, sees me running at 60%, and smiles and lets me slide? I never make it to the majors, but no big deal, I can keep going, being subpar, and everyone’s blissful? Does that sound like the real world to you?”
My father grunts.
“Yeah?” I keep going, my anger mounting. “Think he’s just going to watch my stats plummet, watch me get tagged out on half my runs around the bases … and just turn a cheek? Keep me on the team out of pity? That’s not how it works, Dad.”
“Your legs can do more than 60%,” he returns, as infuriatingly calm as ever. “With enough therapy, enough training, you’d be back to 100% or more. You gave up.”
“If you say I gave up one more time …”
“Sweetie, sweetheart …” comes my mom’s gentle voice.
I’m clenching my teeth and doing everything in my power not to knock that indifferent look off of my father’s face after saying a thing like that. I feel my muscles shaking.
Then a cramp racks my side and I grip the back of the chair I was sitting in to save myself from doubling over.
Fuck.
The more my muscles clench in anger, apparently the more I realize how badly I really was beaten last night. I feel it all over my body, random aches and tinges of pain.
And then I’m thinking of Ryan all over again, how he took me in and cared for me without question.
Caulfield. That fucking Caulfield.
“Of course,” murmurs my father placidly. “Giving up looks a lot like you. Back home. Fixing other men’s bathrooms. Going out drinking every weekend.”
“Ed …” cuts in my mom, trying to stop him.
“Is that your new path?” he asks. “Bar fighter? Bar boxer? Are broken noses and black eyes all we have to look forward to now?”
“My nose isn’t broken, and my eyes aren’t blackened,” I state through my teeth, knowing full well that that wasn’t his point.
My mom’s hand touches mine. When I look up, I gaze past her and spot Rudy standing at the foot of the stairs, half-slouched, with a basketball between his hands. He stares at us with a glassy sort of expression that I won’t call afraid. He’s not afraid of me. He just hates it when we argue.
