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She frowned. “You didn’t know anything in your life was bad until someone told you,” she said, sounding so sad I squeezed her hand back. She was quiet for a little, still frowning to herself as her mind visibly worked. “So she never got better. She just had Holland to make up for how much she resented having to take you in.”
“Yeah. Made sure that was her perfect baby. Her ‘real’ baby.”
“She did not actually say that.”
“When I was younger, yeah, but by the time Holland was older, she stopped. The only thing worse than having to take me in were people knowing her son was a homeless kid. We moved to a new town and a bigger house before Holland was born.”
“Did you keep in touch with your mom and Cole?” she asked.
“My mom, yeah,” I said, feeling her wilt a little against my chest.
“But not Cole.”
I shook my head. “I wanted to. But he wasn’t coming to the phone as much after awhile. After things got harder for them and I wasn’t there for it, he just got distant. And resentful. He knew what my new house looked like. How big it was. He thought I was just living it up over there, and he didn’t get why we couldn’t all live there together. All he wanted to ask when I called was if I was coming back yet. He didn’t get that I had to wait for our mom to get on her feet. To save up some more and get an apartment. He thought I just liked my new life better.”
“But he understood better once he got older, right?” AJ asked.
“I think so. But it didn’t really matter. I wasn’t really relevant to his life anymore. I was just the lucky one who got to get out while he lived a hard life where I know…”
I trailed off, and the time that elapsed after the first half of my sentence felt like forever. I looked out at the colors of the sunset shimmering on the pool. At the changing sky. I felt AJ nestle closer into me and whisper, “You know it’s not your fault.”
I nodded, and in my heart, I knew it wasn’t. But I still didn’t agree.
“I know he saw things and went through things that he shouldn’t have,” I finally finished. “He used to be the little brother I took care of a
nd suddenly he had to grow up really fast by himself. He was in eighth grade when he had to fight off grown men who hurt my mom,” I said, clearing my throat, because my words were choked as I tried to imagine Cole at that age based on the school pictures Mom sent. He didn’t look like someone who could fight off a grown man. But apparently he was. Because the way I did before I left, he looked out for Mom. Made it his job to protect her. “Wherever they were, he slept on floors to let my mom have the couch or the bed. In the meantime, I was sleeping in the pool house, my bedroom, my girlfriend’s house. My friends’ giant-ass houses.”
“But it’s not like you liked your life in Jersey,” AJ argued gently. “Jeannie made your life hell since you were a child. I’d act out too if my house never felt like a home,” she defended me, sounding so hurt I rubbed my hand up and down back. “You were just waiting till your mom got back on her feet.”
I nodded, but I didn’t answer for a little while, just staring out at the deepening warmth of the sky.
“She finally got an apartment when I was sixteen,” I said. I felt her tilt her head up to look at me, but I couldn’t return her gaze. “I was on a nationally ranked basketball team. I had friends and a life. I’d waited for so long, but now Cole hated me, and my coaches were talking about which college I should go to. I think it was just a bad week. Or month. Cameraphones had just gotten really good, so I talked to my mom and my dad and I had got the best ones there were and sent them to Cali. Figured maybe if Cole didn’t want to talk to me directly, he’d be down to record videos here and there. Just send or whatever. Mom was hopeful and said she’d talk to him. So I spent a whole week recording all these videos for Cole. Told him all these stories I’d always wanted to tell him. All the feelings I had as a kid when I left. Pretty much just poured my heart out and figured he might get it now that he was thirteen. But I texted the videos and he never replied, and a few weeks later, Mom asked if I wanted to move into their apartment and share a room with Cole, and I just said no. It was the moment I’d been waiting for since the day I left LA as a kid, and I rejected it.”
It took a while longer to muster up the rest of the story. To tell AJ that my mom’s ex had come back sometime after I rejected the offer. That I could’ve been there to protect her, but wasn’t. Instead, the job fell again to Cole, and it cemented his hatred for me.
Shortly after getting their first apartment, they had to relocate again for safety. Mom moved into a three-bedroom with another single mom from church who had a daughter Cole’s age. Since it was already four of them packed into a small, three-bedroom home, I couldn’t change my mind about going back.
I’d officially missed my window to rejoin my family.
And while it stung like a bitch, it lit a fire under my ass.
It cemented my decision to forego basketball in college. It wasn’t a guaranteed career, and what I needed more than anything was to provide. To have an Ivy League education that would guarantee me a good job, so that when I graduated, I could take care of Mom and Cole. In whatever way they needed.
I was already in law school by the time I found out that all that Little League growing up paid off. Cole was going to LSU for baseball. He ranked high in the country among third basemen, and considering my best friend Iain was already on the path to becoming a sports agent, I decided to take the same one.
“In my head, I was going to save him one day,” I said, and for some reason, the idea still gave me that burst of energy from ten years ago, when I first thought of it. “I was going to be the agent, he was going to be the star. We were going to find our ways back to each other and take care of Mom together, like we used to.”
AJ was looking up at me now, trying to read my expression, and I knew why.
“What’s his last name again?” she asked of Cole.
“Ridnour,” I said, and she went quiet, because she didn’t recognize the name. I knew she was praying to. I could practically feel the surge of hope in her chest as she lay against me, trying to remember every Cole in the league.
The big leagues at least.
“Is he still in the minors?” she asked, her voice small, still hopeful, because the minor leagues at least meant he was still trying.
I nodded.
