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Twenty-Six
The last thing he wanted to do was stand in the back yard with Nick and play baseball instead of playing his video game.
It seemed so stupid. This wasn't something people did in real life. Just on the stupid TV shows Nova watched on the kids’ channel all the time. The glove he'd slipped on his hand was still hard.Brand new. Just for him.
Nick had bought it for him over the internet or something.
Nick hadn't had to do that. Why did he think Noah wanted him to buy him stuff? Unless he was trying to get Noah to like him. That was probably it.
Noah finally looked at his sister for the first time since he'd come outside when Nick had yelled for them. After the delivery truck had left and Nick had been so stupid excited to open the box.
Nick had bought a lot of stuff online that he said kids needed. Noah kind of thought Nick liked shopping for stuff, even though that wasn’t cool for a guy to do.
Nick said he hadn’t had a house before, or space to keep things.
So he kept buying things.
Things Noah's mom could never have afforded to buy them. Like...clothes and stuff. Most of the time, she'd just give Noah money and tell him to go to the Goodwill down the road and find himself and Nova clothes to wear to school. He’d look for the good things, and sometimes he’d get lucky.
Except with socks. He'd always hated buying them used socks. Other people's foot sweat really grossed him out.
Nova had a little gray-and-pink mitt on her hand. She had it on all backwards. But Nick was there, helping her put it on right. There were a couple of softballs at her feet.
She'd got stuff, too.
It wasn't their birthday or Christmas or anything.
He squeezed the mitt on his hand closed. It would need broken in, Nick had said. Noah didn't really know exactly what that meant, but Nick talked like it would make the mitt even better.He was acting all goofy over new ball mitts.
"This ball is bigger than that one," Nova said, grabbing a softball. "Why? Is the big one for big kids?"
"No. This is called a softball. Softball and baseball are two different sports. They are just similar. Noah will play with the smaller ball. You will use this bigger one. Softball and baseball have different rules." Nick was still kneeling down in front of her. Like...he actually cared about her.
Noah still didn't know how he felt about this guy.
He had vague memories of a guy kneeling down in front of him like that once. That guy had been the one to give him the green and red glove he still had on his shelf in his new room. He'd actually taken Noah to the park and played with him there. While his mom slept.
That was really all he could remember.
He stepped closer, the need to know if it had been Nick so strong in him it was all he could think about. "Was it you?"
"Me, what?" Nick looked at him for a moment.
"Who gave me the green mitt?"
Nick nodded. "Yes. For your fourth birthday. Do you remember that day?"
"A little." He remembered being mad when that guy left—but not what the guy’s face had looked like.
"We went to the park a few blocks from your mom's apartment while she took a nap. She had a headache that day. She always did have nasty migraines. I carried her into the ER once to get a shot. They ended up keeping her all night. I came back and got you from the neighbor’s—and kept you at your mom’s place. I fed you Chinese because they delivered. We went and picked her up the next morning together.”
"Mommy said we gave her headaches all the damned time and to just leave her alone," Nova said, twirling around with her mitt on her head like a dork. "So we did. I've never had a mitt before. What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Don’t say damned, ok? Little kids aren’t supposed to. Like this." Noah had to do something, instead of stand there staring at Nick, trying to remember if the guy had been ok back then or not. He grabbed Nova's new softball from her hand and showed her how to throw the ball up in the air and catch it like he’d seen other guys do before. “You got to learn how to catch it. It's really important."
"We're going to practice that together," Nick said. "We'll use the softball with Nova for a few minutes. When she gets bored, you and I can play a little harder and further apart. I used to play ball with my brothers all the time. It was probably the only thing we didn't fight over. That, and girls. We made a promise never to fight over girls. No matter what.”
Noah just nodded.
He didn't have a clue what he was supposed to say. He’d never had anybody actually want to do stuff with him, or Nova, before.
