AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t know. You’d think his parents would work with him a little bit. It’s almost like he’s being this bad on purpose.”
“Yeah. I can hardly think that someone would be that terrible on accident. Or if they were that bad, that their parents would allow them on the field.”
Peyton tried not to listen. They weren’t being deliberately mean to her, they were just frustrated with her son. And probably didn’t want their own children to come home from losing a game because one of the players obviously hadn’t played much baseball.
There wasn’t anything she could do about it now, and she tried hard to just focus on watching her kid and not listening to the ladies behind her.
Owen ran forward one more time. This time when he picked the ball up, he threw it underhanded as hard as he could.
Usually, that worked pretty well. It was the only way he’d thrown up until he was about six or so. But he was out of practice doing that, because he had been throwing overhand for years.
He must have frozen because of the excitement or pressure of the game.
Whatever it was, he threw it underhand and the ball went practically straight up in the air.
Peyton watched in dismay. And fear. She needn’t have worried; the ball had not gone exactly straight up, and it landed about four feet behind him.
It wasn’t hard to hear the shocked outrage of the ladies behind her which was slightly more animated than the gasps of the crowd.
Some of them were moms like herself who had compassion for Owen. But some of them were people whose kids were in it to win, and Peyton couldn’t blame them. No one played a game hoping to lose.
Still, Owen and she had done the best they could. They’d tried, put aside time to practice, and did work on these things.
Another kid came up and grabbed the ball while the runner scored.
Owen’s shoulders slumped, and Peyton’s heart went out to him.
She wanted to go out in the field, put her arms around him, and comfort him. She was his mom. She hated to see this happen to him.
But she sat still, knowing as painful as it was to both of them, it was a good lesson for him.
“I’m going to complain to the coach. It is outrageous that they would let someone like that on the team. There needs to be some kind of standard.”
“I agree. I know it’s a community league, but we can’t just let people who’ve never seen a baseball in their life before stand out there acting like they know what they’re doing. Put him in a corner somewhere until he can say the word ‘ball.’”
The ladies didn’t mean to be unkind, truly.
Peyton’s throat tightened, and she tried hard not to cry.
Thankfully, the next few balls didn’t go anywhere near her son, and the team got three outs in the next three batters.
As the team jogged in toward home plate, she felt a presence sliding beside her, and she turned her head in time to see Bryce lean down.
“Is this seat taken?”
“No.”
The tightness in her throat and the heaviness in her heart lightened some as he slid in, sitting a respectable six inches from her but smiling down and lifting her spirits.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.” It was an honest statement. She hadn’t invited him because she didn’t expect he’d want to come.
“I asked around. Actually, I called Nolt. We went to school together, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt.”
There was a lot in those words. That Bryce had reached out to someone in Sweet Water. That he talked to an old friend. That he had wanted to get out of his house and had taken the initiative to call.
She smiled at him but didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to make him feel more self-conscious than he already felt. “It’s good to see you here.”
“Has he been up yet?”
