AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Are you ever going to tell me what actually happened?”
“You saw her leave.”
He sighs. “I don’t understand her. I know Penny loves her, but she can be… difficult.”
“She hasn’t said anything about me?”
I hate the pathetic note in my words, but I can’t stop myself from asking the question. I worry my necklace, the medallion that once belonged to my father, between my thumb and forefinger.
He just shrugs, no doubt thinking about the moment he caught us together. It wasn’t like we were in the middle of fucking; we were just making out. Yet the second Mia saw him, any vulnerability I’d won from her melted away. The armor went back up, as solid as steel.
“If she has, she told Penny not to tell me. Probably because she knows I’d tell you.”
“Fantastic.”
“It’s not like you’ve told me all that much about what went down.”
I grimace. “Nope. And I won’t.”
“You two are ridiculous,” Penny says from the top of the stairs. She shuffles down, her feet bare, wearing a shirt with a dragon on it that I’m sure belongs to my brother. He has enough nerdy fantasy gear to rival a fan convention. Her rust-colored hair, so different from Mia’s raven locks, is practically a bird’s nest. “For the record, she hasn’t told me anything either. She refuses to talk about it.”
It’s easy to hear the note of concern in her voice. Mia’s her best friend, after all. I’ve kept my own tabs on Mia, and while I know it’s not my fucking business, it seems like she’s been enjoying a lot of company. That’s her right, and sure, I’m doing the same, but after the way we’d been together?
Whenever I think about that moment in my bedroom, I see her smudged lipstick, her bright brown eyes. In between all the kissing, I asked her out to dinner for the second time—for just one dinner, one actual date after months of secretive hookups—and she said yes. Then approximately one minute later, Cooper stumbled in on us, and approximately one minute after that, she hauled her NASA tote bag over her shoulder like a shield and fucking left.
Enjoy watching me leave, Callahan.
Since then, she’s acted like she managed to wipe me clean out of her life without a second thought. I haven’t been able to bring myself to tell Cooper all the details. I still showed up for the date we planned—I waited over two hours just in case she’d show—but she ghosted me. I don’t want to admit that to my own brother. Not when his girlfriend is Mia’s best friend.
“You sure you’re fine on your own for a while?” he asks. He glances at Penny. “Should we stick around? Come to your games? I know that Mia—”
I shake my head. “No, enjoy the trip. Tell James and Bex I said hi. I’ll be fine.”
Penny kisses Cooper’s cheek. He pulls her closer, rocking her as he rests his chin on her head, an unconscious motion. I swallow my spark of jealousy. When James found Bex, it made sense—he’s always been meant for a big love. The soulmate of a wife, kids, the white picket fence, the dog. When Cooper found Penny, it was a surprise to everyone, but it clearly suits him, having one person to focus on, one person to love. I’ve never seen him happier, which makes it worse, the way I miss being casual players together.
My brothers are both deserving of that love. Yet it sucks to be alone and pining over a girl who, apparently, wants less to do with me than dog shit on the bottom of her shoe.
“We told my dad we’d get breakfast with him before hitting the road,” Penny says.
I clear my throat. “Right. I need to head to practice, anyway.”
“Text me if you get draft updates while we’re away,” Cooper says with an easy grin. Since this is his off-season, he’s had a ton of time to focus on other things—namely, where he thinks I’m going to end signing after the MLB draft in July. Whenever I think about it too hard, my stomach ties itself into knots. “Dad mentioned something about the Marlins? Miami would be sick.”
I manage to smile back. I haven’t had the heart to tell him—any of them, actually—that the looming draft is hanging over me like a rapidly approaching storm. It’s ridiculous, because it’s what I’m meant to do. My father wanted to create a legacy, so he made sure that I loved the sport from the moment I first picked up a baseball bat. Baseball has always been my life, and once I’m drafted, it’ll be my future.
But lately, a tiny part of me, just loud enough that I can’t ignore it completely, is wondering if it’s therightfuture.
When I turned down the first draft offer the summer after high school, instead committing to McKee, it meant that I wouldn’t be eligible for the draft again until I turned twenty-one. It’s the way a lot of top baseball players go—see what the offer would be, then stay in college and plan for the next steps when your skills improve, a couple seasons down the line. If the near-daily articles Richard sends me are accurate, I’ll go in the first round, likely to the Miami Marlins or the Texas Rangers. There’s already talk of the Cincinnati Reds trading for me down the line, so the organization can have a Miller back on the team.
It's what Dad wanted. If I close my eyes and focus, I can still hear the way he spoke about baseball, the beauty of it, the history, the symmetry that has made it so enduring in American culture. He was famously patient, a coiled rod of energy in the batter’s box, ready to strike. The National League home run record, set by him in his last season before the accident, remains unbroken.
There are a lot of people out there who expect me to be the one to break it.
It’s poetic, his son being drafted a decade after the tragic accident that took one of baseball’s best players—ever—from the game, way too soon. Not since Thurman Munson died in that plane crash had there been a bigger tragedy in baseball.The Sportsman, the oldest sports magazine in the country, called the other day to ask about me giving an interview, but I haven’t replied yet.
However much I care about baseball—however alive I feel when chasing down a fly ball, when hitting a line drive, when sliding into home plate—it isn’t just mine. When my future in the MLB begins, the comparisons will just get more and more intense.The great Jake Miller’s son.
Letting Dad down isn’t an option. He wanted one thing for me, and it was this. He died in a horrible, unfair instant, arm flung out as if that could protect my mother from death right alongside him. I might wear ‘Callahan’ on the back of my jersey right now, but once this is my job, the expectations will be different.
