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Grant sighs. “I mean, I am committed, but I also don’t want to get hurt and spend the rest of my life sitting in sports bars, reminiscing about my glory days. That sounds fucking depressing.”
“Then stop making up shit in your head that’s never going to happen,” I tell him. I flex my calf muscles, just to feel the burn. I’ve never visualized a future in which I’m not playing professional baseball. I don’t see the point of it when I have no intention of it being my reality. “You’re gonna make it, and so am I.”
It’spitchblackandfreezing outside when I get to Azalea and Callie’s apartment building. I jog up the stairs to the third floor, the muscles in my legs still burning at the slight exertion. The apartment closest to the landing has two jack-o-lanterns outside the door. I walk past them and push open the door with the “no soliciting” sign. The scent of meat and vegetables is heavy in the air. My mouth immediately waters.
I slip off my sneakers by the door—that’s one of Azalea’s house rules—and pad into the kitchen. She’s standing over the stove, stirring something in a pot. Her hair is mostly tamed into a long braid down her back, although a few dark curls have sprung free to frame her face.
“Hey,” she says, smiling at me and revealing the deep dimple to the left of her mouth. “Dad sentajiaco. I’m just heating it up.”
“I was hoping that’s what it was.” I cross the room and start to reach for her, but she takes a step back. “What?”
“Your hair is damp.” She waves her wooden spoon at me. “Sweat or water?”
“Water. Fresh out of the shower.”
Her face relaxes, and she rests her spoon across the top of the pot. I pull her into a hug, smiling at the way she leans into me willingly, pressing her cheek into my chest while I rest mine on top of her head.
The thing with me and Azalea is, I’ve always liked her.Likedher. When I first met her on that airplane, I thought she was fucking gorgeous. I had broken up with my first and only girlfriend just a couple of weeks before, and I immediately started plotting how I could ask out the new girl sitting in the seat beside me.
Then we got in the air, Azalea’s claustrophobia set in, and she had a panic attack. I helped her through it. Obviously, I wasn’t going to make a move right after that. I invited her to hang out with Callie and I and our group while we were in New York, and by the time we got home, we were all friends. I decided to bide my time a little. Weeks went by, then months…and now it’s two and a half years later, we’re juniors in college, and I am firmly in the friend zone.
It's better like this. The draft is in June, only eight months away. I’ve retained my position as one of the top prospects in Iowa during my first two college baseball seasons, and I shouldn’t lose focus in the home stretch. After I get drafted and sign with a team, I’ll be off to play minor league baseball in some rural town, and Azalea will still be finishing her degree here. There’s no reason to rock the boat now.
When I think about starting my professional baseball career, I’m excited and antsy to get going. This has been my dream for as long as I can remember. It’s the one and only thing I’ve worked toward with any sort of consistency. The minor leagues can be rough—the salary is low, and road trips consist of crowded buses and cheap motels. Even so, I can’t wait to get there and start proving myself worthy of a major league roster.
Except.
Except this girl right here—she is the one thing that holds me back. I don’t get too upset at the idea of moving far away from Callie, Grant, my roommate Pax, or even my family. But whenever I imagine myself saying goodbye to Azalea, climbing into my car, and driving off to God-knows-where, my stomach turns over.
“Where’s Callie?” I ask, mostly to keep my mind from continuing down this line of thought.
“She went out to the bars.”
“It’s Monday.”
Azalea shrugs. “And? It’s Callie.” She pulls away from me and peers into the pot. “This is ready. Can you get bowls and spoons?”
I grab the dishes, and she ladles out two bowls of stew for us. We take our meal to the small dining room table in the corner of the kitchen. “How was your trip?” I ask, already shovelingajiacointo my mouth.
“It was fun.” Her voice sounds genuine, but I see a flicker of something that looks like pain cross her face. “Not long enough.”
“What was that look?”
“What look?”
I point my spoon vaguely in her direction. “You made a face. Did something happen?”
Azalea blows on her stew, buying time. I stare at her expectantly. “Nothing happened,” she says finally. “But Audrey has a huge family. Five siblings, a bunch of aunts and uncles, and…it just got me thinking.”
I nod as understanding sets in. Azalea doesn’t talk about her absent mother often, but I don’t know how anybody could have a parent walk out of their life and not wonder what happened to them. Whenever Azalea is at my parents’ house, I notice that she spends a lot of time looking at our wall of family photos. There is a similar area at her dad’s house, but most of the photos are just the two of them, interspersed with some of her dad’s deceased parents. None of her mother. “About your mom?”
“Yeah, but not just her. I wonder if she has family—ifIhave more family out there. I wonder if they even know I exist.”
I think about it as I continue eating. “They have to have known she had a baby, right?”
“Maybe. She was from Texas, and I was born in Colorado. I don’t know anything about her relationship with her family.”
“Did you ask your dad?”
