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“You sure? How long have we been at this? An hour?” She calls back. “Why don’t we take a break?”
Her reluctance doesn’t surprise me. But there’s a big game just a couple weeks out, pretty much right after we get back from the wedding, and I want to be prepared. Plus, she’s not used to lobbing this many practice pitches. She’s a catcher; she’s been my catcher since our high school days and even through college, and while she’s the best catcher and friend I could ask for, but throwing batting practice like this isn’t exactly her skillset.
“You know we have that game coming up and my swing’s been off lately. It has to be perfect.”
She gives me a look that I can read all the way from the batter’s box:you’re crazy.
“It’s a beer league softball game with Decatur Realty from Oakland. We’ve both scouted them, and you know as well as I do that their best player is a forty-seven-year-old photographer named Bruce who gets winded even running to second. His swing is solid, he’s got good eyes, but I saw him hit what would’ve been an inside-the-park home run for anyone else, and he had to stop at third because he was sucking wind so hard, and there was a vein throbbing in his forehead that looked like it was trying to crawl out of his skin like some kind of alien monster.”
It’s true. I saw the same game and wondered if someone was going to have to call an ambulance for him. When I asked the person next to me if we should do something, they told me Bruce is like that any time he has to run, he just needs a minute to catch his breath and a couple MillerHigh Life’s to get himself back on track.
I’ll bet Bruce is dead by fifty.
“It’s still a game, Mo. You know that.”
“Yeah, it’s a game, not the World Series.”
“Just throw, okay?”
She does.
I swing, connect with thatdingthat gives me shivers every time I hear it — a wave of pleasant, pulsating electricity that runs up and down my spine and radiates through my arms, legs, and makes my hair feel like it’s going to stand on end — and send the ball flying high toward the left field fence.
It doesn’t quite make it. It lands short.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Not because the ball bounces short and likely would’ve been nothing more than an easy catch for any competent outfielder, but because, as I track the ball in its course toward mediocrity, I see two motorcycles pull into the softball field’s parking lot. I recognize both of them.
One I recognize right away. I see it at least once a week, usually around lunchtime, when my brother and I meet up to connect, chat, and I have to counsel him out of any likely illegal activities he’s about to get into.
The other, it takes a second to recall. I have to dig into childhood memories. To a summer afternoon spent chasing my brother and his friends on my bicycle, until our paths lead us to another friend’s grandmother’s garage, to something concealed under a tarp so dusty it felt like we were unearthing artifacts in anIndiana Jonesmovie.
Owen.
Electricity of a different kind runs through my body, sparks my heart, and makes my legs feel like Jell-O. Morgan tracks my eyes, turns her gaze back to me, and in that wordless way of hers, says, “Do you need me to get rid of them?”
I shake my head. I know why my brother’s here. It’s one of the same reasons I’m here, too; it isn’t just the upcoming softball game that’s on my mind and has me here, wanting to feel like I have some form of control over my life, my future. It’s the wedding.
I give Morgan a look. After so many years playing together, that’s all it takes for her to know what I want.Throw another, I’ll handle the rest.
She throws.
I swing, connect precisely, and the fantastic frisson feeling surges through me again as I send a ball flying to land right at the feet of Owen and my brother, Dixon. They both stop.
Let that serve as a warning. Turn around, leave me alone. I have more important things to focus on than hearing my brother nag me about safety at the wedding.
It’s not like I don’t know this wedding is unsafe. You don’t hear the name ‘Vertucci’ and expect anything close to safety, but there’s something greater at stake, which means I can’t walk away.
My brother smirks, picks up the ball, tosses it right up in the air and catches it, and then he and Owen resume their walk toward me.
I give Morgan another look.
Another ball comes to me, and another warning lands speeds right past my brother’s head as he approaches third base, missing him by inches.
He chuckles quietly — I can hear the cockiness from here and momentarily debate asking Morgan to toss me another ball so I can whip it right at his smug face — and he and Owen continue, undeterred.
“What do you want, Dixon?” I say, knowing full well what he wants. It’s the same thing he’s wanted ever since he found out that Riley, Morgan’s sister, is getting married to Michael Vertucci. My answer, as it has been from the very beginning, is going to be the same: butt out of my business, brother.
