Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94687 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94687 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
“Really?” Disbelief colored the word.
“Really.” I opened the bag and leaned back against the counter.
“Protect them from what?”
I rolled my eyes. “From the media shitstorm. From gossip. From knowing what it’s like to be stared at and whispered about.”
“How do you know they care?”
I crunched on a chip while April’s words echoed in my head. I don’t care what people say. Let them talk. Would Chip have felt the same way?
No. What eighteen-year-old ball player wants to learn his biological father is a MLB pitcher . . . only to learn oh, it’s that one. The fuckup. The has-been. The choke joke. He’d want nothing to do with me.
“They would care,” I insisted. “Even if they thought they wouldn’t, they would. It’s embarrassing.”
“Hmm. Because I don’t think you left to protect them. I think,” she went on, “you left to avoid dealing with your feelings.”
“What feelings?” I snapped.
“The same ones you shut out your entire life. The ones you felt you could never show because they were a detriment to your macho reputation. Shit, there’s probably a little of everything in there by now. Love? Fear? Compassion? Vulnerability? Shame? A secret longing to be a dad?”
I squinted at her. “Are you fucking crazy? I don’t want to be a dad.”
“Maybe not.” She shrugged. “But you were the one who told me what an expert you were at shutting out anything you didn’t want to feel for thirty-odd years. And I’m not saying I blame you—that habit served you well in baseball, maybe even in life. And it isn’t just going to go away. You have to consciously decide to grapple with those feelings.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Although part of me was afraid she was making a little too much sense.
“I suppose I could be wrong. I mean, maybe you don’t really care for April.”
“I do care for her!” I shouted, gesturing so wildly that chips flew out of the bag. “I care a lot, that’s why I left!”
“You broke her heart to show her how much you care?” Sadie blinked at me. “Sorry. Maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones, but something about that is not making sense.”
I reached into the bag and grabbed another handful of chips. “You said you weren’t going to argue with me.”
“No, I didn’t. I said I wasn’t going to try to convince you to come back, but my fingers were crossed anyway, so it doesn’t count.”
I spoke slowly through clenched teeth. “I’m not going back, Sadie. I can’t. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” She was making me second-guess myself. I hated that feeling.
She sighed. “Okay. Fine. You can stay out here eating chips in your castle with its fancy gate and high walls and security cameras and never have to let anyone in ever again. But it seems like an awfully lonely way to spend the rest of your life.”
“It’s my decision,” I said stubbornly, shoving the chips in my mouth.
Her smile was sad. “Yes. It is.”
We ordered dinner in, and after Sadie closed the door behind the delivery guy, she gestured to a large cardboard box sitting in the front hall. “Is that the box from my attic?”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about it.”
“How’d you get it here?” she asked.
“Actually, this is kind of funny. I forgot it was in the back of my rental car until I got to the airport to turn it in. The guy at the desk happened to be the same one who was there when I rented it. Steve.”
“Oh?”
“He offered to ship it to me, and I said okay. Gave him a big tip.”
She laughed. “Nice. Did it just get here today?”
“A few days ago. After we eat, we can look through it if you want.” Anything was better than listening to her analyze my feelings—even looking at plastic trophies.
But actually, it turned out the box held some neat things. Notes my dad had taken during early coaching sessions with Virgil—things I’d internalized and had repeated to Chip. There’s an art to the mechanics. Focus on the process and not the result. You have to trust your pitches. A few of my favorite baseball cards, some of which were signed by the players.
“If you have a boy and he’s into baseball, he can have these,” I said to Sadie, who was kneeling next to me in the living room, looking through old photos.
“What if I have a girl who’s into baseball?”
I flicked her earlobe with a card. “She can have them too.”
“Hey, look at this one! I think I took it.”
I leaned over and saw a picture of April and me at the kitchen table. “Let me see that.” Grabbing it out of her hands, I studied it more closely. April was sitting how she always did, on her knees, her feet bare, her elbows on the table. She had a pen in her hand and her lower lip caught between her teeth, like she was concentrating hard on whatever she was writing. I, on the other hand, was looking directly at the camera, tilting the chair back on two legs and wearing my usual confident smirk. My hair was wet, as if I’d just gotten out of the shower.