Unfortunately for me, the moment Brie shows up, I’m a mess out there, my breath leaving me in gasps. I loved her. God, did I fucking love that girl. Probably the only girl I ever loved in a string of relationships I can’t quite pinpoint their failure.
Behind the plate, Ez puts two fingers down. A cutter. Leaning to his right, he distances himself from the right-handed batter. I nod my approval, set over the rubber, and drift my eyes to first base, then narrow in on Ez’s mitt.
If I had to guess, Ez is smiling under the mask. He knows who’s up and my feeling about it. I’d love to let a pitch go right at his fucking nose, but that’d mess up my stats and not something I want to do.
I don’t want to throw a fastball to a right-handed batter on the inside. If I do, it’ll cross over the plate and the bat barrel. If I want to deliver him a fastball, I’ll let my wrist turn ever so slightly, and my fingers will fall to the left side of the ball and change the rotation of the ball, its path, and will hit a few inches on the inside toward the batter. It gets me strikes, usually, but like I said, I don’t want to throw that pitch to this particular batter.
The reason why Brie showed up today didn’t have anything to do with me. It has to do with the guy holding the bat and his grudge against me. The only pitcher to ever strike him out. Happened last season, game two of the three-game series against them, and I’ll never let him forget it.
But it goes back even further than that if you want to get technical about it because that guy, we were best friends growing up. And now my girlfriend of the last three years is blowing him.
Funny how betrayal works. Baylor Wright knows a thing or two about it. We make eye contact, and I wonder if he ever considered my reaction before he fucked my girlfriend. Maybe.
He chokes up on the bat, his left foot swiveling and digging into the dirt. There’s hollering on the field. “Come on, throw it in there!” “Give ’em the heat, Reins!”
It’s an unremarkable pitch at an unremarkable moment in the game to anyone but me.
Despite the humidity in the air from the afternoon rain, my arm feels great. I take a breath and relax. Shake out my arm and stare at the dirt beneath my feet and feel the ball in my hand. Curveball. I’d learn to throw a curveball in junior high by an extremely patient pitching coach my dad hired for me. That crazy bastard would sit between the mound and the plate and have me throw a curveball. I was so terrified of hitting him. I picked it up quickly.
Let it go. Hit the glove.
I visualize the path the ball will take from the release to the leather. I twist, wind up, and throw the pitch.
I’m not sure what happened, but once it left my hand, I knew I’d held the ball too long trying to hang the curveball. Instead of brushing the outer inches of the strike zone, I launch the pitch too far right. Baylor gets a hold of it and sends it sailing to left field toward our unlucky left fielder.
Ez flips his face mask up and rushes to his feet to protect the plate.
Sweat runs down the back of my neck as I think about the pitch I just threw.
The inning ends with little commotion. An out at third, and a fly ball to center field.
I don’t look at the stands or the pitching coach probably wondering what the fuck that was about. Ez bumps his shoulder to mine. “I spit on his shoes.”
“Whose?”
“Baylor.”
Snorting, I stare at my mitt and then my hand. What happened out there? Why couldn’t I throw that curveball?
My dad told me once, after he tore his rotator cuff at the end of a three-game series on the road and was leading the league in strikeouts, that “The game usually gives you what you deserve, good or bad.”
For me, it goes back to Friday the thirteenth. I’d love to say I’m not superstitious, but maybe I am. Maybe it’s all because of the damn day of the week and the fact that we give up 7 runs and end the first game in the set with a loss of 6-7. Maybe it’s the two wild pitches I threw after that. Or that same time tomorrow, we’ll face off against them again. It’s not the last time I’ll see Baylor this year, and unfortunately for me, not the last of Brie.
“Bro, you add six and seven, it’s thirteen. How fucking bizarre is that?” Ez grumbles, confirming his triskaidekaphobia fear.
Noah, our shortstop, bumps me from behind after we shake hands with the Dirtbags. I purposely skip Baylor, and he knows why.
I drift my eyes to the stands after the game and notice she’s waiting for him.
“She fuck the entire team or just Wright?”
Squinting, I turn my head and stare at Noah as we walk off the field. Why the fuck would he ask that now, after the game we had?
“Shut the fuck up,” Ez tells him. “Don’t say that shit to him.”
Noah and me, we’re not friends, and though baseball players are certainly known for their egos, he doesn’t have one. I don’t know why I don’t like him, maybe because of comments like that. While it’s meant to be a jab at Baylor, I take it personally.
My attention finds her in the stands, her smile directed at the one she left me for. Soft, blue eyes, innocent, though her actions weren’t. She believed the rumors that I’d been fucking around on her. I hadn’t. Not once. But it didn’t matter. Damage was done and she did her part to destroy it. She seems unaffected by my presence, and I’m undone. Funny how that works. Time heals all wounds?
Bullshit. It exposes you.
For some reason, as I’m walking back to the dugout, I think about that woman from this morning. The one I bought coffee for. I bet she could make me forget about Brie. A thrill of excitement shoots down my spine.
In the locker room, the guys don’t say much about the loss, aside from Ez. He’s Italian, loud, and always has something to say.
Shirtless and holding ice to my shoulder again, I lean my head against my locker. I stare up at Ez, wishing he’d shut the fuck up. I hear enough of his bullshit sleeping on his couch every night. I don’t want to hear it after a loss like this.
He grins, winking at me. “Reins offered his cream to a MILF this morning.” He takes a chug from his Gatorade. “He struck out.”
I kick my foot out, trying to kick him with my cleats on. “You don’t know that she was a mom,” I point out, my thoughts shifting from that shitty game. And maybe that’s why Ez brought her up. He knows me and understands that anytime Brie enters my mind, it takes days to get over it.
“She drove a minivan. If you can call that driving.” With laughter on his lips, he elbows Noah, who’s next to him. “And with those hips, she was definitely a mom.”
“Damn.” Noah smirks, twisting his hat around backward as he peels his jersey off. “Bummed I missed it.”
I’m not. And I can tell you exactly what’s going to take my mind off Brie. Imagining that MILF riding my cock while I’m in the shower later. I also contemplate going back to that Starbucks to see if she goes every day.
“She fuckin’ jumped the curb to get away from him,” Ez adds, screwing the cap back on his Gatorade.
I hope you choke.
I give Ez the look that says “shut the fuck up.” He doesn’t listen to me. I met him freshman year. We lived in the same dorm together our first year, and not once has he ever done what I asked him to. But he saves my ass behind the plate, so I stay friends with him. And his family back in Southern California is some kind of mafia or gang, I’m not sure. But from the stories he’s told me about his cousin Enzo, I want nothing to do with that family. Too bad I’m sleeping on his uncle Luca’s couch these days. Scariest time of my life.