I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “Let me get this straight. Your beautiful girlfriend was nice enough to cook you breakfast.”
“Yes.”
“And instead of showing gratitude by eating the meal she has so lovingly prepared, you are hiding from her like a small child.”
Kellan moved away from the door and helped himself to a seat in my desk chair. “Exactly.”
“Kellan?” Taylor’s exasperated voice penetrated from the other side of the door. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, sweetheart. I have to talk to Thomas.”
“Don’t you need to leave for work soon?”
“Why, yes. Rats!” He snapped his fingers. “I don’t think I’ll have time for breakfast. You can feed my quiche to the cat.”
“We don’t have a cat.”
A nonissue to Kellan. He shrugged. “Someone has a cat.”
“Kellan!”
“I’ll be out in a minute, babe. Thomas needs me.”
“I don’t need him!” I yelled. “Extract him at your earliest convenience.”
Kel shot me a wounded look.
Taylor must have had enough of shouting through the closed door. She flung it open and stood at the threshold, lips pursed, hands on her shapely hips. I made a mental note to put a chain lock on my door. These early morning intrusions from my roommates were not to my liking.
Taylor tapped her manicured nails and gave out orders. “I have made breakfast. The two of you need to quit clowning around and come to the table.”
“I wasn’t clowning around,” I pointed out with a yawn. “I was sleeping. Sort of.”
Kellan made a face. “I can’t get used to this abnormal state of affairs when I’m awake and dressed before you.”
He was right. For years I’d sprint out of bed in the predawn hours and run at least five miles before doing anything else. Shattered knees are tricky, though. Recovery tends to be long and uncertain. I can run again. Just not the way I used to run.
I found another pillow and threw it at my brother. “Get out of here and show your girl some love.”
Taylor grinned. “Young Thomas is wise.”
Kellan’s reply involved jumping out of the chair, seizing Taylor around the waist and dipping her in a clumsy ballroom dance move before planting a kiss on her lips. I’ve seen my dad do exactly the same thing to curb my mother’s irritation. And Taylor proved to be just as susceptible to that goofball charm. She giggled and squealed while my brother slobbered all over her.
Then they disappeared down the hall, leaving me free to barricade the door and pull the covers over my head. I couldn’t stay here for long. I needed to be on the field before the kids showed up. The thought produced yet another yawn. I wished I was still in touch with the feeling of invincibility that swept over me whenever I stepped into the baseball diamond. I’d misplaced it somewhere between getting my pitching hand crushed and the recent major league baseball draft. These last six months I’d worked harder than ever but my hold often slipped on the ball. My pitching speed wasn’t enough. And my knee was unreliable if I ran more than fifty yards. Kellan had gently prodded me to avoid live streaming the draft but I watched to the end anyway. I wasn’t expecting any exciting news and no exciting news was announced.
“There’s always next year,” everyone assured me. I could keep trying. Keep plugging away year after year in the hopes of getting my foot in the door. Or I could admit the cold reality delivered by the best doctors in the business.
I would never be the kind of athlete I used to be.
No good would come out of deliberating on that right now. In one hour a pack of ten year olds would be waiting for me to coach them to summer camp greatness. Dalton would have understood if I told him I needed a break from Dream Fields, the training facility he owned and managed, but I knew it would put him in a tight spot if he had to locate another summer camp coach on short notice.
While Kellan and Taylor were rapid fire bantering in the kitchen I escaped to the bathroom. After dawdling underneath a scalding hot spray for a few minutes I was far more alert and slightly more cheerful. I considered shaving, decided against it, and yanked on a clean blue polo with the Dream Fields logo on the chest.
These days I often had the feeling that I’d been a topic of conversation just prior to walking into a room.
Taylor, looking flawless as always, was smartly outfitted in a purple dress. She set down her cup of coffee, smiled at me and gestured to the table.
“Your breakfast awaits. It’s healthy. I thought you’d like it.”
Under no circumstances was my brother’s girlfriend required to make me breakfast. However, arguing with Taylor would result in hurt feelings so I took a seat and tried the concoction waiting on the paper plate despite the fact that Kellan’s visual description was accurate.
“Thanks.” I picked up a fork. Kellan sat on the other side of the table and was in the process of trying to tuck in his newly wrinkled shirt. Evidently his clothing had suffered a disturbance while I was in the shower.
He nodded at me. “Are you intentionally growing a beard or getting in touch with your mountain man side?”
I took a sip of juice. “You’ve got lipstick on your collar, bro.”
He glowered. “Liar.”
“Actually, you do have lipstick on your collar,” Taylor said. “I take full responsibility.”
Kellan sighed, gave up on buttoning, and pulled the shirt over his head while I dared to eat a mouthful of Taylor’s quiche. It wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t good either, but I was unlikely to die if I choked it down.
Kel left the room to go hunt down a lipstick-free shirt and Taylor made small talk about her meeting with an academic counselor, explaining that the summer classes she’d enrolled in would put her on track to graduate next spring. I understood that I was being invited to discuss my academic future as well but I hadn’t been in the mood for that ever since deciding to withdraw from school last semester.
Kellen promptly returned in a new shirt. This one was white and he’d rolled it to the elbows, which kind of made him look like a waiter. Taylor offered him the rest of her coffee and he kissed her lips before retaking his chair and babbling about stock portfolios. After graduating from Arizona State he’d accepted a position with a high profile financial investment firm in downtown Phoenix. These days stock portfolios concerned him greatly.
I wasn’t really listening as I hooked my left hand under my knee and stretched the leg out for a few seconds, wincing as the knee joint popped.
Taylor noticed. “Is it bothering you today?”
“Nope,” I assured her and now they were both staring at me, stock portfolios abruptly forgotten. “Just some morning stiffness.”
Under ordinary circumstances I could have expected a phallic quip from my brother. Kellan was not a man to allow remarks about mornings and stiffness pass on by. But Kel had no jokes at the moment. He drummed his fingers on the table, something he did when heavy thoughts troubled him. He used to do the same thing when fretting over Derek’s problems but our older brother wasn’t on his mind right now.
“It seems like I don’t see you much these days,” he said.
“We live in the same apartment.”