So I started giving her play-by-plays of every catch and hit. The showier, the better. She ate it up with a spoon.
Soon, she had balloons and streamers waiting for me when I got home from a tournament. She would make posters and a cake and decorate the house. She would go all out to make me know how much she loved me, how much she celebrated me.
But it wasn’t only the big moments where she made this effort. It was like her success in celebrating my achievements on the field made her realize how special she could make our home life. Homemade breakfast every day. Family game nights and movie nights.
It became clear how much she cared about the minutiae of every moment of my life, inside or outside our house. And that filledmewith a need to bring my life to her. To make her feel like she wasn’t missing anything by not going out into the world.
Liesel loves baseball, and I know there’s something going on with that whole Christmas Adam thing that she isn’t talking about. Maybe if I open up, she will.
But then I’d have to open up about something I don’t talk about to anyone who doesn’t already know.
The glass door slides open, and I hear Liesel make her way out to join me.
“Finally come to finish the job, huh?” I ask, gesturing to the ground below us.
“I don’t think I could throw you over if I tried, and I don’t like failing at things, so I’ll let you live.”
I sniff a laugh. She’s funny. I’ve seen that a handful of times tonight. She’s quick on her feet, too, and she can hang in anargument, no question. What’s odd is that I’m not normally a disagreeable person. I’m showy, but I’m not typically a button pusher. But Liesel makes me want to become one. She’s a shiny, bright red button that I want to push and push and push …
I’m an adult.
“It’s 2 a.m.,” Liesel says, “and we need to make some decisions. Are you … okay?”
“Fine.” It’s a brisk night for Arizona. I’m chilly, but Liesel doesn’t seem fazed.
“We’re down to my brothers or Colt and … Betancourt or Jessup. I don’t care. But we need to come to a consensus. So can you tell me the real reason why you don’t want Colt? If we signed him to a big enough deal, you two could play together for a long time.”
I huff. I’m too tired to filter myself like I should. “He reminds me of all the rich kids I faced growing up in club sports.”
“So? You played on those same teams. You were clearly one of them.”
“I wasnotone of those kids.” My throat hurts when I swallow. “I was a scholarship kid.”
“A lot of players in the majors were.”
“Not as many as there should be. You want to talk about everything that’s wrong about baseball? Club and travel teams take the cake. My dad worked his butt off, but club sports have ruined meritocracy. The most talented kids don’t always get the chance to play anymore because their parents aren’t rich enough.”
“That’s true,” she says, much to my relief. Her dad’s a huge deal in the league. He definitely did well enough for them.
“The Colton Spencers of the world have never liked me. I was the kid who took their less-talented friend’s place on the team and all because I was ‘poor,’ as they saw it. So much of baseball is about community, but on those teams, it was cutthroat. I wasallowed to play with them, but they made sure I knew I couldn’t sit with them.”
“Cooper—“
“Spare me the pity,” I say. I’m torn between feeling frustrated about my admission and guilt for snapping at her. I never talk about this stuff, and here I am, spilling the tea to the last woman who wants to talk tome. “I don’t need it. You worked down in Costa Rica where the kids would have killed for a sob story like mine.”
“That’s true.”
“Exactly. And it’s not even really a sob story. Kids from America don’t know hardship like kids from Third World countries. I’m being soft.”
“You think because bad things happen to other people in the world, you’re not allowed to feel the bad things that have happened to you?”
The lump in my throat started as a marble and has swelled to a softball. “Guys like Colt are subtle. They know how to say the right things in public so they can get away with saying all the wrong things in private. No one would believe Colt's poisonous because he carries himself right.”
She tilts her head. “I haven’t seen that.”
“You mean you haven’t watched for it.” I pull up my phone and find the clip of the interview he had after I hit the home run and blew him a kiss. And backflipped onto home plate. The video of Colt's response has nearly as many views as the video of the incident itself.
I skip to Colt's answer.
