“How nervous are you guys for the season to start?” Mr. Walters wanted to talk baseball. Oh! That I could do!
“Nervous,” I admitted.
“Confident,” Reece said at the same time.
“Well,” Mr. Walters replied, “you’re pretty much safe when it comes to your position on varsity. Tryouts for you and a couple of the guys are mostly a formality.”
“Yeah.” Reece nodded. He wasn’t arrogant or cocky about it. I mean, it’s just a fact. Reece was their pitcher.
“Are you feeling strong?” Mr. Walters directed his question to me.
“I think so,” I replied. I didn’t really know how to answer it. Did I feel confident in my skills? I guess as confident as I could. Was I nervous about the possibility that recruiters might be watching me this season? Yeah. Big time.
“You’re gonna do good.”
I froze. The can of soda was halfway to my mouth.
Mr. Walters was looking right at me, and he seemed sincere. Like he respected me. Like he meant what he said.
“Remember, do your best. I’ve seen you and Reece working on strength training and on your reflexes. Approach ball like you approach life. You go at it straight, confident, and honest. God will take you the rest of the way, and where you end up, well, that’s His decision. You just do your best.”
I hadn’t ever heard baseball tryouts put in those terms before. But it made sense—even if it didn’t—I mean, I don’t know how much God really cares about high school tryouts.
Mr. Walters clapped his hand over my shoulder and read my mind. “God doesn’t care about tryouts so much as He cares about you.”
With that, Mr. Walters headed back inside, and Reece followed as though it all hadn’t been a big deal.
But it was a big deal. A really big deal. I couldn’t think of the last time I’d had another guy who was like a dad, give me advice in a way that didn’t leave me feeling like I had to do something extra. Mr. Walters treated me as though Iwere enough. Do my best. That was it. No expectations from him that I’d make it or that I’d fail. I could just—be.
Now probably wasn’t the time to admit this to anyone, but if Mr. Walters was always like this, I’d never want to break up with Brielle, just so I could keep coming over here for pizza and Friday nights.
It kind of felt like, in his way, Mr. Walters wanted me to succeed at life—not just at baseball or at books, like my dad would prefer.
And when I went back inside, I saw Mr. Walters drop a kiss on Mrs. Walters’s cheek. Reece and Brielle were snapping each other with dish towels. The TV blared in the background, and Mrs. Walters popped popcorn in the microwave.
Yeah. Everything else didn’t matter at this point. I was seriously never going to break up with Brielle.
I’d failed at Valentine’s Day. It was last week, but even now, girls were still walking by me mouthing, “Chocolate?”, like I’d given Brielle a bag of dog food instead. I hadn’t really cared, and neither had she—I don’t think—but after hanging out with the Walters family on Friday night and with tryouts this week, I just felt . . . I don’t know. I wasn’t sure how I felt, to be honest. Mr. Walters had said to go at it straight, confident, and honest, and I think he meant that about life—not just baseball.
What bugged me was that Brielle and I weren’t being honest. Not really. Only now, as all of it was evolving, I wasn’t being honest in an entirely different way. Something about Brielle, the Walters family, even their faith was just—I liked it. I liked being around them. I liked Brielle’s quirkiness. The fact that she hated spiders, loved some book dude named Mr. Darcy, could quote baseball stats, had attitude, and even had her BFF, Lia from Canada in her back pocket at least 70% of her time when she wasn’t at school. But it was more than that. Briellehad been gracious. About everything. So, maybe I couldn’t fix it all. I couldn’t break up with her and set life back to rights. I couldn’t reverse the viral video or the fact that we were under a microscope. But I could be honest about one thing.
I could be honest that I’d botched Valentine’s Day.
I mean, even I knew that throwing a bag of chocolate at your girlfriend in the school hallway was pretty lame.
So, I wanted to make up for it.
I wanted her to feel special. Even if we both knew we were just friends, I still wanted her to feel . . . I wanted to say . . . heck, I don’t know what I really wanted. But I’d stashed a bouquet of tulips in my locker before school started for just this reason.
Now I felt pretty dumb—and conspicuous— but whatever. I walked into class with the pink and white tulips in a vase that the lady at the flower store had put together.
Mrs. Templeton looked up from her desk, and a smile stretched across her face, reminding me of that cat in the Alice in Wonderland cartoon Mom made me watch when I was a kid. The cat always freaked me out, but Mrs. Templeton pulled off the wide smile a lot better.
I saw a couple of the girls’ heads pop up from whatever they were reading, and then I spotted Brielle. She was in the far back corner of the room, so theoohsandaahshadn’t reached her yet, but when they did, she looked up at me. Her eyes got huge. Her hair was down around her shoulders, too—I liked it that way—and she was wearing a baseball jersey even as she held a book in her hands. For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
What had I been thinking?
“Who’s the tulips for, Mason?” one of the guys called.
