“Missing home?”
“A little,” she admits.
Her fingertips press against the passenger window before she sits up sharply, using the hoodie sleeve to clean the glass.
I chuckle. “I don’t think you need to worry about fingerprints on the window. It doesn’t look like Noah has ever washed this truck.”
Kenzie isn’t aware that I tossed the balled-up napkins, empty water bottles, and discarded fast food bags in the fire station trash can before driving to Seabreeze Beans. Even now, a pervasive stale-fry scent lingers in the air. I’d crack a window, but Kenzie finally looks comfortable, snuggled up while sipping her hot chocolate.
We fall back into comfortable silence, the murmur of the tires on the curvy road droning in the background.
“What’s with the sevens?” Kenzie asks, tucking a leg beneath her as she rotates to face me in her seat.
“What sevens?” I hedge.
“The boat name—Number Seven. Your necklace.”
My hand tucks the gold number seven pendant back into my shirt. It’s not unusual for baseball players to wear necklaces, often outlandish ones. Our first baseman, Tennessee Jackson—or Tenny as everyone calls him, wears a tennis necklace with sapphires and aquamarine stones, matching our blue-on-bluejerseys. Not to be outdone, DJ Rivera wears both a sapphire and a diamond one with his gold chains. As far as baseball drip goes, mine is tame.
The answer I give sports reporters—that it was my little league jersey number and that I like to remember where I came from—usually earns me a fond, approving smile. It’s also completely true. I played on several different teams as number seven until I got onto school teams in middle and high school. Then it was whatever multi-use jersey the coach tossed in my direction at the beginning of the season. Even when I signed with the Waves, I chose from what was left over—number eighteen.
“It’s not because I’m good at math, if that’s the answer you’re hoping for,” I say with a chuckle.
“No.” She digs a discarded straw from the seat crack and flicks it at me, using the tone she gives Banks when he tries to chew on an electrical cord. “Stop doing that. No more self-effacing jokes at your own expense.”
“Did you just…” I pause, wracking my brain for the word Kenzie would use in this situation. “Did you just fling detritus at me?”
I’m pretty sure I mispronounced detritus, but when I glance right, it doesn’t matter. The beaming smile on Kenzie’s face nearly knocks the wind out of me. My gaze traces the sparkle in her eyes to the soft pink of her cheeks until the lane departure alert sounds. We lurch to the left as I right the truck, causing Kenzie to press a palm over her stomach.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “I’ll slow down.”
Pushing up her sleeves, Kenzie faces straight ahead and takes several deep breaths.
“Need me to pull over?”
Kenzie shakes her head, not looking at me.
After a few rounds of breathing, she says, “Sevens.”
A noisy exhale leaves my nose. Apparently, we’re not letting this go.
“It was my jersey number as a kid.” I let that answer hover in the air for a few beats before telling Kenzie the part reporters don’t know. “My friend’s mom gave me this necklace.”
A gnawing pit churns in my stomach like it always does when I examine this part of my life too closely.
“My parents had very busy careers, and travel baseball is a lot, even when you’re playing 9U. For years, Trish, my friend Jacob’s mom, drove me to and from practices and games. After traveling to Cooperstown—which is this big 12U tournament—she bought Jacob and me necklaces with our numbers on them.”
The gut-wrenching fact is that my parents could’ve easily afforded the gold necklace I haven’t taken off since Trish gave it to me with tears in her eyes, telling me how proud she was.
“They moved the next winter.” My palm presses over my heart, feeling the shape of the pendant beneath my shirt. “Jacob gave up baseball in high school, but we still keep in touch, and Trish sends me a Christmas card every year.”
“Your parents didn’t go to your games?”
Kenzie’s question is so soft I don’t dare look over.
“They’re doctors—surgeons, actually—so they were saving lives. And my three older sisters followed suit. Christina is an orthopedic surgeon like Dad. Nicole followed Mom by specializing in brain surgery. And Allison is still technically a surgeon since she’s an OB and delivers babies via C-section.”
I leave out that Allison caught heat for not going into a more rigorous surgical specialty. By that point, they’d written me off as the family dummy, so they weren’t even fazed that I left college when I got drafted. They also have no idea that I took classes remotely over the years and graduated.
