"An agent for little league?"
"Welcome to suburban Florida youth sports."
The game started. If it could be called a game. Eight-year-olds stood in the outfield picking at the grass. A kid on second base sat down. The pitcher threw four straight balls into the dirt before the coach came out to settle him down.
Jacob came up in the second inning. He walked to the plate with his bat dragging behind him like a sword too heavy for its knight, positioned himself, and stared down the pitcher with the focus of a surgeon.
He swung.
Missed by a foot.
"That's okay, buddy!" Jake was on his feet, hands cupped around his mouth. "Reset. Eye on the ball."
Jacob swung at the next pitch. Connected this time, a weak dribble that barely cleared the dirt. It didn't matter. Jake cheered like it was a walk-off homer. Full volume, full commitment, no self-consciousness whatsoever.
Emily watched him, and the ground moved under her feet.
Not the attraction. That had been there since the bullpen, since she'd felt the intoxication of his gaze. Not the respect either, which had grown every day as she watched him work, read people, build something from nothing with patience and instinct.
This was different.
This was watching a man cheer for an eight-year-old who could barely make contact with a pitched ball, and meaning every word of it. This was Jake Walsh with no case to work, no network to run, no competence to display. A man who'd made a promise to a dead friend and kept it, year after year, because the alternative never occurred to him.
She turned to Erika.
"How long has he been doing this?" Emily already knew the answer. She wanted to hear it from someone else.
"The games? Since Jacob started playing, two years ago. But the showing up?" Erika's voice was matter-of-fact, but the depth underneath was unmistakable. "Since before Jacob was born. He was there in the delivery room. He was there for the first steps, the first words, every birthday, every Christmas. When he was deployed, he'd video call at bedtime. Once he FaceTimed from somewhere he definitely wasn't supposed to have a phone. I could hear helicopters."
Emily turned to Jake, still standing, still cheering as Jacob trotted to first base on an error.
"He won't tell you any of this." Erika's voice dropped, meant only for Emily. "He thinks showing up is what everyone does. Doesn't occur to him that most people don't."
The game unfolded. Jacob struck out once, walked once, and caught a ball that bounced directly into his glove while he was looking at whatever had caught his attention in the dirt. Jake celebrated the catch louder than anything else, and Jacob beamed like he'd won the World Series.
Between innings, Erika talked. Not gossip, not idle chatter. She told Emily about the backyard batting practice, Jake pitching underhand while Jacob swung with his eyes closed. About the time Jake taught him to field ground balls and Jacob took one off the chin and cried for ten minutes and then asked to do it again. About years of bedtime stories over satellite phones, birthday presents that arrived from countries Jacob couldn't pronounce, and the time Jacob's class had career day and Jake came in his dress uniform and every kid in second grade decided they wanted to be soldiers.
"He's the only father figure Jacob has," Erika said. "I've dated. A couple of good men, even. But Jacob measures all of them against Jake, and none of them have passed."
Emily understood that. She was beginning to measure things against Jake too.
"Can I ask you something?" Emily said.
“Sure.”
"Does he ever talk about what it costs him? Being this for everyone?"
Erika watched the field. A kid on the opposing team was running the bases in the wrong direction. The coach was trying not to laugh.
"Matt used to worry about that," Erika said. "He told me once that Jake gives everything to the people he loves and doesn't know how to ask for anything back. Matt said it wasn't selflessness. It was the only way Jake knew how to show people they mattered." She looked at Emily directly. "He's never brought anyone to meet us. In eight years. You're the first."
Emily didn't have a response for that. Or she had too many, all of them tangled together, none of them adequate.
"I'm not telling you to be careful," Erika said. "I'm telling you that what he's offering you is real. All of it. And whatever you decide to do with that, just make sure someone's giving back to him. He deserves that."
The game ended. Jacob's team lost by a margin too large to count, which no one on either side seemed to notice or care about. Jacob ran to them with dirt on his face and his jersey untucked and a grin that could power a small city.
"Did you see my catch? I caught it!"
