“You’ve had thistone.” His voice lowered at the end of the sentence.
“A tone?”
“A tone.” Dad punctuated his words with a stern look. “Ever since I got here. It’s … harsh.”
Brayden pulled his chin back. Had he? “I don’t mean to.”
“I know. But you should pay attention to it.”
“So his attitude is my fault.”
“No, but putting him on the defensive isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
Had he been that way with Tilly too? After the accident when she was sore and trying to care for him? In an instant, he knew he had. He shifted in his seat, his thoughts weighing him down. He plucked at his bottom lip, considering how much he’d pushed her away and what was her pulling away.
“You saw Tilly today, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“That is one special lady. I miss her smiling face around your house.”
Me too.“Dad.” His warning was weak.
“What? She’s my baby girl.” He didn’t seem at all worried about picking sides in this situation. “I’m going to take her to lunch one day.”
“You do that.” Brayden stared out the window.
“You could come.” There was too much hope in dad’s voice. A forced calm that meant Dad had a plan.
“No. I can’t, Dad. We broke up.”
“You can get back together.”
“She deserves better.”
Dad shook his head. “I don’t appreciate you talking about my son that way.”
Brayden rubbed his head again. “I have nothing to offer her. My skills, the way my mind and body worked together, everything I was, I wanted to give to her. That’s all toast. How can I go to her with empty hands?”
Dad pondered that for a moment. His ability to think things through rather than shoot off at the mouth had not transferred to Brayden. Finally, he said, “Tilly lost her job too, the one she loved. She seems to be getting on all right in her new position.”
“Yeah, the kids love her tours, and I’ve seen her chatting it up with the front office staff. She knew a few of them before the accident, so it wasn’t hard for her to slide in and make friends.”
“She’s figuring things out.”
“I guess.”
“You need to figure things out. Are you going to be a coach?”
Was he? The opportunity had fallen into his lap, and he hadn’t given it much thought beyond knowing he needed to do something. Even if he did want to be a coach, there was one big pain in the butt in his way. “I really don’t like Gunner.”
Dad laughed. “You don’t have to like him to coach him.”
Brayden nodded. He’d had coaches that he wasn’t close to, but they were professional. He could at least be that. All he’d done so far was show up and drop a couple tips on the guy, corrected what he saw was wrong. He thought back to some of the early drills he’d learned. The things that taught him to rotate his hand when he pitched. He could walk Gunner through them. If the guy would listen to him for five minutes. Maybe if he worked on histone.
If he could get Gunner to throw a decent cutter … That would be something.
They pulled into his garage and the door rolled down, casting them in shadow.
