I jog out to the grass in left field behind Jayden, the sparkly pink 10 reflecting the late afternoon sun off his back. I didn’t even look at the back of Jayden’s jersey when I put it on, so when I get to my throwing spot, I squeeze the ball and glove between my knees so I can tug the collar to the side. I crane my neck to read the back without taking the jersey off.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jayden says through a chuckle. He flaps his glove with his hand, calling for the ball.
I give up trying to stretch the jersey and slip my glove on my left hand, then throw Jayden the ball.
“What number’s on yours?” I shout.
“Ten. Like yours,” he says, working the ball in his fingers to find the perfect two-seam grip. He’s always trying to convince my dad to let him pitch. Problem is, he throws perfect strikes. Perfectlyhittablestrikes.
“Why’d you pick ten?” I ask after the ball smacks into my leather pocket.
“Because it’s your number.” He shrugs, and I feel for the four-seam grip so I can try to throw it back to him harder and distract the both of us from the smile slowly pulling my lips higher into my cheeks.
Because it’s my number.
We throw for a while in silence, nothing but the rhythm of our arms and the slap of ball on leather. It’s soothing. Our safe space. Out here, I can even let go of the fact I had to switchto softball and don’t get to play with my friend anymore. He’ll always be my throwing partner.
Jayden snags a pop fly I throw for him, then drops his gaze across the field. I figure the other team finally showed up, so I move to the baseline to make room for our guys to warm up again. But when I realize Jayden’s gaze is still locked across the field, I follow the line of his focus to the parking.
A Harris County Sheriff’s SUV has pulled in crooked, the lights on top strobing blue and red. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of commotion, no students fighting or roaming around the sparse parking lot, and there isn’t another car parked close, so nobody got pulled over. Adriel is hitting in the cages behind the outfield wall, so they can’t be here for him. Besides, smoking a blunt on campus doesn’t seem to warrant flashing lights and a sheriff’s deputy, I would think.
My dad’s boss, Mr. Riordan, the school’s athletic director, is talking with one of the officers, and when the two of them gesture toward the field, my body buzzes with an uncomfortable energy. I can’t tell whether I want to run away or throw up. I’m frozen in place regardless of the electricity coursing through me.
Both officers take off their brown cowboy hats when they step onto the warning track dirt, and something about the way the taller one holds his hat against his chest as Mr. Riordan calls my father over to join them makes me uneasy.
“Jayden. Go tell the guys to start stretching and throwing,” my father shouts mid-stride.
“Yes, Coach.” Jayden responds with a nod, though he lingers next to me, his gaze holding mine for a few extra seconds before taking off in a sprint toward the hitting cages.
Jayden didn’t speak, but I imagine he has the same questions on his tongue that at do. Why are they here? Who’s in trouble? Are they here for Adriel? Did something happen to someone we know?
My dad’s hands are on his hips, and he’s nodding while listening to the tall sheriff with the hat over his heart. Within seconds, though, my dad’s strong posture crumbles, and his hands move to his face, cupping his mouth as he drops one knee to the ground. And then the wailing starts.
My feet are stuck where they are, as if I’m wearing long spikes dug so deeply into the dirt that I’m practically planted. I jerk my head around to look for Jayden, and he’s paused just in front of the left field fence, his hand on the gate as the man he admires more than anyone falls apart over something that must be the worst news in the world. Jayden meets my eyes across perfectly mowed lines on the grass outfield, and I feel it in my bones—things are about to change.Forever.
PRESENT
The déjà vu of being on a field with Jayden on Mother’s Day is fucking with my head. I half expected him to ask me to play catch when he clomped his way through the dugout during pre-game. Of course he didn’t. We have our roles now. And it’s a different Mother’s Day, years later.
We aren’t kids anymore.
And my mom is dead.
More than a decade has passed, and I think I’m getting better—until this day comes along. My dad is the same. He’s why I show up. I missed last year, too busy coaching at the college. He had to visit Mom’s grave alone. He said it was fine, but his voice can’t bluff the same way his face can. He wasn’t fine.Iwasn’t fine.
I was able to slip my dad a ticket for a better seat for today, so I’ve been able to step on the top row of the dugout and meet his gaze after every inning. He seems happy being outhere, watching me. Watching Jayden. I first met his eyes after Jayden’s first at-bat, when he took the ball down the baseline for a line drive that got caught in the corner for a triple. That’s what we worked on all week—his pull power. I’ve finally convinced him to lean into it. Jayden’s worry is that the other teams will start to shift on him, closing the gaps. And that’s when we’ll open him back up a little, so he can spray the field.
It’s not a technique you can push on many players. Very few, actually. Guys get pegged as one or the other, pull or oppo hitters. Jayden’s special, though. He has it in him to be both on command. He just needs more time to put it into practice.
“Let’s go, Jay! Find a way!” My father’s voice sounds above everyone’s, even in a stadium with four thousand shouting fans. There’s a familiarity in the way he calls Jayden out. There may be more years on those vocal cords, but they holler Jayden’s name with the same inflection they always have. Forever his coach.
I prop my iPad on the dugout wall and pull up the sequence from Jayden’s previous at-bat. It took a few swings for him to earn that triple, and the same pitcher is throwing to him, albeit with forty more pitches on his arm. If Jayden can get to him now, they’ll pull the guy. He’s one double away from being done.
Jayden knocks the donut off his bat then flips it in his palm, taking a few swift hacks without the weight before glancing over his shoulder at me. I flash him my pinky finger, my signal to guard the outside of the plate. They know he has pull power, and their pitcher isn’t going to want to feed into that. But all Jayden needs is one miss.
“Wait for him to miss,” I mutter under my breath.
A bulky presence knocks into my side, and Jake spits on the dugout floor between us before he props a foot on one of the crossbars. He’s dressed out to catch bullpen pitchers today while his dad is starting in the game. Jake’s desperation to get his shotemanates from his body, as if he were dropped in a radioactive vat of chemicals that left him pulsing with superpowers.
