I fear he won’t.
NINETEEN
COLBY
Jayden and I leave my room at different times. I slip out early, arriving at the field before the rest of the coaching staff. Coach Shuster seems impressed, giving me a thumbs up when he walks in and catches me reviewing Adriel’s at-bats.
“Glad to see you on it,” he says. I salute him and drop my focus back to the iPad, replaying his last turn at the plate. Coach Shuster moves on to managing his pitching rotation for the next two games.
He’s right. I am on it. On getting Adriel out of here. On removing the thousand-pound weight that came along with him. The one smothering both Jayden and me.
I see plenty for Adriel to work on. Ways he can get more out of his swing and get the attention he craves from the right people.
The trick is, will he listen to me?
He likes to pretend he’s my fan. He’s always treated me like his little sister. But he still sees me as lesser than him, his brother, and his dad when it comes to knowledge about this game. I see it in his expression, and the breathy laugh he let out when Coach introduced me to him formally.
“Pfft, yeah, I know Colby. She’s all right,” he said.
Coach thought he meant that in a good way, that I’mall rightin the cool way that word can be construed. But no. He meant it as mediocre. I’m the little softball player whose dad used to ride his tail during practice. Inferior thanks to my sex, and definitely not qualified to tell him what to do.
Well.
Here goes nothing.
I carry the iPad out to the field, where the Little Rock field crew is setting up the equipment for BP. I drag one of the folding chairs from our dugout toward the rolling backstop and prop my feet on the crossbar, doing my best to appear relaxed and ready.
“Coach.” Jake nods at me as he drops two buckets by the portable mound.
Coach Bastion wanders toward the screen, circling his arm in some sort of half-assed stretch routine. He’s in his late fifties, and he’s thrown a lot of BP over the years, so he probably doesn’t have a lot of cartilage left to tear.
He eyes me as he stretches his arm across his chest, a move our training staff has insisted the guys stop doing because it puts strain on the wrong set of muscles. I wonder if he knows that and is just doing it to be stubborn, or if nobody’s told him yet. Either way, I hope his arm fucking hurts today.
“Jake, give me a few bunts,” he says, grabbing a ball and working it in his hands.
Jake steps in to give him a target, and Coach Bastion throws about a dozen pitches, slowly narrowing in on the strike zone.
“All right. Swing away,” he says, finally feeling ready, I guess.
Jake nods, then glances at me.
“Remember what we talked about,” I tell him. He adjusts his back foot a few inches, and Coach Bastion rolls his neck, clearly annoyed that I’m giving input. That I exist.
Jake takes a hack at the first pitch and sends it to the fence, and while I’d love to shout something out loud, I take pleasurein my tight-lipped smirk as I drop my gaze to the iPad so I can record Jake’s progress.
Adriel comes out of the clubhouse alongside his brother, and I will myself not to look up and acknowledge either of them until they are both standing behind me doing their stretching routine.
“I hear you’re going to make me a hitter again, huh?” Adriel says. There’s a noticeable snarkiness to his tone.
“No,you’regoing to make yourself a better hitter,” I respond, again avoiding meeting his eyes. I clip the small camera that feeds into my iPad to the screen, then sit back and wait for the data points.
Coach Bastion chuckles from the mound. I don’t look at him, either. He and I haven’t really crossed paths since I helped him in after his bender. And while I don’t love that he made a verbal note of where I was, tacking on his little suspicious commentary, I also know he doesn’t want me sharing his sad state with our boss. We’re at a stalemate for now, he and I. But Adriel could tip those scales.
Adriel steps into the batter’s box, and goes about his usual routine. First, two rotations of the bat before reaching it across the plate to ensure he’s covering everything. Then he pauses, holding it there before slowly bringing it to his shoulder. He doesn’t look at the pitcher—aka Couch Bastion for now—until he tilts his bat steeply over his shoulder, so it’s almost pointed at the ground as if he’s slung a sack of potatoes over his back.
Coach Bastion throws him a meatball down the middle of the plate, and Adriel drills it right back at the L screen. Coach Bastion whistles, and Adriel eyes me, smirking. Rather prideful. I don’t flinch.
The same routine goes on for a dozen pitches, and Adriel puts a hard bat on each one, nailing the ball around the field. When he’s done, I pull up the stats as Adriel saunters around the backstop, stripping open the Velcro from his batting gloves.
