But it felt right. In the way a baseball connected with the bat. It wasn’t a World Series kind of feeling. It was something else, something a lot quieter.
It was right in the way of enjoying a piece of blueberry pie after a long day, or coming home to a woman who loves you. As if my body and my life were straining to align. I’d never felt that way about anything but baseball, and truth be told, this scared the shit out of me. And yet, I never questioned things when the stars aligned. Just like I never second-guessed a swing, I sure as hell wasn’t going to double think this.
Heidi was mine. As of that moment, I was all about finding a way to keep her. So I finished my meatloaf and pie. I even drank the tangy lemonade without adding sugar. And then I grabbed Heidi by the hand and led her out of the house.
I had a plan. It was time I got to it.
Chapter Thirteen
Heidi
Rob was different. Sometime between pleading with me to get into his Corvette and finishing off his mother’s amazing cooking, he’d become a different man. The first change was his clothes. Soft blue jeans cut low on his hips and his T-shirt fit like a second skin. The man had gone from professional baseball player to Nebraska farm-boy hottie. He even had the light scruff on his chin and the work boots on his feet to complete the outfit. His body had gotten harder somehow, too. The muscles more defined, even as his eyes had grown warmer and his expression more open. Rob already had the Honest Abe-Opie Taylor look down, but suddenly there was a joy in his face I’d only ever seen when he hit a home run. He was happy here in Nebraska and it showed. When he’d first stepped out of his bedroom in that outfit, my mouth had gone bone dry. Suddenly I understood why cowboy romances were popular. My knees went weak and I lost control of my voice for a bit.
Then there was the other change. There was a moment during the meal when his gaze had landed on me. His eyes had widened, and he’d just frozen like that with his fork halfway to his mouth. His father was talking, so I’m pretty sure the man hadn’t noticed, but I had. And his mother certainly had. I’d heard her set her coffee mug down as she watched him watching me.
And what had I done? Sat there staring back at him while my heartbeat increased. I didn’t even know why it happened, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. And I couldn’t stop my body’s steady rise in temperature.
Then the moment was over. Rob blinked and looked at his fork. He put it to his mouth, chewing slowly as he continued to look at me. Not directly anymore, but in a slow tick of movement. To me, then to whomever was speaking, then back to me. Steady, relentless, and as dependable as the tide. He kept looking at me, and I grew flustered enough that I had to stop eating or choke.
Then he’d declared that we were going out to the fire pit. He’d knocked fists with his father, kissed his mother, and grabbed me by the hand. His other hand snatched up a wastebasket like that was normal. And together we went out the back toward a barn dimly lit in the distance. Halfway in between was a fire pit surrounded by benches and rocking chairs.
He went right to the business of lighting it and soon we had flames dancing in front of us. It was a lovely night with a nearly full moon and more stars than I’d ever seen, even down in Ft. Lauderdale. He pulled me to a bench and sat down next to me. We were near enough to the fire that I felt the heat of it on my face almost as much as the press of his large body heated my insides. We were thigh to thigh as he grabbed the full wastepaper basket.
“What is that?” I asked.
He pulled a handful of newsprint out and showed it to me. “Press clippings. Mom cuts out everything anybody says about me and leaves it on my dresser.”
I eyed the full wastebasket. “That’s a lot of press.”
“Tell me about it,” he drawled as he tossed a handful into the fire. He didn’t even look at the headlines, much less read all those column inches. He just tossed them all in the fire.
“Your mother spent hours doing that,” I said. “You’re just burning them?”
“Yup. And she knows. It’s been my ritual since I was in high school.”
“To burn the newspapers?”
“To burn whatever is said about me—good, bad, or ugly.”
I watched him toss more words onto the fire. I followed a particularly large chunk as it curled on the edges, caught flame, then disintegrated into ash. A black square lifted up into the air and I followed the tiny piece until it fluttered away, caught on the breeze.
“You really hate the press that much?” I asked.
“Nope. But it’s easy to let this shit get into my head. So after a particularly bad game in high school, my dad and I came out here and burned it all. The bad reviews first, but eventually everything. The stuff about me breaking hitting records. The first time someone said I was the new Babe Ruth. The time the story broke that I’d gone into the minors and then later to the Bobcats.” He held up a big article about his jump to the majors. It was the lead sports story in theIndianapolis Sunfrom a few months ago. With a grin, he tossed it into the fire. “It’s how I keep myself real. This stuff…” He held up another handful of careful clippings. “It’s not who I am.”
Again they went into the fire. Piece by piece until the wastebasket was empty. And I was impressed. I still had a copy of every article I’d written for the newspaper. I had a copy of my award-winning essay tucked in my file cabinet. My SAT scores hadn’t been important for years, but they were still pinned on the corkboard in my bedroom at home. Not to mention all the stuff my mom had put on our Wall of Accomplishments. I couldn’t bring myself to burn any of it. They were proof that I was smart. That I was a good writer. That I had value. And I looked at them when I began to doubt myself. I couldn’t imagine burning any of it.
“So if that isn’t you,” I asked, “what is?”
“Nothing is. I’m me, not this stuff.”
Grounded. The man was so damn grounded in who he was that I couldn’t begin to fathom it. I was my accomplishments. If someone asked me who I was, I’d list my job and what I’d written. Apparently, Rob was just a guy who played baseball really well and that blew my mind.
“You can’t possibly be that free of ego,” I said.
He flashed me that thousand-watt grin. “Well, I do count the pieces of paper.”
“What?”
