After he bounds up the stairs, I drop down into the nearest chair. “Thank God he doesn’t know how to hold a grudge.”
Mom bustles into the kitchen, pulling together the dinner she insisted on preparing. “He’s a good kid, and he loves you. He knows this move isn’t meant to be a bad thing, just give him time to adjust.”
And later that night, when I’m sitting on a cold concrete wall, watching my boy skateboard around the dips and ramps of the nearby skate park, I breathe a sigh of relief. Because now that we’re here, I can feel myself finally starting to believe that Mom and Juni might be right.
Moving to Cedar Creekwillbe a good thing.
4
LUCA
It’s absolutelyridiculous that I feel nervous right now, staring out the window that looks down onto the field where most of the players, the few temporary staff we’ve hired, and a smattering of family members are starting to mill about.
My goal today was to bring everyone together for the simple job of getting to know each other. It also gives me a chance to try and feel everyone out in terms of what they might want to see happen with the Thunder.
I should be down there with them all, but instead, I’m standing in my office, if you can call it that, at the stadium. This place is still a dump. I have no furniture, and there’s stains on the walls and a broken light bulb in the retro track lighting above me.
I insisted that my office be one of the last spaces fixed up. I’m more than capable of working from home, or from anywhere until everything else is dealt with. After all, the owner of a team isn’t as important as the players,the coaching staff, and everyone else who actually brings fans into the stadium.
But it’s not my run-down office making me nervous. It’s not the players that I haven’t met yet, or the renovations that seem to be taking forever.
No, these nerves are one hundred percent caused by the stunning woman with wavy red hair pulled back in a high ponytail who just walked in. Against my better judgment, I don’t stop my gaze from traveling down her curvy body, covered in figure-hugging denim and an off-the-shoulder sweater that’s almost an exact match for the shade of blue on the Thunder’s home uniform.
My jaw clenches. I can’t be doing this. I can’t be looking at Isla and seeing anything other than the competent marketing consultant I’ve hired to help me turn this team around over the next several months. Yet every damn time I’ve seen her since she started last week, I’ve fought a battle. A struggle between the devil on one shoulder, telling me no one has caught my interest like Isla does since my ex-girlfriend back in Toronto, and the angel on the other shoulder, reminding me just how much younger than me she is. To say nothing of her being my fucking employee. Everything about Isla is off-limits.
It doesn’t help that I overheard a conversation between her and Gabe in which she admitted to being single. All that did was make the devil even louder.
But the devil doesn’t care that me pursuing her could end in disaster. For me, if she is offended by my advances. For her, if anyone suspected she got the jobbased on my attraction and not based on her skills. And for the team, if I lose the perfect person to make Cedar Creek fall in love with their baseball team again.
“Son, you ready?”
I turn at my dad’s voice. His back is stooped, his hair fully silver, but even at eighty years old, he’s still the strong man who raised me to be who I am today. Focused, driven, yet compassionate and generous. Those qualities are what I pride myself on, and I can’t allow one beautiful woman to throw me off course.
“You bet. Is Mom downstairs?”
He chuckles as I make my way over to him. “Of course she is. Probably convincing those players of yours to eat more vegetables.”
We both laugh. My mother is a retired therapist, with an uncanny way of getting people to spill their life’s story. She’s also been a vegetarian since the seventies, and is constantly trying to get everyone around her, strangers and all, to see what she calls the “benefits of a rainbow diet.” She’s good-natured about it, and never forces or judges anyone, but it’s become a running joke for Dad and me, trying to predict who her next target will be whenever we’re out.
It could be the cashier at a store, or an usher at a theater. Heck, I’ve seen her try to peddle carrot soup as an alternative to lobster bisque at an upscale restaurant.
She’s determined, that’s for sure. Guess I come by my own tenacity honestly. And my propensity toward healthy eating.
Dad and I make our way downstairs and head downthe tunnel toward the field. The sound of voices gets louder as we grow closer. Dad pulls me to a stop just before we round the corner that will take us out onto the grass. Turning me to face him, he places his wrinkled hands on my shoulders and looks in my eyes. “Luca, I’m proud of you. I know you felt untethered for a while after selling off GaitSync. And I know coming back to Cedar Creek may not have been your first choice, but your mother and I really did appreciate the help after my fall.”
“Dad, stop. Moving home was the right decision, and I don’t regret it. ”
Of course, that lack of regret was also the proof I needed that my last relationship was at its end. Because moving back to be closer to my parents was more important to me than staying in Toronto like my ex wanted. Truly, it was a timely wake-up call to the fact that we’d both been settling instead of chasing our happiness.
“Well, still, I hope you don’t hold yourself back from finding someone again. Anyone would be damn lucky to have you. Look at you now, owner of the Cedar Creek Thunder, doing great things for the community. I just…” he trails off, a soft smile creasing his face. “I’m just so damn proud of you, son.”
I pull him in for a gentle hug, feeling how frail he seems in my arms. It fucking sucks having aging parents, and when Dad fell from a ladder last winter, it really brought that hard truth home. I’d missed too many years, and who knew how many more I’d have left.
“Thanks, Dad. But remember, no one here knows I’m connected to GaitSync. I don’t want any attention being on me, or my leg, or my money.”
After graduating from the University of Toronto with both a Bachelor’s of Electrical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering, I spent over a decade living and working on the East Coast, developing GaitSync. A smart gait feedback module, it addressed the ongoing frustration of gait analysis wearing a prosthetic, and the constant adjustments needed to ensure no long-term joint damage was done.
When I eventually sold the technology to a Canadian company that specialized in advanced prosthetics in a private, anonymous sale that kept my name far away from it, I stayed back east, trying to think of my next step. My ex disagreed with me staying anonymous, and then the arguments over my lack of direction started up as well. I was so aimless, and she didn’t understand that I hated it, too. I simply couldn’t figure out what to do. GaitSync had been my whole life, my passion, for so long that when it was no longer mine, I felt lost.
