Authors: Kristen Kehoe
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cora
The club is loud and packed when A.J. pours herself onto one of the abandoned stools at our table. I sat a moment ago, having left the dance floor in search of something to cool my throat and my skin. Jake can dance, like, really move in more than the usual awkward white boy grab-her-hips-and-gyrate-back-and-forth way.
I’m embarrassed to admit that he’s definitely the one keeping us afloat on the floor, as all I seem capable of doing is holding onto him. Now, he’s headed toward the bar to get a mineral water and lemon for me and another beer for himself, and I’m sitting with A.J. while Liam spits some serious game with a redhead in the corner. When the girl bites her lip and flips her hair for the fifth time, I can practically see the triumph on his face. I never would have pegged Liam as a player, but watching him work I’m certain this is a regular activity for him.
I look around at the other people crowding the bar and the dance floor, the dark corners that house couples, the balcony where still more people stand and flirt, watch the dance floor and wait for their turn, and I realize that after more than a year away from this scene, I haven’t missed it. Being with Jake on the dance floor was nice — more than nice when I pressed up against him and he moved in a way that showed me his skills reached far beyond the bedroom or the ball field — and it made me realize that what used to be something that filled me, gave me energy and purpose, now only means something because he’s here with me. It’s not the club that has me happy and relaxed, almost content. It’s Jake.
“Looks like I’ll be getting myself home,” A.J. says with a motion toward Liam and I laugh, tuning back in, grateful for her interruption from the path my thoughts were taking. Giving in, I prop my feet on the stool across from me. My studded Alexander McQueen peep-toe booties sparkle back at me, and I wince when I think of the walk home in them. Sexy? Yes. Comfortable after two hours of dancing and walking in them? Not exactly.
“We’ll get you there,” I tell A.J. when she mirrors my pose. “Besides, I thought Chloe was meeting you here.”
“We broke up,” she says and I stop admiring my feet long enough to shoot her a look.
“When?”
“A couple of days ago when it became clear that however into me she was, it wasn’t enough for her to be open and honest with the people in her life.” A.J. shrugs her shoulder and clicks on her phone, scrolling through some texts, looking busy to mask what I think is the hurt in her voice. “I don’t hide who or what I am, and since that’s what she needed from me, I decided to take a walk.”
“That black and white?” I ask and her eyes stop scanning her screen long enough to shoot to me.
“Yeah, Snow White, that black and white. You’re either with someone or you’re not. Hiding them isn’t the way to show them you want to be with them.”
“Was she hiding or was she trying to figure it out? You said it yourself, you’re her first serious girlfriend, the first person she’s done more than go to dinner with. However ready she might be, she’s also probably pretty scared. Doesn’t she deserve some slack?”
I don’t know why I’m defending Chloe, especially since I’ve only met her a handful of times, each one in passing at the salon. All I can see is that A.J. walked away from someone that made her happy because she was hurt. I’ve been in counseling long enough to know that walking away from things, from people, can be just as dangerous for a person as staying. There’s a precious balance we have to work to maintain, the one that allows us to be more open, more accepting, more willing to try, and the one that tells us when enough is a enough, when it’s time to walk away and save ourselves anymore unnecessary hurt. For whatever reason, the way A.J. looks is telling me walking away isn’t necessarily the best decision for her or Chloe right now.
“What do you know about being scared, Snow White?”
It’s a challenge, and one she’s earned, so I lean back and cross my ankles. “I wanted everyone to love me and no one to know me, A.J., and as a result I got married and divorced before my twenty-first birthday, stopped talking to my parents, and ended up in rehab. I’m over a year sober now, and because I didn’t walk away, didn’t let anger and fear rule me, that hottie walking toward us is sleeping in my bed regularly. And more, he’s with me right now, dancing and celebrating a night that’s important to him, and he’s friends with my friends. That’s something I was too afraid to have a couple of years ago, because I was afraid the hurt would be too much in the end.”
“How do you know it’s going to end?”
I want to say I don’t, that what we have has shown me that it doesn’t have to, that what I feel with him is so strong, so different than I ever imagined real love could be that I know it actually has a chance, but I can’t. Since the beginning, I’ve known why Jake was here, what he was working toward. Our futures don’t line up, so all we can take is right now.
“Sometimes you can see the end before it even starts,” I tell her. “And still, what we get in those brief moments together is enough to make the ending worth it.”
She stares at me, keeps staring even as Jake sets down my water and stands beside my chair, sipping his beer.
Then she shakes her head. “Goddamn, Snow White, anytime you want to change teams you let me know.”
“And me,” Jake says and we all laugh.
A.J. rakes her multicolor nails through the side of her hair that’s long. “It’s been a long time since I was ashamed of who I was, and I didn’t like it then. I like it even less now, especially since someone who matters is the one making me feel this way. It wasn’t so bad when it was a stranger, but now, when it’s the person I want to feel for me the way I feel for her? It hurts a lot and I can’t fucking stand it.”
I think back to when it was my mother making me feel like less, when all I wanted was for her to tell me just once that I mattered or that I looked nice, that she noticed me, maybe even she loved me. And now I think about all of the regrets I have because of how I responded to her carelessness, how many times I didn’t tell her I loved her or needed her or respected her, and I realize the bad things can’t be the only things that matters. Sometimes, you have to move forward, and know that the pain may be there and you can survive it.
“Are your feelings for her going away just because you walked?” She shakes her head. “Are you feeling any better about yourself?” She hesitates and then shakes her head again. “Then maybe you should call her, try introducing her to a small group of people first, see how it goes. And be patient,” I tell her, looking at Jake. “It helps when you’re scared to know that someone’s willing to wait it out and just be there, no matter how often you tell them to go away.”
I watch her walk away to call Chloe a minute later and then Jake turns my chair so my legs fall and he’s standing right in front of me. When he brackets his hands on the back of it and leans down so our eyes are level, I smile and reach out, tracing my fingertip across his brow, over and down his straight nose to his lips. He’s wearing one of the few button downs he owns, this one a dark blue denim, paired with his khaki colored cords, cuffed and resting on the top of his lace up brown boots that aren’t vintage and trendy, but worn and well lived in. His shirt sleeves are rolled up to the elbow and I trace his tattoo while he looks down at me, mesmerized as always with the words that he chose to make a part of himself.
“You’re going to do it, Handsome Jake.” I linger on the last letter and then look up at him, inches away from those beautiful brown eyes. “You’re going to get your dream back. You’re going to rise from this, too.”
I know he’s had a life that doesn’t hand out second chances, one where he worked to carve out a place for himself, even a girl, but she left him, just like his mother. He’s never said it, but he doesn’t have to. I see him, better than I’ve ever seen anyone else, and I remember what he said that night on the golf course when he told me that she just didn’t love him, and then after when he told me that his mother left because she wanted something better. He’s a riser, someone who’s walked from the ashes and made a man of himself, and this time is no different.
He doesn’t say anything, but his hands tense and his forehead drops to mine and for a second we stay like that, both finally acknowledging that whatever we’ve started has a shelf life. We both came here to escape a memory, but where this is the final destination in my journey, Jake is only in the middle of his, and the other half leads him back to where he came from, just like me.
He’s going to go back, to finish becoming who he’s meant to be, and when he does I’ll stay here with the memory of him and how he pulled me from the in-between and into life and held onto me until I was strong enough to remember who I was and make her a part of who I am.
And I’ll never forget what it felt like to know that for a while, I loved, and it was real.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jake
I was ten the first time I threw a solid pitch with something more in mind than getting it over the plate. Montana isn’t the hotspot for baseball — not the way it is in the south and southeast, but I found a team at eight and by twelve we played all year round. I rotated between outfield and the mound, two of the limited positions a lefty can play, and I was soon known for my curveball and my speed — throwing, not foot. As I got bigger, my velocity got better, to the point that I never doubted I’d get a chance after high school.
The day I left for college, my dad stepped out onto the barely-there front stoop of the double wide we lived in and leaned a shoulder against the metal side of the trailer, watching as I threw my two duffels into the back of my beat up ’87 Land Rover that he’d rebuilt and given to me when I turned sixteen. We didn’t have a bad relationship, it just wasn’t a verbal one. Maybe it’s because we were two men living in a kind-of-house with no female to soften the rough edges on either of us, or maybe it’s because I wanted what he once thought was his, and he wanted to forget that time; either way, we never talked much and that day was no different.
Only, I wanted to talk to him, wanted to hear his voice and his encouragement, anything to tell me that I wasn’t going to fail, that I wasn’t chasing a dream that was going to end in a fiery pit of depression like it had for him. I didn’t get that, even when I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked back to where he was standing.
“I guess that’s it,” I said and he nodded.
“Don’t forget to stop somewhere in Utah. Seventeen hours plus is too long for one day.”
I nodded, scuffing my feet in the dirt that was speckled with weeds, wishing just once that the words I’d always been able to use would come to me when I was faced with my father. As usual, they didn’t, and we both stood there in silence, the sounds from the other residents of the trailer park booming around us. Sighing, I looked up and held out my hand, waiting for him to take it. The words were still stuck in my throat, the need to say them physically painful, but I didn’t. Whatever I needed, he needed things too, and silence was one of them.
He grasped my hand and, after a second, surprised us both by hauling me forward and pounding on my back with his left. “Don’t listen to anybody but your catcher, and remember the best pitch to throw is the one you can do the most accurate, the most often. Throw ‘em hard, Jake.”
Then he let me go and turned to walk inside, the metal screen door slapping closed behind him and echoing like a gunshot. I stood and stared at it, even when I heard the television click on and the sounds of an old western pour out of the windows. It wasn’t reassurance in the traditional sense, but it was more than we’d said about baseball in a long time, and more than enough for me to read into it and know he was proud of me. He couldn’t say it, couldn’t push past whatever stood in his way and kept him from being truly whole, but he could acknowledge me as the pitcher I was, and it was enough.
That memory floated back to me today as I took the mound for the first time in eight months with the intent to
release
the ball, really release it, like a pitcher, like the ball player he had made me all those years ago. My arm didn’t revolt, my elbow didn’t tingle or weaken. It all held together and finally, I was back to the place I never thought I’d be.
I’m throwing from the mound every day now. My fastball is at seventy-five percent, and next week I get to start throwing breaking balls from a flat surface. Although my arm feels strong, there’s still this sense of awkwardness, a learning curve to adjust to the foreign ligament that’s now holding my bones together and allowing my arm to throw. The doctors assure me that this is normal, and most players feel like this until up to twenty months after their surgery. I’m only eight months out of surgery, and though there have been setbacks (my inability to focus at the beginning, my move from Arizona to Portland) I’m back on track. If everything continues as is, I’ll be able to practice in game-like conditions soon, which means scrimmages and a batter, moving on the mound and taking calls from my catcher. It also means the future that I had put to the side all those months ago is now staring me right in the face.
Only now another future is there with it, one that includes Blue.
The lines of Hughes’s
A Dream Deferred
run through my head and I wonder if sacrificing one dream for another is smart, or even possible. I’m terrified of leaving her, terrified that she’s become just as big as the dream that came before her, but I’m also terrified of being like my father and sinking in the overwhelming feeling of failure. She knows this, because she asked me one night and I couldn’t lie.
“Are you afraid of anything, Handsome Jake?”
We were sitting on the couch, her feet on my lap, a fashion magazine resting on her chest while I played Call of Duty. Like the other times that she asked me a question, it was out of the blue and took me by surprise. My initial answer was
no
, but then she gave me that look, the one that said she knew I was brushing her off, so I paused my game and sighed.
“Why does it matter?”
She shrugged but then she said the one thing that we both knew I couldn’t refuse. “Because you matter and I want to be there for you. Is it the idea of never playing again?”
“That’s one of them,” I admitted.
“What’s the other?”
Swallowing, I looked at her. “Ending my career like this, like my dad did, broken and used up, sad and angry. I promised myself a long time ago that wherever baseball took me, for however long I got to play, when the end came it wouldn’t be a bitter one, it would be one where I looked back and thanked the baseball gods for the time they looked out for me, one where I could be grateful for the chances I had rather than resentful for the ones I didn’t.” I clenched my fist and looked down. “And then I tore my UCL, ended my career, and broke my promise all at the same time.”
She was silent a second, like she so often is, and then she was sitting up, curling her legs under her as she pushed up enough to turn my face toward hers and look into my eyes. “You’re not done, Handsome Jake. You’re just taking a break.”
I couldn’t help the small smile that formed. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” And then she kissed me and I kissed her back, because whether or not she knew it, she made me believe that anything was possible in that moment.
Now, I’m walking toward her salon after my workout, just getting off the phone with my agent, whose been talking to the ASU coach, both of whom happen to agree with Cora. The draft is in two months, and if my progress continues like it has been I’ll be entering… which also means going back to my team soon and engaging in those game-like situations to finish out my rehab.
Why this feels like giving up on Blue is confusing to me. We both know I’ve been rehabbing for one specific thing, yet I can’t help but think I’m letting her down, walking away, doing what everyone else has done that I swore I wouldn’t. I stop outside of the salon and look at her through the window as she finishes her check out process at the register. I’m almost a half an hour late, which means she had a walk-in or an appointment that ran over. Either way, I stay where I am and stare at her while she clicks away with the mouse and A.J. comes up from behind her, her approach clearly startling to Blue as she jumps and looks over her shoulder with a laugh and a glare.
The spunky brunette with the badass style and a sensitive heart just laughs and smacks her lips on the side of Cora’s cheek. An ache forms in my chest as I watch her another few moments, noting that Liam eventually wanders over to add his opinion on whatever they’re talking about. Cora laughs, A.J. scowls, Liam shrugs his shoulders in an
I call it like I see it
gesture.
She’s opened in the last few months, bloomed and become more of the person I think she once was before she thought she had to shed those memories and start over. Four months ago she was a girl with a mission, but I’m not sure if she even knew that she was running. Running back to face her demons, running away from those she’d already shed. My siren, so fragile when she lets herself believe, and just tough enough to survive disbelief. Every day I’m with her she imbeds herself deeper and deeper inside of me until it’s difficult to think of being anywhere she isn’t.
After last week, the intensity of my feelings has doubled and so has my need for her. When she reached out and traced my tattoo at the club, her slim fingers dancing over the letters as if memorizing them onto her own skin, it almost brought me to my knees. And then she said what she did, told me I was taking back my dream, and for a second all I could think of was her and making her mine, of being hers and finding a new dream, one that ended with the two of us together.
I didn’t say it because I won’t put that on her, won’t place on her the strain and stress that my own father’s dream placed on the woman who once loved him enough to want to build a family with him. Whoever she was, he wasn’t there, and when he came home he didn’t have any idea who he was, let alone what she needed. Then she left and he’s spent the rest of his life trying to erase the memory of her and his other failures from his brain. I won’t do that to Cora.
Which means I only have a few weeks left with her, almost a month if I’m lucky, and I need to give her everything I can, so she never doubts what she means to me, or who she is inside of me.
She steps out the door, a sky blue bag big enough to fit a bowling ball inside over her shoulder, her legs showing their impressive tone and length in a pair of fitted black shorts that end just above mid-thigh. She’s paired her sexy shorts with a simple black T-shirt sporting a chest pocket in the same blue as her bag, and some sort of wedge sandal in black and cork that wrap around her ankle and show her cute blue toenails. Needing to touch, I reach my hand out to her waist and bring her close, pleased when she sinks her fingers into my hair and drags them through.
“Hi.”
“Hi back. How was training today?”
I shake my head and begin to walk, my arms still around her so she’s forced to hold onto me and trust me to keep her safe as I guide her backwards. “Nope, we’re not going to talk about training, or work, or anything real for the next twelve hours.”
“We’re not?”
I shake my head. “We’re just going to be you and me, right here, right now.”
If she senses my urgency or the reason for this need, she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she studies me for a minute before nodding, and then she times it so that she shifts and lifts in a reverse sit up motion while my momentum propels me forward, allowing her to easily wrap her legs around my waist without so much as a mere hesitation in my stride. Tightening her legs around me, she brushes her fingers through my hair again and looks down at me.
“Sounds perfect.”
And it is. I carry her all of the way home and laugh at the looks people give us, stopping to pose for a picture from some romantic soul. We make dinner and eat it on our miniscule balcony overlooking the parade of people below us on the sidewalk. We talk about movies and music, she explains the hilarious text conversation she had with Nina that had something to do with another engineering nerd, a school social, and a mixed piece of communication that ended with a broken heart and an irritated Nina. When the sun sets and the shadows take over, I take her hand and link our fingers, leaving our dishes from dinner on the small table as I lead her inside.
She comes willingly as I lead her into the bedroom — the one we’ve somehow morphed from hers to
ours
with carelessly discarded clothes and forgotten pocket items on the dresser and night table. Several of my paperbacks sit on the table next to the bed, her earrings on top of them. My boots are kicked against the closet door, a lacy red bra next to them.
Turning her to face me, I put my back to the window so the dying light pours over her skin while I look at her. Her eyes are wide and her chest is moving up and down but she doesn’t blink, doesn’t shake or back away from me. She waits while I look, my fingers still threaded through hers and my other hand reaching for the band in her hair, tugging until those gold tipped locks break free and spill around her shoulders.
I still don’t say anything, just stand and drink her in with my eyes, my memory reminding me of the scent, taste, feel of each curve I skim over until my fingers are no longer content to stand on the sidelines. Releasing her hand, I bring it to my mouth and place a small kiss on her palm, then the inside of her wrist, tracing the sensitive skin there that’s spiced with scent, something floral with dark undertones, that contradiction of secrets and serenity I noticed in her the first night I saw her five and a half months ago.
Now, she’s trusted me with her secrets and I cherish that knowledge even as my lips cruise to the inside of her elbow to worship the sensitive skin there.
“Jake,” she says, her voice whisper soft and breathless. I shake my head, cruising up to her shoulder and the curve of her neck, the shell of her ear, before I take the lobe into my mouth and scrape my teeth along it.
Her fingers grip the front of my shirt, twisting into the thin jersey material as she struggles to hold on while I assault her senses. My lips cruise to hers, sipping at them, teasing the seam as my fingers skim up her sides and under the silky soft fabric of her T-shirt, taking it with me as I continue up to her breasts, pausing at their sides as Blue raises her arms over her head, allowing me to continue until the shirt is in a heap on the floor. One look at her breasts contained in the barely-there light blue lace cups of her bra and my restraint threatens to snap, a tether strung tight and almost to its breaking point as I strap down the need that wants to claw free and
take
.