Between the Seams (18 page)

She didn’t really remember walking up Jenn’s front walk and ringing the doorbell.

So when Jenn opened the door, Jo was a bit surprised to see her best friend standing there, a look of surprise on her face before Jo promptly burst into tears.

Jenn ushered her inside, closing the door behind her.

“Did you know?” Jo choked out.

A look of confusion passed over Jenn’s face.

“Know what?”

“That he’s sick?”

“Who’s sick?”

Jo felt like she was breaking into a million tiny pieces, and those pieces were slowly being scattered by the wind until soon there would be nothing left.

“Chase,” she choked out.

Jenn guided her to the couch, and Jo suddenly realized that they weren’t alone, that Matt was also there, sitting on one end of the couch, watching her warily, like she was a rabid raccoon about to attack.

She turned to Matt, pointed her finger at him. “You. You knew, didn’t you?”

Matt swallowed. Nodded.

Jo lunged for him, but before she could inflict any real damage he wrapped an arm around her, pinning her arms to her sides, and used his free hand to rub her back. In a soft, soothing voice she never would have expected from him, he said, “Just calm down, Jo. Breathe. That’s it. Breathe.”

All those millions of tiny pieces inside of her broke loose a little more, and Jo found herself burying her head on Matt’s chest, sobs wracking her body.

I’m getting snot all over the highest paid pitcher in MLB history.

Slowly, as if waking from a nightmare, the sobs quieted. She felt tired. So, so tired.

Jenn sat down beside her, and Matt kept rubbing her back.

“You’re kind of good at this whole comforting thing, y’know,” she mumbled against his chest.

Matt snorted. “It’s one of my secret talents.”

“I’m afraid I got snot all over your shirt.”

She felt him shrug. “That’s okay. I have plenty.”

She pulled back and looked. He was wearing a 2012 World Series t-shirt. The year the Wranglers won. “It’s your World Series t-shirt!”

He smiled at her. “Jo, it’s okay. I literally have a dozen of these. At least.”

Embarrassed, she grabbed a tissue out of the box on the coffee table so she could blow her nose. “I’m sorry I attacked you.”

“It’s no biggie. I have to admit, I was kind of impressed—I don’t think I’ve seen you that worked up since the time I stuck frogs in the back of y’all’s bathing suits.”

“Still, though, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s okay. So what got you so worked up to begin with?”

She looked from Matt to Jenn, for the first time realizing that she’d possibly walked in on something between the two of them. “Was I interrupting something?”

“Nope. We were just watching the game.”

The TV wasn’t on. Jo looked from it to Jenn, who at least had the decency to blush.

“We were about to watch the game. I just got here,” Matt said. Covering for Jenn, Jo was sure.

Whatever, though. As much as she wanted to solve the mystery of Matt and Jenn, Jo was too heartbroken and too shattered to care beyond some good-natured teasing. Defeated, her shoulders fell and she slumped into the couch cushions.

“So what did you mean, Chase is sick?” Jenn asked, worry in her voice.

Jo rolled her head and looked at her best friend. “So I take it you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

Jo sighed. Rolled her head to look at Matt. “What about you?”

He nodded. “The family’s known since he was a teen, and then he found out in his early twenties, I think, that he had Chronic Kidney Disease.”

Jenn gasped. “He’s been sick that long and never told me?”

“Don’t get mad at him, Jenn. He probably kept it from you to protect you,” Matt said.

“Kind of how he just broke up with me to protect me, you mean?” Jo asked. Bitterly.

“My brother’s a fucking idiot.”

“On this, I wholeheartedly agree with you.”

Jo sniffled, and Matt handed her the box of tissues. “So I take it the CKD’s gotten worse?”

She nodded her head. “From what he just explained to me, yes. His doctor thinks he’ll probably need a transplant within a year.”

Jenn asked, “Hold on. He’s sick enough that he needs a fucking transplant? And he never told me? I’m his best friend!”

Jo closed her eyes, a tension headache forming at the base of her neck. “I’m his girlfriend. Was his girlfriend. Fuck if I even know what I am anymore. And he just now told me. So join the club.”

The three of them fell silent, each lost in their own thoughts. Matt finally broke the silence by asking, “So what are you going to do?”

Jo sighed. “I don’t know. I have to be back in Austin early next week for work, when what I want to do is stay here and show him I’m not that easy to push away.”

In other words, it was a lose-lose situation.

~~*~~

Chapter Twenty

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Chase looked up from the bottle of beer he’d been nursing for the past thirty minutes, noted the anger on Matt’s face and looked away.

He shrugged, not even bothering to ask Matt what he was talking about. Jo. It all came back to Jo. “Probably.”

Matt sat down in the patio chair across from him. “You’re seriously just going to let her walk away? No, screw that. You’re seriously just going to push Jo out of your life when now and the next few years are when you’re going to need her most?”

Chase stared blankly at the swimming pool, numb. “You don’t understand, Matt.”

“No, I really don’t. First, you don’t tell anyone how bad it’s gotten, and then when you do you break up with your girlfriend and shut everyone out. Then you throw a pity party—population one—and sulk like a sixteen-year-old who had his car keys taken away. And now you’re sitting there looking like the poster child for a Prozac commercial. That’s not like you, Chase, so no, I don’t understand.”

He wanted to be angry. Hell, he was kind of irritated at least. But Matt was right—his behavior since he’d gotten the latest diagnosis was completely not like him. Logically, he knew that. Illogically, though, he just wanted to shut down.

“What would you know, Matt? You’ve barely been around the past ten years,” Chase goaded.

Instead of getting angry, Matt simply shook his head. “No, you don’t get to use that card right now, because you and I both know it’s bullshit. What’s up with the poor pitiful me act anyway?”

Chase’s shoulders sagged as if a giant weight had suddenly settled upon them. “Fuck if I know, Matt.”

“I think you do.” Matt paused before continuing. “So you’re going to need a transplant?”

Chase nodded. “Not immediately, but sooner rather than later. The doctor thinks it’s only a matter of a year or two.”

“When are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”

“Soon. I don’t know why I haven’t yet. How’d you even find out?”

Matt waved his hand as if to indicate his answer didn’t matter. “I was at Jenn’s when Jo came in earlier bawling her eyes out. She hit me then got snot all over my shirt.”

Chase finally took a good look at Matt at that, narrowed his eyes. “What were you doing at Jenn’s?”

He shrugged. “I sometimes go over there and hang out to give you and Jo some privacy.”

“At Jenn’s?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So I thought you two hated each other for some reason.” This was much better than thinking about his own mess of a life.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve ever hated each other,” Matt evaded.

Chase raised an eyebrow.

“There was just a bit of a misunderstanding years ago. It’s been cleared up now.”

“I swear to God, Matt, if you hurt Jenn…” Chase let the implied threat hang in the air between them.

Matt raised his hands, palms out. “Not my intent. She’s just nice to hang out with sometimes, that’s all. We’re friends.”

“I’ve never known you to be friends with a woman.”

“I’m friends with Jo. But I’m not the subject at hand here—you are. You and your idiocy.”

“It’s not idiocy.”
Yes it is.

Matt shot him a look that clearly said, “You’re an even bigger idiot than I thought you were.”

Chase swallowed past the idiot-sized lump in his throat.

“Since when are you in to heart to hearts? This is starting to feel like some Lifetime movie.”

Matt snorted. “Hardly. As far as I know of neither of us has slept with a fifty-year-old woman who’s twenty-year-old son slash lover wants to murder us.”

“You know far too much about Lifetime movies.”

“I had a lot of time to sit and watch cable TV in the hospital.”

Chase felt a smile tug at his lips. He shook his head, wondering at the turn his and Matt’s relationship had taken over the past month. “The truth is,” he swallowed, picked at the label on his beer bottle, “I’m scared shitless, Matt. I’ve always been a bit of a loner, mostly because I’ve been in love with Jo since I was a kid, along with having the possibility of renal failure looming over my head. Finding out I was going to need a kidney transplant so soon…it’s not fair to her. She’s gone through so much, man. She’s already lost both her parents. I can’t do that to her.”

“I don’t think you’re giving her enough credit.”

“Probably not.”

“That woman loves you, bro, and when you find something like that you don’t just throw it away like last night’s leftovers. You hold on to that and don’t let go.”

Chase glanced up at his brother. “Where’d this philosophical side come from?”

Matt shrugged and looked slightly embarrassed. “It’s always been there. Everyone’s always seen what they wanted to see is all.”

“So there’s more to you than womanizing and a ninety-eight mile per hour fastball is what you’re saying?”

Matt snorted. “To the public and my adoring fans? No.”

Chase assessed his brother with new eyes, feeling kind of bad for assuming the worst about Matt just like everyone else always had. “How is it I’ve never seen this side of you until the past month?”

“I guess I never wanted you to. Facing your own mortality kind of gives you a new perspective on life, though.”

Matt’s comment hit home, and Chase rubbed his chest. “Point taken. Were you this scared when you came-to on the mound?”

Matt nodded, once. “Absolutely. I couldn’t move for a few minutes. My ears were ringing and I could feel blood trickling down my face and neck. My head hurt like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Luckily I didn’t know how bad it was at the time—just that the situation wasn’t good. And when I woke up later, in the hospital,” Matt shook his head, “I remember feeling lost and worried, mostly about Mom and Dad. It wasn’t until a couple days later that the uncertainty of my baseball future really hit me, and that scared me, too.”

“That’s why you really came back home, isn’t it? Because you were scared,” Chase said with sudden clarity.

“Yeah.” Matt sat back and sighed. “I was scared. I still am. Sure, my head seems to be healing fine, but baseball? I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play again. I’m thirty-five and I’d already been thinking about retiring in another year or two, but I’d wanted to go out on my terms, y’know?”

“I had no idea you’d even thought about retirement. You’ve seemed so oblivious to the fact that you’re kind of old for a pitcher.”

Matt glanced at Chase and shook his head. “Again, everyone sees what they want to see. I’m not an idiot—I did graduate summa cum laude from Texas, y’know.”

“Wait. What? But you were taken in the first round after your junior year. When did you go back and get your degree?” How had he not known this?

“In the off-season and through online courses. I finished it in 2008.”

“Jesus, man. What other secrets do you have hiding out in there? I don’t know if I can take much more.”

Matt rubbed a hand over his jaw, looked at something over Chase’s shoulder for long moments before turning his gaze back to him. “You know when you need a transplant I’ll be the first one to offer a kidney, right?”

Chase sucked in a deep breath, blinked against the stinging in his eyes. He was not going to cry in front of his brother. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t, but you’re my brother. We’re the same blood type and siblings tend to be the best matches. My kidneys are in great shape, I’m healthy, and if I can do something to keep you alive as long as possible I’m going to.”

He nodded, unable to speak past the lump in his throat.

“In the mean time, I suggest you figure out how you’re going to apologize to Jo and grovel appropriately. You need her now, and you’re going to need her in the future. Don’t be a dick and make decisions for her—it’s her choice to make, whether she wants to stick with you through this or not.”

Chase sighed. “Do you know what the statistics are like for kidney transplant recipients? How long donor kidneys last? The complications, not to mention the cost involved?”

Matt crossed his arms over his chest. “Most donor kidneys will last on average fifteen years, with some lasting for twenty, possibly more if it’s a really good match and the recipient takes their meds and takes care of themselves. That means you’d probably need another kidney in your fifties, and another in your sixties or seventies. Obviously, they’re hard to come by the older you get, but it’s not impossible. As for cost, the anti-rejection meds are incredibly expensive, but good insurance plans will usually cover at least a portion of the cost, and once you hit your out of pocket you pay nothing for the rest of your plan year. And yes, there’s a risk involved with being on anti-rejection medications, including cancer, but most cases are skin cancer that’s easily treated. You just have to be careful—wash your hands, use hand sanitizer, clean regularly, stay away from anyone who has the flu, that sort of thing. In other words, it’s nothing insurmountable.”

Chase was flabbergasted. All this time, he’d thought Matt was oblivious to everything outside of baseball and women, and yet he’d been getting a degree and apparently researching kidney transplants. “I feel like I owe you an apology.”

Matt shrugged. “Nah. Like I said, people see what they want to see, and I don’t do anything to dispel that image. It’s more comfortable that way, honestly. But don’t think for a minute I don’t care, or that I haven’t done research. You’re my brother.”

That damned burning feeling in his eyes was back. “I don’t want to tell Mom and Dad.”

Matt nodded. “I would imagine not. They can handle it, though. We’ve all known it was going to happen sooner or later.” He grinned. “But wait until Mom finds out you broke up with Jo. You might wish you were dead then.”

Chase rolled his eyes and flicked his bottle cap at Matt. “Shut it, asshole. I already know I screwed up big time in that regard.”

“So what are you going to do to fix it?”

He cocked his head to the side. “You think you could help me with something?”

~~*~~