Sweet Spot: Homeruns #4 (17 page)

I stormed to the back of the clubhouse and directly into Sean’s office. I didn’t give a shit how bad it looked; I’d worked up a full head of steam and slammed the door closed hard enough the pictures on the wall rattled.

“Nick, calm down,” Sean warned me as he motioned for me to take the seat across from him.

“No! Don’t tell me to calm the fuck down,” I spat. I’d regret my outburst later, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d fucking earned my spot. Not because of my dad. Not because I was the next poster boy for the Mavericks’ stellar attempt to prove how inclusive professional sports could be, but because I had one hell of an arm on me. “What happened to you wanting me in Dubuque? Was that all a bunch of bullshit to get me to bust my ass? You know I’m better than Double-A.”

It’s funny how quickly things change. It’d been less than an hour ago I’d been confident I’d make it through whatever happened today. I told myself I’d be levelheaded and accept my placement. Now, though? Now, I was spitting mad. I didn’t sit in the seat Sean offered me. Instead, I paced around the room like a rabid, caged animal.

“Nick, hear me out,” Sean pleaded. His voice was so level it only pissed me off even more. I wondered how he’d react if our roles were reversed. Given what I’d seen from him over the years, I figured he’d probably be as calm as he was then. “I do want you in Dubuque. And you’ll get there. But there were some shuffles on the roster for Milwaukee, and this is what we have to do for now. It’s nothing against you. You’re solid. You know how it goes.”

“Yeah, I do.” And I did. I really did, but I didn’t have to like it. “So where am I headed?”

If he said anywhere other than Reading, I was going to snap. “Reading.” Good. I’d have hated to have to explain why I’d strangled my former idol. “As soon as I have a spot, I’ll make sure you’re called up.”

“I know you will. I guess I’ll see you around.” There was no fight left. Baseball had won. I reached for the doorknob and didn’t look back when Sean called for me to wait. “Yeah?”

“Remember, this is temporary,” he assured me. “Keep your head where it’s been and you’ll be just fine.”

“Yeah, thanks.” It was hard to work up much more than that. I had to get out of there and call Cody. I guess it was a blessing in disguise Jimmy had found me so early in the day. Now, I could get my travel plans and spend at least a few more hours with Cody before having to say goodbye.

I kept my head down as I walked back to my locker. Luckily, most of my shit was already packed because everyone was leaving soon. That made it easy for me to gather the last few things and slide out before anyone cornered me to see where I was headed. I really didn’t want to fucking talk about it.

I waited until I was outside to pull my phone out of my pocket. I tossed my equipment bag toward the curb and sat on it, staring at the display while I tried to work up the balls to call Cody. If I hadn’t listened to the hype, maybe I’d have better prepared him for this call. Instead, he’d pulled out of the parking lot this morning completely confident I’d be heading to Dubuque and we’d only have to overcome a few hours of space between us. He’d promised me we’d make it work no matter what, but now that “no matter what” was a reality, I wasn’t so sure we were solid enough to get through this season.

With one final deep breath, I hit the call button before I could talk myself out of it. Might as well get this over with. And since I’d been cut early in the day, I hoped Cody wouldn’t mind swinging back to pick me up. I wanted to get the fuck out of here so I didn’t have to listen to anyone tell me how I’d been robbed of my spot. I fucking knew that already.

“Hey, babe,” Cody answered. The excitement in his voice felt like a knife straight to my heart. He was in a good mood, and I was about to crush him. Again. Darkness overcame my mind as I very briefly considered whether it’d be best for me to cut him loose. Not forever, but for the season. Whether it was selfish or noble, there was no way in hell I was going to put him through that again. I needed to believe him when he said we’d be okay. “Nick? Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” I failed to hide my disappointment.

“Where are you?” Cody asked. One door slammed, and then another. He sounded tinny when the Bluetooth receiver engaged. “Nick, I’m on my way back to the park. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

Fuck, I loved him. I didn’t even have to ask for him to rescue me; he knew what I needed. I ought to kick my own ass for even thinking about leaving him again.

“Can we talk about it after you get here?” I pleaded. A few more guys sulked out of the clubhouse, headed to their cars. The sun was shining in my eyes, so I didn’t see who the latest victims were, but it didn’t really matter. The bulk of the day was going to be guys packing it up for another year and players congregating outside so we could eventually leave for wherever we were headed.

“Yeah, of course,” he agreed without prying. “I suppose it’s not the best time to be talking when you’re out in the open, huh?”

“Not so much,” I responded flatly.

“Do you have time for a quick hike?” Cody suggested. I was torn, because as much as hiking the trail had become our thing, I felt completely wiped out. What I really wanted to do was head back to the house and sleep until it was time to leave. “If not, maybe we could just get something to eat. What time do you have to be back there?”

“I’m not sure I could eat anything right now,” I admitted. “Would you be cool if we just played it low key and went back to the house? I have to be back by two, but I’m not really up for dealing with people right now.”

“Yeah, that’s totally fine.” I looked up and saw Cody pulling into the parking lot. He didn’t even say anything, just disconnected the call as he parked directly in front of me.

I slid into the passenger’s seat and he pulled away without a word. Cody rested his hand on my knee as he maneuvered his way back onto the freeway. We were almost home before he brought up my meeting. “So, it’s safe to assume you’re not going to Dubuque?”

“Nope.” It shocked me how calmly I answered him. It was as though I’d lost the ability to fight. I wasn’t angry anymore. I wasn’t anything. Just tired.

“Did they say why?” he pressed when I wasn’t forthcoming with details.

I shrugged and sighed for about the hundredth time. “It’s how it goes,” I told him. “Other guys are more important, so they’re protected.”

“How so?”

“I really don’t want to explain all of it,” I admitted, hoping he wouldn’t be pissed. I worried that if I had to spell it out for him, I’d get pissed off again. If I got angry, he’d be the person I snapped at, and I wasn’t about to alienate anyone else today. Especially not him. “Let’s just say it’s all a bunch of politics and a bit of a shell game.”

Everyone gave us a wide berth when we walked into the house. There were no platitudes about how it’d get better, no one asked what was going on. That meant they either knew or they’d seen this often enough it wasn’t foreign to them.

Cody led me upstairs and into the bedroom, where he slowly started stripping me out of my clothes. I realized then how fucked up I was in the head, because I wasn’t even in the mood to fuck him. That
never
happened. I curled my fingers around his wrist to stop him before this went too far. “Cody, do you mind if we just take a nap?”

He pulled out of my grasp and wrapped his arms around my waist. Slowly, tenderly, he kissed his way along my collarbone and up my neck. “We can do whatever you want. But I don’t want there to be anything between us. I want you to remember how my body feels when you’re wrapped around me while we sleep. How hard my heart beats, knowing you love me as much as I love you.”

“Yeah, I want that too,” I whispered, before curling my fingers around the back of Cody’s neck. When my thumbs grazed across his cheeks, I tried to ignore the dampness. I hoped he wouldn’t realize my own eyes seemed to have sprung a leak. “I just… Fuck, you know I’m not as good with words as you are.”

Cody leaned in and kissed me again. “I know, but I love you anyway. Always.”

Always. That one little word completely wrecked me. I buried my face against his neck and allowed him to lead me to the bed while I cried. I was going to miss the hell out of Cody. Not because I wouldn’t be getting laid, but because he was my best friend. He knew what I needed and what I was capable of giving in return and never asked for more.

“We’ll get through this,” I promised him as he pulled the sheet over our legs. “Right?”

“Without a doubt.” He kissed my shoulder and laid his head on my chest. I doubted either of us would sleep, but being with him was the perfect way to forget this morning had really happened.

N
o matter
how much I told myself Pennsylvania was just a stopping point for my season, every day that went by without me getting called up to Dubuque made Reading feel more like a prison sentence. I hated being there and it was beginning to show. I did my best to steer clear of my teammates in the bullpen, telling myself it was because I didn’t need to make friends here. But I did. No one liked a stuck-up diva who thought the organization owed them. Even though Sean swore he was going to pull me up as soon as he could, he still didn’t owe me shit. No one did. The only way out was to prove my worth on the mound. Luckily, I took every ounce of frustration out on the batters who stepped into the box. They were the key to me moving up.

And it showed. When Price called me back to his office after the first month of the regular season, his broad smile told me I was doing well. So did the numbers, but I’d been around the game long enough to know stats weren’t enough to get a guy where he deserved to be. There was a whole political side of the game, and sometimes I wondered if that mattered more than strikeouts, runs, and innings pitched.

“You’re doing good, Stone,” he praised me. Price wasn’t the type of coach who gave pats on the back. His coaching style was the baseball equivalent of the tough love some parents doled out. He told us what we were fucking up, why we were fucking up, and what he thought we needed to do to quit fucking up. So, to hear him tell me I was doing a good job gave me the confidence I needed to carry me through another day. And then he just had to keep talking. “On the mound, you’re great. But you’re insufferable everywhere else. Everything okay?”

I wanted to tell him he was high. That no one who’d been fucked the way I had been would be cool with what’d happened. But I didn’t. Coaches didn’t want whiners causing trouble. They wanted grown men who would get the job done and not bitch about how their Technicolor dreams had turned grainy or black and white. They didn’t want to hear about how I missed my boyfriend. There was no room for personal lives once you walked into the clubhouse.

“Yeah, I’m good,” I lied. It was what he wanted to hear.

“Don’t feed me a line of shit,” Price challenged. “You’re fucking miserable. You feel like you had the rug pulled out from under you when you were sent here. And you’re not necessarily wrong to be upset. But you know how it goes.”

I was so fucking sick of that phrase. Every time anyone talked to me about why I wasn’t in Iowa, they always added something about how this was the way it went in the minors. “Just keep doing what you’re doing,” they’d tell me. Or even better, “With your arm, there’s no way they’ll keep you here for long.” All of it added up to a pile of false hope. Sadly, I’d found myself parroting those same consolations to Cody more than once over the phone.

“So what if I am pissed about being here,” I argued. “It’s not going to change anything, so why bitch about it? If it was my rookie year, I might say something, but it’s not. I know better than to think complaining will get me anything other than passed over for not being mature enough to understand what’s going on.”

“That’s good to know,” he appeased me. “Now, figure out how to play nice with your teammates. They’re not the ones holding you back.”

“Yeah, my shitty attitude is,” I grumbled, my dad’s admonishments from earlier in the year ringing in my ears.

Price shook his head. “Never said that. But your attitude sure as hell ain’t helping you bide your time. It’s making you and the rest of the club miserable. Not to mention you’re one of the veterans in this clubhouse. You’re the guys the kids look up to. If you’re being a pissy little bitch about not being where you should be, they’ll think it’s acceptable behavior. If I wanted to be in charge of a bunch of two-year-olds, I’d have become a daycare teacher. But I don’t. I’m a pitching coach and I expect to work with grown men who know how to act like it.”

“Yes, sir,” I responded meekly. This was the Price I was used to. I was fucking up, he’d called me on it and told me how to fix it. Now, he expected me to actually listen to him.

“Now, get your mangy ass out of here.” Price went back to looking over the stat sheets before the next pitcher came in to talk to him. He had a thought as I walked out of the room and got in one last barb. “And see if you can’t find a barber or someone with a weed whacker to do something about your damn hair.”

I considered letting my hair grow longer just to spite him. Hell, the guys in the majors didn’t have to dick around with making sure they looked good. They could let their hair grow all season, call it a superstition and no one would say a fucking word to them. But not us. We had to be the clean-cut All-American boys families wanted to see when they dragged the kids to a minor league game. This was only the second day we’d had off in a month, and I didn’t want to spend it taking care of meaningless shit like getting a haircut. I wanted to head back to my host family’s house, hide out in my room, and watch the Mavericks game.

I
wound
up getting the damn haircut. I tried going along with my original plan, but when I found myself straining to see if I could catch a glimpse of Cody along the fence line rather than what the players were doing on the field, I turned off the TV and left. If I hadn’t, I would’ve driven myself crazy. Maybe this was the reason so many players were against relationships when they weren’t stable. Because it well and truly sucked to be away from him. The only consolation was all of us were stuck in the same boat because no one could afford to move their families on a Double-A salary. And no one was that stupid. The one thing we hoped for was to get moved somewhere better, which meant uprooting everyone if the family followed along. That wasn’t possible for most of the guys, since the ones who were married or in relationships had to rely on their partners to be the breadwinners. Baseball was full of dirty little secrets no one liked to talk about.

After the haircut, I wound up walking around town trying to find something to do. I picked up my phone to call Devin and see how he was doing in Dubuque or if there were any rumors about me moving up, but they were still in the middle of a game. When my phone finally rang, I was watching a bunch of kids playing a pickup game at the park around the corner from my host family. I’d considered joining them, but figured most parents would freak if a grown man wanted to play ball with their kids.

“Hey,” I answered, hoping I didn’t sound as desperate as I felt. I needed to hear from Cody. I needed his voice to remind me why I had to pay attention to my game.

“Hey yourself,” he responded. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

I pushed myself off the park bench and started walking toward home. “No, I was just hanging around, bored off my ass, waiting for you to get back to the hotel.”

Cody was closer geographically than he’d been in the past few weeks. The Mavericks were in the middle of a road series and currently in Baltimore. I’d considered borrowing a car and driving down to see him, but there was no way to make it there and back with our schedule. Somehow, knowing he was close was harder than him being back in Wisconsin.

“Yeah, sorry it took so long. The game went into extra innings and then Rebecca had a ton of shit she wanted me to do after the game.”

“It’s your own fault, you know,” I teased. “If you weren’t so damn good at what you do, you’d be biding your time the way most of the interns do.”

“You know I don’t work that way,” he protested.

I did know he’d never try to skate by. Cody was a good man, a hard worker. It was why I worried about what would happen once his internship ended. In a perfect world, I’d be called up to the Mavericks, they’d find him an invaluable asset to the team, and we’d live happily ever after. Unfortunately, that was unlikely to happen. The Mavericks already had a solid PR department, and I couldn’t imagine he’d be satisfied with following the team all over the place for very long. And at the rate I was going, I’d have to hope he’d be able to find a job in Pennsylvania.

I was trying to keep my chin up and believe everyone when they told me it was only a matter of time before I got called up, but it was hard. There were so many horror stories of guys who believed those promises for years before finally giving up on their dreams to get real jobs. I didn’t want to quit. I wanted to hold on to the pipe dream for as long as possible.

“I know, I was just giving you a hard time,” I told him. I swiped away the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. It was only early May, but an early heat wave had it feeling more like the middle of July. “How’s Baltimore?”

“Lonely,” Cody responded somberly. “I wish it’d worked out for you to come down for a day.”

While I was glad Cody was telling me how he really felt, I wished he understood how hard it was for me to hear him admit he missed me. I wanted to fix the problem. I wanted to take the sadness and longing out of his voice. But I couldn’t, because it was my fucking career holding me hostage.

“Me too,” I told him as I turned onto the street where I lived for the time being. It wasn’t a bad place to live, but it wasn’t home. “Price called me into his office today. Told me again they’re trying to get me moved up as quick as they can.” Cody let out a disbelieving grunt. He didn’t have to say anything else. I knew what he was thinking. But both of us needed to remember this was life. Some guys spent years waiting for the call without any promises. “I know, but for now I have to believe they’re telling me the truth. Otherwise, I’d be on the next bus out of here.”

“You don’t mean that,” Cody argued. He had no clue how close I was to walking away from it all. “Please, tell me you aren’t being serious right now. I know it’s tough, but I don’t want you doing something you’ll regret.”

“I wouldn’t regret it,” I insisted. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since the start of the season, and to be honest, I’m not sure this is even what I want anymore.”

“Stop it,” Cody demanded. “I know you better than that. This is everything you’ve ever wanted. You can’t just walk away.”

“But I would,” I said, not bothering to challenge the rest of his statement.

“No, you won’t.”

“I would,” I repeated. Baseball was great, but I’d come to realize it wasn’t the only thing I wanted in life.

“I won’t let you quit.” The rustle of fabric across the line was followed by muffled voices. “Sorry, I was letting Rebecca know I needed to run up to my room. Listen to me. I don’t want you making any rash decisions. I know life sucks right now, but it will get better.”

“But what if it doesn’t?” I asked.

“It will,” Cody insisted. “Look, I have to get going, but I’ll try giving you a call later. Drew and Jason invited me to tag along for dinner.”

At least one of us was having a good time. Almost every time I talked to Cody, he was getting ready to go hang out with the guys or he’d just gotten back. He’d tried convincing me to do the same, but I didn’t want to make nice with my teammates. Yes, I knew how immature and petty I sounded, but if I befriended them, then I was resigning myself to being here long enough to need their friendship. It felt like giving up.

“Yeah, I don’t want to keep you,” I lied. I wanted to stay on the phone with him until my battery died and then jump on the computer. But I wasn’t about to make Cody as miserable as I was.

We quickly said our goodbyes and I tossed my phone on the bed. Technically, I had the run of the house with my host family out of town for the week, but that felt like an invasion of their privacy. So instead, I did the same thing I did every night when I got home. I toed off my shoes and curled up on my bed, trying to find something on the television. The problem was, now that I knew Cody wasn’t any happier than I was about our time apart, nothing held my attention except thinking about him.

I checked the time, then pulled up the Miners’ schedule on my phone to make sure it’d be a good time to call. It was. Or at least it should be.

“Nick, it’s good to hear from you,” Sean answered. He’d told me as we loaded up to leave spring training to call him any time, but this was the first time I’d taken him up on the offer. I hoped he’d meant it and I wasn’t about to sabotage my chances of him calling me up. “How’s everything out in Reading?”

The chuckle following his question told me he already knew my answer. “Boring as shit.”

“Yeah, and knowing you, you’re probably trying to keep yourself as isolated as possible, which isn’t going to help things any.” I debated arguing with him, but he wasn’t a stupid man. Maybe I could tell him I was doing it to make sure I wasn’t distracted during my starts. No, he’d see through that, too. “Listen to me. You need to get out of the house. You guys have a night off, which is a rarity. You should be half in the bag by now, not calling me.”

“You know I don’t drink,” I reminded him.

“Maybe you should start,” he suggested. I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it, wondering if one of the organization’s coaches was seriously telling me to develop a drinking habit. Then again, he’d been a player long enough to know bonding over beers was almost a rite of passage. “I’m kidding. So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”