Sweet Spot: Homeruns #4 (9 page)

“
D
o
you have any clue where you’re going?” Nick asked as we drove away from the center of town. I did, as long as the internet could be trusted. I wondered if he’d freak if I admitted as much.

“Yeah, I know exactly where I’m headed,” I replied. “Now, how far up does the GPS say the next turn is?”

Nick seemed nervous a few minutes later when I pulled into a deserted parking lot in the middle of nowhere. I quickly got out of the car and hefted my travel pack onto my back. I’d left most of my gear at the house when I’d gone to change, a decision I now regretted. Seeing the beauty of the desert, I thought about how I might be able to tie this in as part of the photo essay I had due at the end of the semester.

“Cody, I hate to tell you this, but I think you might have the wrong place,” Nick said cautiously.

“Nope, this is exactly where I want to be,” I told him as I started to the trailhead. “This is supposed to be a fairly easy hike with some great views.”

“And why does that matter?” Nick quickly caught up to me, which was no surprise since I was taking a nice, leisurely pace. I held up the camera hanging around my neck and he nodded. “Ahh, I forgot. Yeah, I suppose this is a pretty perfect place for someone like you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, not liking his little “someone like you” comment.

“I mean you’re the type of person who likes finding beauty in the world around him,” Nick quickly recovered. “I’m used to spending the bulk of my time either at a ballpark, in a shitty hotel room, or training for the next game.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to learn to relax a bit,” I suggested.

“Yeah, probably,” he conceded, looking like there was something more he wanted to say. My fingers twitched with the urge to lift my camera and study him through the viewfinder. He had this pensive expression, a tension throughout his entire body, that I wanted to explore further. It never ceased to amaze me how so many people let down their guard when there was a mass of metal, plastic, and glass shielding them from knowing they were being watched. I wondered if Nick would be like that or if it’d cause his unease to ratchet up a level.

Nick’s agitation seemed to grow the further we hiked up the trail. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him glancing over his shoulder, straining to see the car at the bottom of the hill. “No one’s going to steal it.”

“I know.” Nick waited patiently while I fiddled with the settings on my camera and clicked a few pictures. The sun was still high in the sky and created what looked like a halo around a nearby cactus. It wasn’t a technically perfect shot by any stretch, but it was pretty damn awesome. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the desert so alive with wildflowers in bloom, but it did. First, because I’d never thought of February and March as anything other than cold and depressing, but also because my limited worldview left me thinking deserts were always barren. I spun on my heel to tell Nick I was ready to keep going and momentarily forgot how to breathe. Although physically, he was only about ten feet away, his mind may as well have been back in Wisconsin. I snapped a few shots of Nick, staring off in the opposite direction. He’d taken off his cap, allowing the wind to catch the messy waves on top of his head. Again, not a perfectly composed image, but a moment in time I never wanted to forget.

Nick startled when I approached him, gently cupping his elbow to let him know I was ready. He seemed to be deep in thought, so I led him a bit higher to where the trail widened and a boulder formed a natural resting point. Nick climbed up first and held out his hand to take my gear. While I wasn’t comfortable letting anyone touch my camera, it was a better option than crushing everything if I stumbled and fell backward.

“So, you wanted to talk,” I said once I got myself situated. The rock didn’t seem too big when we were on the ground, but I was beginning to wonder how in the hell we were going to get down. “What happened last night that’s got you so rattled?”

Nick pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs as he continued staring at some point on the horizon. The silence dragged on long enough that I wondered if he was going to continue. “Have you ever thought you had everything figured out in your mind? And then something happens and you begin to wonder why you’d been so worried?”

“All the time,” I said with certainty. Hell, until almost twenty-four hours ago, I’d convinced myself that baseball had been a convenient excuse for Nick to bail on what was quickly turning into a deadly serious relationship for two guys who were way too young. “I take it you had one of those moments?”

“Yeah, you could say that.” Nick huffed out a disbelieving laugh. He rested his cheek on his knees so he was looking at me as he talked. “Something you said last night started it.”

“It did?” Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised because I’d said more than my fair share, thinking it was going to be one of the only times I’d be sitting across from him. After I’d left the coffee shop, I’d kicked myself in the ass for allowing the conversation to get as off track as it had.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “After we left the coffee shop, I wasn’t ready to go back to the hotel. I have a shitty roommate this year and I didn’t feel like dealing with him, so I called my dad.”

“Wow, you must really not like the guy you’re staying with,” I teased. Okay, so I was being somewhat serious. Nick tried to keep as much distance as he could from his family during the season. “So how is this my fault?”

“You went off on a tangent about how my dad’s trying to make things better for minor league players because of what I’ve gone through,” he reminded me. “I’m still not sure that’s accurate since he lived through the same shit or worse when he was in the minors, but still, it got me thinking. So, I called him.”

“You did?” He nodded. “And how’d it go?”

Nick shrugged and started running the sole of his shoe across the dusty surface of the boulder. “Good, I guess. While I was sitting there having dinner with him, I thought about how you’ve always insisted that I’ve made it to where I am because of my talent. You’re right. And last night, he laid into me about that very fact.”

“He did?” Marcus didn’t strike me as the type to go off on anyone. He was much more of the strong and silent type. Then again, I only knew the businessman, not the father. “What’d he say?”

“Basically, he said I’m a damn good player and the only thing holding me back is the mindfuck I put myself through.” Good. Maybe if he started hearing it more often, he’d begin to realize he really was the only person making a big deal about being related to the GM. And if it was an issue, he could always talk to his agent about trying to get him traded to another team. “He also suggested I talk to some of the other players who are in my shoes. Sometimes, I try to pretend like baseball isn’t a haven of nepotism.”

“I’m sure all of you guys who play for your dads’ teams have earned your places,” I reassured him. I still didn’t fully understand the ins and outs of the draft, but I couldn’t imagine anyone manipulating the system to get their kid on the roster when that type of money was on the line.

“Yeah, he said that, too,” Nick told me. “And I told him I’d think about calling one of his former teammate’s kids, but I don’t know if I will.”

“It might help.” The sun peeked out from behind the clouds and I couldn’t resist pulling out my camera. “Is that why you were so deep in thought earlier and avoiding your teammates? And texting me in the middle of the damn night?”

Nick chuckled weakly. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

“You know, this guy I used to have a huge crush on liked to tell me I apologized too much.” The corner of his mouth lifted into a slight smile as he remembered how apologetic I’d been when I was younger. Because of what I’d been through, I didn’t trust people wouldn’t get sick of me and tell me to leave. Including Nick. Any time I offered him my unsolicited opinion, I’d apologize. If I moved the wrong way when we were curled up on my bed watching a movie, I’d apologize. Finally, Nick grabbed me by the shoulders and told me he didn’t want to hear my apologies any longer. It took me a long time to understand why he’d said that. I bumped my shoulder against his. “I’m thinking you might need to take your own advice.”

“You may be right,” he agreed. “But I’m going to do it anyway. Unlike you, I have plenty to apologize for. God, I can’t believe you’re actually sitting out here talking to me. I was a complete asshole to you.”

When I leaned back and stretched out on the rock, Nick did the same. Our hands brushed and he quickly tried to move away. “Yeah, you were, but I think it’s going to be okay,” I told him. We were better than okay as far as I was concerned. This still wasn’t a good idea, but my tension melted from the heat of his hand over mine. It felt terrifyingly right. He craved a connection to someone, and I was who he wanted. “So tell me what happened, because you’re even more tense now than you were earlier.”

“Man, you don’t beat around the bush, do you?” he asked. That was something relatively new. Once I’d gone off to college, I’d slowly shed the uncertainty that had plagued me for a long time. I finally believed I had people who wouldn’t let me wind up back on the streets and quit dancing around what I really wanted to say. It was amazing what acceptance could do for a man’s confidence.

“Nah, I missed out on some pretty cool shit by not being comfortable asking for it,” I told him. I didn’t offer any further information because this wasn’t the time for us to talk about me. “Now, quit stalling and tell me what’s going on.”

“As much as you don’t want to hear it, I owe you another apology,” he said, turning back to stare at the scenery. “You once told me that I shouldn’t hide who I was because the world around me was changing. It’s funny now to think about how much smarter than me you were even though you didn’t know anything about baseball. I think that might’ve been part of why it was so easy for you to be logical about everything. All you had to go on were the facts laid out in front of you, not the horror stories of the past.

“So anyway, last night I called my dad, thinking it’d be good to sit down and have dinner with him,” he repeated, trying to get his story back on track. “It wasn’t fair of me to push him away. I’ve been told several times how he didn’t have anything to do with me getting drafted and how he told his staff he was going to take a step back from the decision-making that year because he trusted them to do what was right for the team. He was trying to protect me from the scrutiny. And I repaid the favor by staying as far from him as possible. Last night when we were talking, I realized you know more about my dad than I do, all because of the rules I put in place.”

“That wasn’t my intention,” I told him as I slid closer to him. While I still worried something would happen and Nick would run, Cam was right. We weren’t the same idiotic kids we were four years ago and I needed to remember he’d likely changed as much as I had, if not more.

“I know,” he assured me. “But I think it was the message I needed to hear. And for what it’s worth, I think my dad would be sending you a thank-you note if he knew I called him because of something you said. After he got done basically telling me I’d been a fool, he started talking about the other things he thought were holding me back. Apparently, he noticed I was upset after one of my buddies got married this winter.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. With the stories I’d heard about Eric’s fling with Sean and Drew having a crush on Cam for most of his life, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear where this story was headed.

Nick shook his head and moved even closer to me. At this point, if either of us moved again, we’d wind up in the other’s lap. I pulled my hand out from under him and slid it behind his back so I could rest my head on his shoulder. “In case you’ve forgotten, I sometimes suck at saying what I mean. I wasn’t upset because he got married. He’s a good guy, but not my type.”

“And what is your type?” I asked playfully.

“Well… for one thing, I prefer guys who aren’t straight.” We both had a good laugh over that. “What upset me was that over the past two years, it’s seemed like most of my buddies have either gotten married or settled into serious relationships. At the reception, a bunch of them started giving me shit about when I was going to bite the bullet and find myself a good woman to take care of me. And I had no choice but to sit there and laugh it off, because I couldn’t tell them the truth. I swear, I considered coming out in the middle of the reception to shut them up, but I couldn’t.”

“It’s okay,” I soothed him. I’d never thought about how much it ate away at him to pretend to be something he wasn’t. “While I don’t agree with anyone thinking they need to hide in the closet, I also understand why some people feel it’s their only choice. And until you’re ready to open that door, you don’t owe anyone a damn thing.”

Nick stared at me for a long moment, long enough I began to feel uncomfortable with the attention. And then, he did something I should’ve expected but didn’t. He leaned in and brushed his lips against mine. I was so at war with myself I neither welcomed the kiss nor pushed him away, and he didn’t try for more. Just another simple connection, a sort of testing the waters. When he pulled back, I reached up with my free hand and brushed my thumb across his cheek. God, I missed this man.

“Sometimes, it’s hard for me to remember you’re younger than me,” he admitted. “Even when we met, you were always the wiser one. I know you thought I saw you as some immature kid, but it was actually the exact opposite. Being around you made me see how much growing up I needed to do. If I’d gone through a quarter of the shit you did in your life, I’d have been sitting in a corner, rocking myself and crying like a little bitch, but not you. You picked yourself up and made something of your life.”

“I had a lot of help,” I reminded him. That was probably the biggest difference between the two of us, other than him having a birth family who loved him. He was determined to do everything on his own while I’d been forced to realize I couldn’t live that way. It hadn’t been as easy as he made it sound for me to accept help from the guys when it was first offered.