Quit Your Pitchin' (There's No Crying in Baseball 2)

“Thank God.” I snatched the bag. “Go into his room and distract him while I put the Elf up.”

George winked and moved toward the mouth of the hallway, leaving me unable to breathe.

He was in baseball pants today, and they were tight.

He had on slip-on sandals over his socks, and the tight Under Armour shirt that was clinging to every single muscle on his chest was making me want to hyperventilate.

The man could literally pose for Under Armour with the way he filled out his shirts.

God.

And he had his hat on, too.

The full shebang.

The man that I fell in love with was in my house, sweaty, and looking beautiful.

I looked down at myself and winced.

I was most assuredly not.

Fuck.

***

George

Thirty minutes earlier

“Who was that that put such a huge fuckin’ smile on your face?” Hancock asked.

I shoved the phone back into my back pocket and resituated my batting gloves.

“My wife.”

“You mean your ex-wife, correct?” Gentry confirmed. “Or did you go get married in Vegas again and we just didn’t know?”

“Ex-wife,” I gritted through my teeth, nowhere near as happy as I’d been moments earlier when Wrigley had called in a panic.

Hearing that Wrigley was no longer my wife was one of those things that still stung, even six months later.

“Sorry, man,” Gentry winced, understanding exactly what I was going through.

With an ex and children of his own, he didn’t much talk about his problems, either.

“No problem,” I lied.

“What’d she want?” Hancock wondered.

“She wanted me to run to Target and get another one of those Elf on the Shelf things because the dog ate it,” I answered.

“I’m never going to get those,” Hancock grumbled. “They’re so fucking stupid.”

“They are,” I agreed. “But Micah seems to love it, and even at his young age, he looks for it.”

Wrigley sent me videos of Micah looking for it every day, and I had to admit, despite my original reluctance of the elf, it was a super cute idea.

Whoever came up with those dumb fuckers were now billionaires.

“When did she get a dog?” Gentry asked.

“When I bought her one,” I answered. “It’s a protection dog. One of those dogs that’ll protect the owners with his life.”

“How much did that set you back?” Gentry followed up. “I’ve always wanted one.”

“Twenty K,” I answered. “But it was worth it.”

Gentry grunted. “I think I’ll stick with a shelter dog.”

I was about to reply when Hancock interrupted my thoughts.

“Well, why don’t you just go and take care of that? The rest of practice is just us hitting, and since you’ve already hit, there’s no reason to be here,” Hancock, our team captain, suggested.

I gave him a mock salute. “Sounds good.”

Then I was off to Target to find a stupid elf.

Only, after a thorough search, I realized that there wasn’t an Elf. There was an elfette. That was it.

Then, for expedience, I called every store in a ten-mile radius and realized rather quickly that they didn’t have any either.

Apparently, Elf on the Shelf was on sale for Black Friday for a steal at every single retailer in town. I was lucky to find the stupid girl Elf.

Fuck.

And, as I walked up the steps to Wrigley’s condo, I hoped that it would be okay.

My breath left me the moment she opened the door.

“I only found the girl Elf,” I told her slowly, taking her in. “The boy Elf wasn’t there. Or at the other stores I went to. You can explain this, right?”

She was wearing leggings.

Goddamn leggings that fit her curvy hips like a glove.

When Wrigley had Micah, she’d never completely lost the baby weight, so she was still carrying a few extra pounds around her hips and thighs.

Her breasts had grown, too, and were still just as big now as when she’d been breastfeeding.

Let’s not forget to mention that she wasn’t wearing a bra at that moment in time, either.

She was wearing one of my old t-shirts. One that’d been suspiciously missing when she’d left all my shit on the front porch.

I swallowed and tried to breathe, thinking about anything but what she was wearing.

My grandmother. Her marrying and being sexually active with her husband, who was just as old as her.

Yep, that did the trick.

“Thank God.” She snatched the bag. “Go into his room and distract him while I put the Elf up.”

I walked through the living room stiffly, carefully keeping my eyes on my destination instead of Wrigley, and made my way to my son’s room.

My son who was getting progressively louder the longer his mommy left him in his room.

About three or four months ago, my son had started the particular stage in his short life where he didn’t like being in his bed.

So, to circumvent him leaving when we weren’t aware—because he had done that one night and walked straight out of the condo—we’d started locking his door.