CHAPTER 1Shepherd
“I had a good streak going.”Present day…
“You’re really doing it. You’re really moving to some Podunk island in the middle of nowhere. Shepherd Oliver, greatest center fielder in Hawks history, retiring to be a fucking high school baseball coach.”
Twisting the top off a bottle of beer, the only thing left in my fridge at this point, I slide it across the counter of my kitchen island. My friend and former teammate, Nick DeVera, stares around the house I’ve lived in right on the Puget Sound in Washington for almost fourteen years since I was first drafted. Nothing remains inside the 5,000 square foot modern home made from natural steel and black-stained cedar except for a few cardboard boxes in the entryway by the front door and a couch in the living room. So our voices echo off the now bare walls.
“It’s so empty and cold in here. Kind of like your soul.”
Nick snorts with the beer bottle pressed against his mouth, tipping it back and taking a drink as two of the movers come back inside and walk through the open-floorplan home into the living room to grab the couch. Nick and I remain quiet while the men work, having learned early on in our professional baseball careers to always watch what kind of personal information you talk about when strangers are present. One time, I hired a guy to come over once a week and go through my fan mail for me. I had to fire him after week two for recording a private conversation I had on the phone with my manager and then selling it to the tabloids.
While the two guys lift up the couch that sits right in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows with a panoramic view of the Sound, I look around the place, trying to see it from Nick’s perspective when he joked that it’s so empty and cold now. To me, it looks and feels exactly the same. Whether it’s filled with all the furniture, art, area rugs, and pointless knickknacks my interior designer decorated the place with, or the rooms and walls are completely void of anything, it will always be empty and cold.
There aren’t enough priceless paintings or statement furniture pieces in the world to make up for the lack of warmth, love, and noise that other people bring to a home, or to stop me from missing the family of my own I thought I’d have filled this huge house with by now. It was the only reason I bought something so large at such a young age. Baseball was always the most important thing in my life, and I kept telling myself I had plenty of time for everything else. Year after year, I put the game above all else, and for what? An empty and cold house, because all that time passed me by faster than my sprint speed, and now I’m almost thirty-five and still alone.
“No one has seen or heard from you in months since Alana dumped you, and then out of the blue, I get a phone call telling me to come over and help you finish packing,” Nick finally continues when the movers are back outside loading the couch onto the truck.
Vomit doesn’t rush up to my mouth from my gut when Nick says my ex-girlfriend’s name, so at least that’s progress. She made a ridiculous media circus out of asking me to make things exclusive a year ago on home plate when I made the winning run that took us to the playoffs, but at least she had the decency to break things off quietly and in private after my injury and after I told her I was thinking about retiring and never playing pro ball again.
“And yet you’ve been here for twenty minutes and haven’t packed a thing.” I scoff.
“Neither have you. You hired movers and packers, you rich, lazy dipshit,” Nick replies with a smirk, telling me I’m forgiven for the radio silence all this time. And for leaving him high and dry in the outfield.
Nick was drafted as the starting right fielder for the Hawks a year after me. On our team, a bullpen relief pitcher will come out between innings and warm up the left fielder, leaving the center and right fielders to warm each other up. Nick and I were forced to create a friendship and a bond from day one, whether we liked each other or not, if we wanted our team to succeed. Thankfully, neither one of us are too big of assholes, and we hit it off immediately. Now I’m leaving him with an egotistical rookie center fielder whose opinion of himself is currently higher than his batting average.
“I have to do this, man. Summersweet isn’t a Podunk island in the middle of nowhere. It’s right off the coast of Virginia, and it’s where I’m from; you know that. They needed a high school baseball coach, and I needed a new job,” I remind him with a shrug, flipping his beer bottle cap around through my fingers.