Swing and a Mishap (Summersweet Island 2)

“I don’t love it like I used to. The money and the fame don’t give me someone to talk to who understands when I’m having a shit day, or to call when I’m lonely out on the road. It doesn’t give me someone to make it better after an eight-hour grueling practice, and it doesn’t give me kids to play catch with out in the front yard,” I explain to him, dropping my head to look at the two baseball caps I’m now fiddling with on the counter. “You don’t get it. You have all of that. You have Amanda and the kids, and you have a reason for wanting to keep busting your ass and putting your body through hell to play the game and bring home a paycheck for them. I have enough money that I never have to work for the rest of my life. Who the fuck am I even doing this for anymore?”

“No, I get it. I do.” Nick nods. “If I didn’t have Amanda and the boys, I couldn’t imagine still doing this job and not having them to come home to.”

“I thought I was making the right choice trying to settle down and be serious with Alana and she would be that for me—”

“Oh fuck off, you never once thought that about her,” Nick scolds, pointing his beer bottle at me. “You made a hasty decision under pressure on national television so you wouldn’t look like an asshole in front of the entire world. She was a vapid social media influencer you met at a party who made you carry her purse in public so she could take ten thousand selfies. She was never going to be your person, and she proved that point by dumping your ass when she found out you weren’t going to be a big, famous ballplayer anymore, and she no longer had someone to get her into the best club openings and parties.”

All I can do is sigh, because he’s right. Alana Caldwell was convenient. I said yes to a date with her, because the person I really wanted to date lived three thousand miles away. And I agreed to make things more serious and exclusive with her a few weeks later, because the person I really wanted to be serious and exclusive with was taken.

Or so I fucking thought.

I didn’t just spend the last six months feeling sorry for myself about my injury and about how empty my life is. Before she ended things, every minute I spent alone in the hospital when Alana was too busy to visit, or every time I called and she had one excuse after another for brushing me off and not having time to talk, it was never more obvious what a bad decision I made. And not just with making things exclusive in front of the whole world or saying yes to that first fucking date. But with my ridiculous decision to abruptly cut off all communication with one of the most important people in my life after that television debacle a year ago, because I thought it was the right thing to do.

And because I thought she was taken. All this goddamn time.

She would have put her life on hold and talked to me on the phone for hours after my injury if it’s what I needed.

She would have sent me more messages than Nick to try to cheer me up when I was rehabbing, and she probably would have been the only one to succeed.

She would’ve absolutely gotten on a plane to come to me if I asked.

But I fucked up and I let her go, because I never thought she was an option for me. And I knew the only way I could move on with my life was to move on from her, as shitty as it was and as shitty as it made me feel.

“Coach also let it slip you went back to Summersweet a few weeks ago, but he said you were barely there a full twenty-four hours before you turned right around and came back to Washington. When I asked him what the fuck happened in that short amount of time for you to immediately turn in your resignation and pack up your life here, he said I needed to ask you that. But I’m pretty sure I already know the answer.”

Nick pauses, and a slow smile spreads across his face.

“You’re not moving back home for a change or for a job you don’t even need. You’re moving back home to finally get you your pen pal! It’s so sweet I could puke.”

The corner of my mouth twitches at Nick’s exuberance as he pumps his arms in the air and dances his big body around on top of my bar stool. Nick was the only person who knew about my yearlong “pen pal” relationship with Wren Bennett, and it was only because he caught me smiling down at my phone one too many times. He snatched it out of my hand once at practice when I was icing my shoulder in the dugout, and Wren had accidentally sent me a video of herself drunk, singing very, very badly but adorably. Nick naturally assumed I was laughing at a funny meme I hadn’t shared with him and wouldn’t give my phone back to me until he read through damn near all of our messages.