Long Ball(13)

Maybe I can have the best of both worlds this way. Keep up my baseball career, spend time with kids, feel fulfilled all the way around. God knows my life has been painfully lacking for months. Years. Superficial and inconsistent.

I walk the two to the doors of the bus and Cora gifts me with a giant hug. It takes everything I have to not get weepy. I’d bawl like a baby if no one else could get word back to the boys, who’d never stop giving me shit.

Maybe not Doug. I remember the day his wife went into labor, and he raced away from batting practice to be by her side. He looked so happy, and he beamed with pride when we went to visit after they came home. Doug wouldn’t give me shit.

Kemp, too, maybe. Despite his flaws, he’s a good guy. He just doesn’t always understand why I had to sit out from womanizing in the clubs.

I wave goodbye as the little Camila-lookalike trots off the bus and jumps into the arms of another woman, presumably her mom. Cora turns to wave goodbye again and points to me, talking to her mom. The woman, another beauty in quiet clothes, looks up, smiles at me, and then immediately turns pale. Her mouth slacks into a silent “O” and her eyes grow wide. I look behind me, in case someone is there to offend her, but there’s no one.

My heart starts racing. Did she think I was crossing a line by being close to her daughter? Does she not like men around her? My mind spins as the door closes and the bus pulls away. Just before we round the corner, it hits me so hard I can barely breathe.

The girl. From Omaha. She’s the girl from Omaha at the county fair. The night I tricked her into tripping over my shoes, and stole her heart underneath a blanket of stars in the middle of nowhere. The girl who never told me her name, who left me in the middle of the night, who haunted my dreams until I covered her up with booze and made up women and more booze.

That was almost six years ago.

Cora said she was five.

Shelbie taps me on the shoulder. “Cute kid.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. All I can see, smell, taste, is that county fair in Omaha, years and miles away.





4





There’s no way she’s mine.

There’s no way she’s not.

She looked just like my sister, I mean a damn near a carbon copy. Kate said she never cozied up to strangers, but I couldn’t get her out of my lap. It’s like Cora knew who I was, knew we had a connection, and didn’t want to break it.

I don’t even know her mother’s name. But there’s no way I’m not the father. I can feel it in my very bones. Cora is mine.

Mine.

How many other Latinos are in Omaha? Okay, scratch that–there were quite a few of us. The opportunities are excellent, and not just for ball players like me. She didn’t strike me as the kind of girl to sleep around, but she also left me in the middle of the night.

No matter what I thought of our connection, we never met again. We slept together without knowing each other. We created life after four hours together. I have to find her. I have to see Cora. I have to know.

Kansas City is too big to just walk downtown and find them. What if they were living here for months and I’ve only just now seen them? But, that’s impossible, right? She recognized me right away and I’m all over the television stations because of the games, and because I’m usually the one hauling a completely wasted Kemp home.

To be fair, after his last conference and set of away games, he’s really kept his promise to keep his shit together, but that doesn’t change the fact that my face has been plastered all over the city more than once. How could she miss me?

Maybe they just moved here. Or maybe, after our time together, she swore off baseball players forever. I always looked for her at every Storm Chasers game with the hopes she would come see me. I left messages for her on the big screen and waited at the field until they kicked me out in hopes she would show up. Never. My country angel never wanted to see me again.

Was it because she was pregnant? Was she worried I would abandon her and figured it’d be easier to never tell me? I would have been there for every second. I could have been there the day Cora was born, held her tiny body to be the first person she saw when she opened those beautiful blue eyes…

“Bonilla!” Someone snaps their fingers in front of my face and I blink. Kemp is practically nose-to-nose with me, steaming. “Bro, are you okay? Or are you going to keep missing every goddamn line drive that rockets your way?”

I shake my head and reality comes crashing back down on me hard. The roar of the crowd, the blinding lights, Coach Bart making frantic hand gestures at me from across the field that I know are all meant to tell me, as nondescript as possible so he wouldn’t get fined, to f*ck the f*ck right off.

“Shit.” I smack myself with my glove. “Sorry, man. I just— “

“Focus.” Kemp trots back to his place between first and second base, a look somewhere between concern and frustration radiating off of him. I glance over my shoulder and George has his arms crossed, clearly unhappy.

Fuck.

I try to pay attention to the rest of the game, but it whizzes by and I feel dizzy under the lights. What if Cora is here? What if her mom found out my name and came here… so Cora could meet her dad? Formerly?

The inning ends with a pop fly to left field and Coach is already scowling at me before I can get in the dugout and reach for my bat.