Moonshot(19)

“Poetic, but completely wrong.”

He spun the ball on the center console, the red stitches blurring, the ball wandering toward the edge. “You can’t always recognize stupidity, Ty. Most of the time it takes years to see your own mistakes.”

I caught the ball when it fell off the edge, squeezing it hard, my fingers at home in their grip. I looked up from it and into his face. “What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made?

I expected him to say the Davis affair. Or the DUI he got rookie year. Or the two years he wasted at Stanford. I was wrong.

His answer took everything I thought I knew about Chase Stern and scattered it to the wind.





34



“Emily.”

A girl. A small part of me, the one that still drew hearts and flowers around the words Ty Stern in my notebook, wept. His biggest mistake was a girl. I swallowed hard. “Was she your first love?”

“My only.” A new look crossed his face—somber. It haunted his eyes and closed off his features—his jaw tight, mouth hard. “You ever think you could love someone too much?”

I hadn’t. But in a way, a seven-year-old girl’s way, I had. There was a reason I never thought about my mother. A reason I avoided women, their perfumes and hugs, their kind words and motherly gestures. Some things were too painful to mourn. My love for her had been too great for my little heart to handle. “Yeah,” I said softly.

“Emily was ten.” He reached over, pulling the ball gently from my hands. “She was my little sister.”

I said nothing. I couldn’t ask, couldn’t bring myself to voice a question he wouldn’t want to answer.

When he finally spoke, his voice was wood, no life in its syllables, no movement in his eyes. “I forgot to pick her up from gymnastics. I had practice; it ran late. She walked home. Didn’t make it.” His mouth tightened, voice growing thin. “It was getting dark. She didn’t look, ran across the road toward our house. A truck…” he stopped.

I reached over, covering the ball with my hand, his fingers moving, reaching for mine, our hands looping together around the ball. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, leaning into his chest, his other arm wrapping around my shoulders, pulling me tight.

We stayed like that for a long moment, the tension leaving his body slowly, one muscle at a time, his fingers still tight through mine. When the jet started its descent, the sun peeking over the New York coastline, I got up slowly, carefully crawling over his legs, my fingers gentle in their pull from his grip, his body still curled around the space where I had been.

I felt off balance, settling back into my seat. So many of my impressions of him changing, his skill on the field fading in my mind, the details of Chase Stern emerging as everything I felt about his blurred. I had thought, with all of my fandom, all of my research, all of his stats and interviews and press, that I knew him. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe there was more than talent and ego stretching those veins.





35



Chicago

Knives clinked against china. Gold-press wallpaper and black velvet curtains held in the loud conversation—twenty hungry bodies pulled close to the table. I chewed on a piece of filet and half-heartedly listened to Dad’s discussion with Fernandez about immigration reform. Across the table, a few bodies down, was Chase. Our eyes had met once. I had given a small smile, then hadn’t looked back. I could feel him watching me. It was uncomfortable, but I craved it, the scratch to the itch that wouldn’t stop crawling across my skin.

To my left, Mr. Grant wished me a happy birthday. Asked about school. Told me Tobey was coming to the Cincinnati series next week. I nodded politely and remembered our kiss, grabbed in those shadows of their mansion, right before the news of Chase broke.

“You should hang out with him,” Dad said, his bony elbow poking me in the ribs.

“Sure.” I smiled politely. “Maybe we can grab a matinee.”

“You don’t have to work the game,” Dad offered. “Take the night off. Celebrate your birthday.”

“We already did.” And we had, in high-style. Road trip up to Maine. Two days stuffing our faces with lobster and crab, our shirts stained with butter, smiles big. Dad sang karaoke in a dive bar in South Portland, and I won twenty bucks against bikers in Portland. I hadn’t needed friends, and watching a chick flick with Tobey a week after my birthday wouldn’t come close.

“I know Tobey would love to see you,” Mr. Grant pushed.

I coughed out an uncomfortable laugh, pinned between the two of them. “I appreciate it, Dad, but I’ll work the game. I’ve never—”

“—missed a game. I know. Just know the offer is there.”

I met his eyes and narrowed my own. It was no mystery that my father loved Tobey. Five or six years ago, when Tobey wanted to be a pitcher and Dad had spent the better part of a winter coaching him—they’d bonded over Revolutionary War history and the Steelers. Since then, Dad and Mr. Grant had been scheming, trying to put us together. But he should know better than to think I’d give up a game to prance around the mall.

I pushed on the edge of the table and stood, flashing a regretful smile at the two matchmakers. “Excuse me, I need to use the ladies’ room.”

I sidestepped down the table, my eyes sliding forward, past the row of men hunched over their food, each engaged in conversation or busy eating. All except for Chase, who sat back, one arm draped over the back of a chair, his expression impossible to read, his stare dark and penetrating and locked on me. I tried to look away, but couldn’t, holding the contact until I reached the end of the table and was free, all but tripping in my heels in my haste to exit.