Heroine(40)

I can’t ask her now, not with Nikki in our space and a game about to start. The last thing we need in between our clean line of the pitching rubber and home plate is friction. So I let it go, though some of my excitement leaves with it, the fire in my center at the commencement of our last season suddenly snuffed out, leaving only empty space behind.





Chapter Twenty-Six


forget: to lose the remembrance of; to let go from the memory; to cease to have in mind; not to think of “Nice win.”

“Thanks,” I say to Luther, but it’s all I’ve got. Whatever confidence I carried with me last week is gone, and the ability to find that perfect space under his arm that—somehow—a very large girl fills perfectly seems only to exist after I’ve taken a shot of Oxy straight to the brain. So I do that, quick, wanting to recapture the feeling.

“Were you there?” I ask him, once I’ve wiped my upper lip to be sure it’s clean, and have turned the Precious Moments girl away so I don’t have to look at her.

“Third baseline,” he says. “Me and Derrick came in halfway through the fourth inning.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t see you.”

“There were a ton of people,” Luther says, shrugging it off. “You guys need, like, a stadium or something.”

“We might draw a Baylor Springs crowd, but we don’t have your money,” I tell him. Instead we end up with people in long lines of lawn chairs that extend to the outfield, the tail curving inward so that late arrivals can see the batter’s box.

“You get a decent seat?” I ask him.

“Guys like me stand,” he says, and I laugh, the sound catching Derrick’s attention from where he sits on the floor, trying desperately to figure out if Josie actually wants the bedspread set they’re selling on QVC or is just yanking his chain.

“Math error,” Josie yells at the screen, making us all jump.

“What the fuck, dude?” Derrick says, rubbing his elbow from where he bumped it on the coffee table.

“They’re claiming that it’s sixty percent off, but it’s not,” Josie says. “Sixty percent off 199.99 would be 80, not 79.99.”

“I think they’re rounding down for clarity, hon,” Edith says.

“But they’re wrong,” Josie says, color rising in her cheeks.

Derrick pulls out his phone and double-checks, then glances at Josie. “Seriously, how do you even do that?”

Edith’s streaming service is crap and the picture keeps pixelating. There are no definite lines between anyone or anything, which is how I feel when Luther puts his arm around me, and I slide into the warm cocoon of space beside his body.

“I thought you were gay,” Derrick says.

“Straight girls can be good at softball,” I say, turning to Luther. “I swear I need a T-shirt.”

“Or maybe not,” he says, eyeing me up and down.

In the kitchen, the scanner goes off.

7300 to 45. Go ahead 7300 . . . 45 report to a 20 at 1568 Lincoln Way.

“What’s that one?” Derrick asks Josie.

“Domestic dispute,” she says. “Probably nothing serious. You’ll know it’s bad if they call for a sixteen-f.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” Derrick asks.

“Coroner,” she says, eyes closed in relaxation as Edith starts to comb out her hair.

Derrick’s attention comes back to me and Luther, since he can’t get Josie’s.

“If you two had a baby it would be, like, an Olympian.”

“I’m not getting pregnant,” I inform him. “Softball is more important than sex.”

Josie practically doubles over laughing, the long mane of her hair stretched taut between her skull and Edith’s brush.

“Softball is more important than sex,” Derrick repeats, unbelieving.

“I hear you,” Luther says, his voice reverberating by my ear. “On a day when I’m sinking threes I’d rather have my hands on a basketball than a girl. Every time. It’s a different kind of good, but damn good.”

“Damn straight,” I agree.

“You kids know what’s better than sex or sports?” Edith asks, snapping a hair tie around Josie’s slick ponytail.

“What’s that, Grandma?” Josie dutifully asks.

“Retirement.”

Josie’s laugh flares again, loud and brilliant, cut short when Edith gives her a warning tap on the crown of her head with the hairbrush. “Neighbors,” she chides.

It’s two in the morning, and Edith doesn’t exactly live in the part of town where anyone would be up to hear us, but like Mom always says, better safe than sorry. I feel a stab in my gut at the thought of Mom, a mix of guilt and fear. She’d been at my game, of course, casting worried glances at my hip every time I crouched down, assessing my gait when I got back up. But her phone had gone off when she’d met me in the parking lot with a hug, her cheek coming away wet from my freshly showered hair.

“I’ve got to go in,” she said. “The Hughes girl is in labor.”

“Go,” I said, waving her away as I spotted Aaron sweeping Carolina up in another swinging embrace. God, can’t he just hug her like a normal person?