Without even thinking about it, I exited out of that e-mail and opened the one with the phone numbers, almost angrily punching Send on the screen when Trip’s phone number transferred to the correct screen. “This isn’t going to work,” I said to Ginny as the phone rang. “They’re out of their minds. I’m calling Trip right now.”
I did and he didn’t answer. Damn it. Facing the list of four phone numbers for each staff member—including that rude one, Jackson, who only ever talked to the boys—I eyed Dallas’s digits for a moment, wondering whether he should be my next option or not. I hesitated. Then I reminded myself of how I was going to be stuck dealing with him for a while; it didn’t need to be weird for whatever reason it could or would be. I hadn’t done anything to make him feel strange around me.
So I copied the number and pasted it into the keypad. “Your cousin didn’t answer so I’m calling Dallas.”
There was a short hesitation before she said, “Might as well.”
“Yeah. This is stupid.” Why was she hesitating so much, I wondered as the line rang. “Hey, is there something wrong with—”
“Hello?” a raspy, masculine voice answered on the other end.
I paused for a second, my words to Ginny hanging off my tongue before I snapped to attention. “Hi. Dallas?”
“This is me,” he replied evenly, almost professionally.
“Hi. This is Diana Casillas. Josh’s—” What the hell was I going to call myself? “Your neighbor.”
There was a brief pause while I’m sure he tried to remember who I was. His neighbor. The one who had saved his brother’s ass. The same one who had a nephew that was—in my opinion—the best player on his team, not that I was biased or anything like that. “Oh.” There was an awkward pause. “Hi.”
That sounded real friendly and honest. Not. “I was calling about the e-mail I just got regarding the schedule,” I tried to prep him.
The deep sigh that escaped him made me feel like I wasn’t the first person to reach out to him today about the same exact thing. “Okay,” was his answer that pretty much confirmed that suspicion.
So I just went right for it like I would have with Josh’s old coach. “Look, I don’t know what you guys were smoking when you put the schedule together, but this is way too busy.” I was doing it. Fuck it. I was a terrible bullshitter. “Three practices a week? He already has coaching two other days. All that with weekend tournaments multiple times a month isn’t going to work either. They’re kids. They need some time to do… kid stuff.”
There was a pause on his end, a controlled exhale. “I get what you’re saying—”
This wasn’t going to end well. I needed to go ahead and accept that.
“—but this is just preparation for when they’re older, playing more competitive ball.” He ended in that deep tone that sounded like he’d lost his voice once and never regained it.
“I think we have three or maybe four more years for that. I think they’ll be fine playing tournaments once or twice a month, and practicing two times a week. There’s no way I’m the only person that this isn’t working for.”
“Three other sets of the parents approved the schedule before we sent it out,” Dallas said in a voice that reminded me how Ginny had mentioned him being in the military. He was telling me this information.
Unfortunately for him, I had a problem with people telling me what I could and couldn’t do.
“Well, those three parents must only have one kid, no lives, and that one kid must hate them because they don’t do anything that isn’t baseball related,” I grumbled back, surprised at what he was telling me. What the hell was wrong with these people?
There was a shout in the background that sounded surprisingly like “Boss!” Then a muffled shout back that I was pretty sure came from Dallas before he returned in a cool, quick voice. “I gotta go, but I’ll think about what you said and somebody will get back to you about the schedule.”
That was it? “Somebody” was going to get back to me? Not him? “Please think about it—”
“I gotta go, sorry. Bye,” he cut me off a split second before the line went dead.
With a groan that came straight from my gut, I pressed my finger against the screen and ground down on my molars. “Damn it.”
* * *
When three days went by and I hadn’t gotten a new e-mail about the schedule being changed for the better, I started to get a little frustrated. When another day went by, including a practice, with half of the parents complaining to one another about their outrage regarding practices and tournaments, and still none of the staff commented about anything being done… I got more frustrated. But it wasn’t until four more days passed, including another practice, with nothing changing and no one saying anything, that I realized the truth.
Nothing was going to happen.
And that just wasn’t going to work.
I’d already talked to my parents and the Larsens about Josh’s insane schedule and they had all assured me we could make it work between all of us, but that wasn’t the point. What about the parents who didn’t have four extra people to help them out? What about the parents with more kids, who all had other sports and activities? What about my Louie who liked going skateboarding and riding his bike from time to time?
I understood how highly competitive sports worked. I had family members who had grown up to be professional athletes, but a ten-year-old completely sacrificing all of their free time? That didn’t seem like the best idea to me. They needed a couple more years to be kids, didn’t they?
So between clients, I picked up the phone and redialed the numbers I had saved in my contacts a week ago. And when it went to voice mail, I left a message. Four hours later, when I still hadn’t gotten a response, I called Trip again and left him a voice mail. In my desperation, I called again and left another message on Dallas’s phone. I may or may not have been making faces the entire time it took me to get home from work at seven that evening, making up all kinds of random excuses why I hadn’t gotten a call back from the team’s head coach when I lived across the street from him and worked with the assistant coach’s cousin, who worked down the block. The only thing that had kept me from walking to the mechanic shop where I’d overheard Trip worked was that would be creepy and crossing the line. A work place was a work place.
“This is bullshit,” I finally whispered to myself as I sat in my car before opening the door and heading up the path to my house. Unfortunately for Dallas, I dropped my keys on the ground and it took forever to wipe the fob off on my pants, otherwise I might have missed him getting home. The fact was I didn’t miss anything. As an old, Ford pickup rumbled its way down the street and turned into his driveway, I stood there. In the cab, I spotted that familiar buzz-cut dark head of hair behind the wheel of his big, old F-350.
I stood there, watching and debating whether to leave Dallas alone or not.
I went with not leaving him alone.
Before his truck had even disappeared into the garage set back along his driveway, I was already crossing the street and making my way over, hands tucked into the back pockets of my black jeans.
“Hi,” I called out to him as I approached. He already had one leg hanging out of the driver side, the door flung open wide.
“Hey” was his response as he got out, his eyes going a little wide into what I knew couldn’t be exasperation, right? Dressed in a long-sleeved, button-up, navy blue work shirt and khaki cargo shorts with more holes in them than pockets, Dallas was dusty as hell. I still hadn’t figured out what he did for a living, not that it mattered or that it was even my business.
I smiled at him, trying to be as sweet and nonthreatening as possible. My abuela, God rest her soul, had always told me you get a lot more out of life being nice than being a cabrona. God, I had loved that woman. “I wanted to see if you had changed your mind about the schedule,” I said, still smiling, trying to be all nice and innocent.
Almost as if sensing my bullshit, Dalla
s narrowed those hazel eyes at me. “It’s been brought up, but nothing has been decided,” was his political bullshit answer.
I was a lot of things, but a quitter wasn’t one of them. “Okay. In that case, I hope you guys see reason and change it because it’s crazy.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have gone with the “C” word. Maybe.
When those light-colored irises went even smaller, I decided that yeah, I probably shouldn’t have. “I’ll make sure you know if anything changes.” His tone clearly said, “get out of my face,” so I knew he was full of it.
“Please,” I peeped, getting desperate. “Everyone was complaining about it. Even Josh said he was tired just looking at it, and he doesn’t really have an off switch.”
Dallas eyed me one last time before starting to make his way around me. “I got you,” he threw over his shoulder, not bothering to spare me another glance. “We’ll see what we can do.”
“Thanks!” I hollered after him, squeezing my fists at my sides at the brush-off he’d just given me. Son of a bitch.
The man whose brother owed me the teeth in his mouth lifted a hand as he walked into the house right before the security door slammed closed behind him. I was getting sick and tired of him brushing me off. If he wasn’t going to listen to me, then damn it, I knew other people would. Because like my grandma would also say, if being nice doesn’t work, que todos se vayan a la fregada.
* * *
By the time the weekend came around, I had spoken to nearly half the parents on the team and gotten a definite feel that I wasn’t in any way, shape, or form the only one who wasn’t okay with the revised schedule from hell. We wanted it changed and no one in power was willing to do it. Governments had fallen thanks to pissed off citizens. Why couldn’t Tornado parents or guardians do the same thing on a smaller scale?
Over the course of those days, the parents I talked to reached out to others they knew and soon the entire team had been contacted. There was a handful that genuinely didn’t care about the schedule or understand why we were upset by it. Suck-ups.
But there was no way a big group of us could all be ignored. I figured, if nothing was done, those of us who disagreed could plan to not show up on the new date that had been added during the week. I wasn’t just doing this for me; I was doing it for Josh and Louie. When the hell would I manage to do things with Louie if we were always busy with Josh? He was at such a delicate age for memories and shaping the outcome of the kind of person he would become. I didn’t want him to ever feel like he was less important than his brother. I knew what that felt like, and I’d never want either of the boys to experience that.
Someone decided that at the end of practice, we were all going to talk to the coaching staff. And that was what happened. A swarm of parents descended on the head and assistant coaches of the Tornado. It looked like a mob with the three men and one woman in the middle. Some people were shouting to get heard; there was some finger pointing, but mostly there was a ton of “Yeah!” when someone overheard a good point another person made. Somehow I’d gotten wrangled into the middle of the circle, right at the center of the action. My head had started hurting earlier in the day, and the near shouting didn’t help it at all.
I was only partially surprised as Dallas, while in the middle of saying, “Stop yelling. I can’t think when you’re in my face,” looked right at me. He’d been glancing from face to face from the moment he’d been surrounded, but as soon as his gaze landed on me, it stayed there.
What the hell had I done now? He’d brought this on himself, hadn’t he?
“It was brought to our attention,” he said, staring right at me, “how unhappy you are with the schedule. I get it. I’ll get together with the rest of the staff and see what changes we can make.” He repeated the same words he’d told me days ago.
I looked from side to side as discreetly as possible, but when my eyes went forward again, Dallas still hadn’t looked away. Why? I hadn’t been the only one to complain.
“Some of us don’t mind the schedule the way it is,” one lone, ballsy parent piped in. It was the woman who had complained during the tryouts when the two women sitting in front of me had been talking about Dallas’s body.
“Some of us have a life, Christy,” one of the parents, whose name I couldn’t remember, shot back. “Our kids need lives too.”
“It isn’t that bad,” Christy kept arguing, her gaze landing on me and narrowing. What the hell was happening? Why were multiple people looking at me like I’d caused this? Hadn’t I tried to prevent it? “We never had problems like this before. Some people need to realize they aren’t always going to get their way.”
The fact that she was looking right at me didn’t help the situation at all. The schedule hadn’t been like that before. One of the parents I talked to told me that.
Plus, I wasn’t an idiot. Josh hadn’t left his old team on good terms. His coach had moved him to second base to give his own son the catcher position and we’d complained. Soon afterward, the team had picked up another player and Josh had gotten screwed over again. Coincidence? I think not. It had been his idea to leave, and I had supported him 100 percent… even though I’d called his ex-coach a prick when we finally walked out of there for the last time. Had rumors gotten around here already about that? I knew how tight this community was. There might be two degrees of separation between everyone.
Either way, I knew this parent was talking about me. Us. I’d have to be an idiot to not recognize that. And I didn’t like it.
From what I’d learned, only three new boys had joined the Tornado at the same time Josh had, and I didn’t know where the hell the parents of those kids were. If they were even here. Regardless, with parents of kids in competitive teams, you had to assert your dominance before your voice was lost forever. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to put Josh into that position of having the parent that was just okay with everything. If anyone ever picked on him, they were going to learn the hard way my family didn’t get messed with.
Those were the excuses I was going to go with to justify what happened next.
“Why are you looking right at me as you say that?” I asked the woman calmly. Was today “Pick on Diana Day” and I hadn’t gotten the memo?
The woman sneered, and I swore a couple of people standing right by her took a step away. “I didn’t say your name, did I?”
I didn’t have an anger problem. I never had because I didn’t bottle up my emotions, except for that one stupid period at the age of twenty-six when I wasted months of my life on the second worst thing that ever happened to me: my ex. If I had a problem with someone, I dealt with it, and if I happened to stay mad afterward, it was no one else’s fault but mine.
But I was going to beat the shit out of this woman the second there weren’t any witnesses around, I decided instantly. “You didn’t have to say my name. You were staring right at me. Am I the one having a hissy fit about wanting things to go ‘my way’?”
The woman had the urge to shrug.
I made sure not to break eye contact with her as I stayed pretty damn calm. “I’m not having a hissy fit. The schedule is ridiculous, and I’m not the only one who thinks so, so don’t put this on me, lady.” Looking back on it, maybe I shouldn’t have used the “L” word. Someone had called me that once and it had the same effect on me as the “B” word did.
“But you started it,” she argued.
“I didn’t start sh—anything. My kid needs a day off during the week. This has nothing to do with me. My kid is ten. He isn’t in the majors yet. You want him getting Little League elbow or stress fractures in a couple of years? I don’t want Josh to have to get surgery before he’s even out of high school because I wanted him to win a fu—damn tournament he isn’t going to remember when he’s sixteen,” I snapped at her, irritated.
“I do care about my son,” she tried to argue.
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
It was shameful how much I enjoyed her cheeks g
oing red. “But you implied it!”
I shrugged right back at her the same way she had at me, and it sent her into a rage. Bitch. “Well, you have an awesome way of showing it when I just told you about how he could injure himself by overdoing it, and you’re still arguing with me over something that’s had plenty of studies done on.”
“I do care about my son, Teen Mom—”
God help me. I took a step toward her. I didn’t know what the hell I was thinking about doing to her, but it was something, damn it.
The expression on my face must have said just that because the woman shut her mouth and took a step backward, her hands immediately coming up to her face.
“Okay! Okay!” An arm was waved up and down. “That’s enough. Christy, go home. You’re out of here for the next two practices for that,” Dallas ordered. When the woman started opening her mouth, he blinked, that alone working better than any “zip it” gesture. “You started it and you know it.”
I almost stuck my tongue out at her when her gaze swung over to me.
“Diana, make sure somebody else brings Josh to the next practice.”
What? Was he fucking kidding me? I hadn’t even done anything but defend myself!
Just as I opened my mouth to argue that fact, Trip jumped in. “Everybody else, we’ll talk over the next couple of days and come to some agreement on changing the schedule. We’ll e-mail you,” he concluded with a whole hell of a lot of finality to his voice. Where was the guy who had hung out with me at the bar?
I was pissed. As the mob finally split up, I stood there, stunned and about five seconds away from pepper spraying half the parents.
I turned to try and find Trip, who had done little more than smile at me from twenty feet away lately, but he was surrounded by parents deep in conversation already. Dallas… I had no clue where the hell he had disappeared to. And Jackson was standing off to the side with his arms over his chest, looking so unimpressed with life, I wasn’t sure why he bothered still breathing.
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