by Dee Lagasse
“You cannot allow her to talk to me like that!” Estelle shrieks when she realizes I’m not going to say anything to my best friend. “I will tell Grandmother.”
“Oh, stop acting so pretentious, Estelle,” I laugh, shaking my head at her temper tantrum. “You will tell Granny nothing. Because then she’ll come to me and I’ll just have to tell her how you required supervision the entire trip because you couldn’t be left alone and trusted to act like an adult.”
Estelle and I are complete opposites. Night and day. In white canvas sneakers, tight, ripped jeans and a low cut navy-blue tank-top with a big red “B” on it, the casual look Estelle is wearing tonight could allow her to pass off as a local. Her black hair is up and tucked into a ponytail, coming out of the back of a navy Red Sox baseball cap.
And then, there’s me. My golden blonde hair, currently spun into loose curls, sits just below my shoulders. The white jersey I have on is buttoned all the way up. It’s fitted, but still loose enough that it doesn’t cling to me and there’s no cleavage at all. The black pants I’m wearing are sleek and slim-fitting, leading to the red pumps that match the letters and the number on the back of the jersey.
Pear-shaped ruby earrings in diamond swirl frames sit in my ears and a matching pendant hangs from my neck. Both pieces have been in my family for hundreds of years and were only given to me on loan from my grandmother specifically for this trip.
For me, tonight is work.
For Estelle, it’s a party.
As hard as it is sometimes to not feel resentful, I try my hardest not to be bitter. It’s not Estelle’s fault. It’s not mine either. To be mad about the life I have would be completely selfish and unwarranted. I’ve wanted for nothing my entire life.
I grew up living in a literal palace. My parents, despite their duties to our family and our country, always made sure to make me and Simone feel loved. There were gourmet chefs cooking our meals, maids to clean up our messes, and we each had personal drivers on call for us. But my mum and dad made it their mission to make us aware of everything we had from the moment we could understand it.
When I was about twelve, Simone and I each spent a day following someone from every position on staff. We knew how hard everyone worked to keep the house running. And no one worked in the house on Sundays, ever. My parents made sure that everyone got at least one day off. Something I’ve brought into my adulthood now that I have my own house with my own staff.
As a family, we, to this day, spend every Christmas Eve at a women’s and children’s shelter, delivering toys and serving food. And once a month, we sit down and assign a day that we can all be together, and we prepare little care packages that we personally hand out to the homeless in and around the city.
It’s not for publicity or show. And unless some bystander happens to see us and get a picture, it goes unnoticed. It’s always been a combination of my mother’s kind heart and my father’s need for us to know how lucky we are to have all we do.
So as much as I would love to stay in the hotel room, get a back massage and order chicken wings, I know that showing up tonight will provide more books and reading resources to the children of Boston. So, I’ll go. I’ll smile, take pictures, and hopefully leave the party making a few connections for when I come back to Massachusetts. All because my parents raised me this way.
At exactly seven, a short rap of knocking comes at the door and there’s only one person it can be. Grabbing the small black clutch bag that holds my lipstick, a mirror, and my cell phone, I answer the door to find my personal secretary looking more relaxed than I’ve seen him on the entire trip so far.
In a red cotton t-shirt that has “Red Sox” written in blue letters across his chest and loose, distressed blue jeans, Luke looks like he could be any guy in Boston right now.
“Good evening, ma’am,” he says, peeking around the corner, sighing in relief when Estelle comes into view. “The car is waiting downstairs.”
“Have fun,” Clementine yells, waving from behind us, smirking as she blows me a kiss.
Just because I had to go and do my part tonight didn’t mean Clem did. So, I set up a spa night for her. As soon as we leave, she’s heading down to the hotel spa to spend the night being completely pampered. She deserves it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a little jealous.
Forcing a smile at Luke, I step forward out of the room and to the side as Estelle storms past us, presumably still butthurt I put her in her place.
“Oh!” Luke exclaims before lowering his voice as he pulls his phone from his pocket. “It appears your last e-mail made its way to your grandmother’s hands. I got an e-mail approximately ten minutes ago with Estelle’s morning travel itinerary. She’s going home so, you can ‘focus the remainder of your tour on your reading initiative.’”
A pang of guilt flashes through me when I sigh in relief. As much as I wish I could get through to her the way our grandmother did with me, I don’t think it’s going to happen here in Boston, or in California either.
We just need to get through this event tonight and then I can breathe for a little bit.
“Alright, shall we?”
Chapter 2
Bodie
I don’t want to do this.
After a week of non-stop appearances on talk shows, traveling across the country, back and forth from California to Boston to New York and back to California before I got to come home this morning, I’m exhausted. I know I should be soaking it all in, appreciating every single celebratory second of this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful and I am soaking it all in.
I just would like to soak the rest of this Friday night in from my bed...with some rum, in my pajamas.
Luckily, in theory, tonight requires minimal preparation. That is until I see my reflection after getting out of the shower. In a moment of haste, I take a razor and run it across my cheek.
There’s no going back now.
For the first time since early October, there’s no sign of the playoff beard I’d let take over my face. Once my cheeks, chin, and jawline are once again hairless, I rinse the random traces of shaving cream left behind and apply a layer of aftershave to my newly smooth face.
Pulling a charcoal World Series Champions shirt over my head, I contemplate styling my hair for about thirty seconds, quickly deciding against it. I put a matching gray hat on backwards instead. A pair of dark denim jeans and a clean, white pair of Nikes almost complete my ensemble.
Grabbing my wallet, phone, and keys from the counter, I do a mental checklist as I make my way to the little closet by the front door. I sift through the hangers until I find my black lightweight rain jacket, putting it on before I walk out of the safety of my little corner in Willoughby, Massachusetts.
The warm air and cold rain contradict each other as I step out my front door. While walking to my car, the dark green minivan belonging to my next-door neighbor slowly passes by. The driver, Stu Pollard, is a man in his mid-fifties, dad of two teenage girls, and always plows out my driveway for me during the winter months. I thank him by randomly giving him tickets to Red Sox games throughout the season.
The Gallaghers on the other side of me shower me with fresh berries and vegetables all spring and summer long. Every week I try to pay Abigail when she shows up with baskets of green beans, zucchini, summer squash, cucumbers, raspberries and every week, she refuses to take the cash. When it comes time for her and Norm to go visit the grandkids in Florida for Thanksgiving, they know they’ve got themselves a guaranteed dog sitter for their Dalmatian, Cookie. Mrs. Thompson across the street makes me fresh banana bread every week, knowing that every spring and fall, she can count on me to help her open and close her pool.
The whole town is like that. It has been my whole life. And I’m so thankful. The media might be going crazy about the hometown boy winning the World Series (again), but here in Willoughby, no one bats an eye.
The only people that continuously make a big deal out of me are my pops and my grandparents. E
veryone else lets me do my thing. I can go to the grocery store, and, yeah, this week, I was inundated with “congratulations” and a few kids asked me to take a selfie, but normally, everyone just goes about their business.
When I signed with the Red Sox in 2006, I gave my grandparents the money to pay off the loan they had taken out to make repairs to their house, and my dad the money to pay off his mortgage entirely. Despite Willoughby only being twenty minutes from Boston, I was settled in my Beacon Hill apartment before the ink dried on my contract. I didn’t want to settle anywhere permanently because you just never know with sports. Injury could end a career on any day and contracts only last for so long.
That was until my grandparents moved to North Carolina two years ago. My grandmother begged me to move back home, and more specifically into their house. I could do whatever I wanted to the property. She just wanted it to stay in the family. So I did. I moved in during the off-season and I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else anymore.
After making them repeatedly swear they wouldn’t be upset if I modernized the house, I spent six months ripping up burnt orange carpets, stripping mustard yellow wallpaper, and tearing down a wall of wood paneling. I don’t think my grandparents altered a single thing in the house since they purchased it in 1973. To say that I was terrified the first time they came back to visit in the spring would be putting it mildly. But, to my complete surprise and relief, my grandfather, a man of very few words, told me I “did good,” and my grandmother cried tears of joy when she saw how “pretty” everything is.
Leaving the comfort of my house gives me a strange anxiety lately. I love my life. Not everyone gets to say they honestly, truly love their life, and I do. But more and more I find myself wanting to go from the field to my home, and that’s it. Baseball was my first love…and since the days of t-ball, it’s been the longest, most consistent love.
But lately, it hasn’t been enough. I want more. I need more.
The empty space, the void I feel that exposes me and makes me vulnerable has been there since Hannah and I ended things. Some days, I wish I could hate her. Maybe it would make this emptiness dissipate just a little. Though, I knew it wasn’t Hannah I was missing. It was just having someone.
It’s still so strange for me to think about it. I was married. I was someone’s husband…and then, I just wasn’t. Five years ago, she gave me an ultimatum. It was the game or her. I loved Hannah. I really did. But I loved baseball more.
With an ironclad pre-nuptial agreement, there wasn’t anything to fight over. We signed the papers and it was over. She had already packed all her things and moved out when I was away playing a series in Toronto. There was no bitterness, at least not on my end. It was just done.
Kind of like what I wished tonight was. Done. But I’ll go and smile on the red carpet, shake hands with politicians, take pictures with the Commissioner’s Trophy. Only because it’s an event that will benefit the children of Boston. That’s one of the only reasons I didn’t say no when I got the phone call asking if I could attend.
On a good day, it takes about a half hour to drive into Boston from Willoughby. A lot of the guys on the team grumble about the traffic, but growing up in a suburb right outside of the city, I’m used to it. As a kid, I spent a lot of Sundays in the city with my dad and siblings. We spent countless hours at the aquarium and the children’s museum, and I’ve seen my fair share of Broadway plays.
Turning onto Tremont Street, I pull in front of The Steinhart. I’d been to the swanky, two-floor martini bar quite a few times since it opened in the spring. In fact, Kaci Steinhart and I grew up together in Willoughby. But after I got drafted in the first round of the 2006 First-Year Player Draft, I lost touch with a lot of the people I grew up with.
It wasn’t anything intentional. I was just an eighteen-year-old right out of high school and had just signed a two-year contract with the Boston Red Sox. People started coming out of the woodwork. People I hadn’t spoken to in years suddenly wanted to make plans, catch up. I built up a wall, and even to this day, not too many people get through it.
So last year when I got a message on Instagram from Kaci, inviting me to her grand opening, I had to do a little research to remember who she was. She remembered me from a photography class we took together our senior year of high school, but I couldn’t place her. Luckily, all it took was making one phone call to Oliver. My little brother conveniently had her as a friend on Facebook and after five seconds of scrolling through her feed, I knew she was legit.
Shutting down her club to the public on a Friday night is a lot to ask as it is, but after learning that all the proceeds from tonight’s event would be donated to children’s charities throughout the city, she refused to take any payment from the group putting it together. When she called me asking if I could get her in touch with someone from the office to possibly arrange having the Commissioner’s Trophy there for people to take pictures with, I did one better. I not only got the trophy there, but half the team as well. I couldn’t very well not show up when I was the reason my teammates were coming.
A tuxedoed valet rushes around and takes my keys as I step out of my custom black Jeep Wrangler. There are only two other people in front of me waiting to get into the club. It’s still early and since it’s a private event, it won’t be full like it normally is on a Friday night.
Fully prepared to flash my ID at the door when the two people in front of me have to, I chuckle when the doorman recognizes me and waves me by, allowing me to step into the coat check area with no hassle. After exchanging my jacket for a ticket, I walk down the long, narrow hallway to two mahogany doors. As soon as I open the doors and step onto the strip of red carpet, bright flashes from the photographers temporarily blind me.
Immediately flashing the pearly whites on cue, I take a few steps and continuously change my direction every thirty seconds, so they can all get the shot they need. After answering a few questions, I’m saved by the sound of the door opening behind me. The first hour or so of the event is the press hour, so even as I make my way up the spiral staircase to the second floor, I’m stopped twice for a picture and a quote.
Then it happens.
My life becomes a complete cliché. Like every intro scene in any given romance movie, the world pauses, and a luminescent glow leads me to the beautiful sound of a woman’s laughter. Birds are chirping, the heavens are singing, you know the scene.
Cue to the moment the camera pans to her perfectly curled blonde hair and slowly makes its way down, stopping right on my last name on the back of her jersey. At this point, my heart starts to race, and I know there’s only one thing for me to do right now. As if this is a perfectly planned script written for this moment, the brunette woman she is talking to leaves the bar and walks right by me. Making her way past me, the brunette woman’s bright red lips curl up in a slight smile as if she knows more about what’s about to happen than the rest of us do.
Mustering up the courage, I begin to make my way over to the high wooden-backed stool she’s sitting at. When she begins to turn toward me, anticipation builds rapidly, not knowing what to expect, but knowing for sure that my life will never be the same again after I say hello.
Locking in on a pair of chocolate brown eyes, I wonder if she feels it too. She has to, right? I can't be the only one that feels this.
“So, I like the name on your jersey.”
Aw, fuck. Of all the things I could have said, I go with that? Ugh. I need a do-over. Right now.
Alright, time for Plan B. Panicking a little when I realize I don’t actually have a Plan B. Winging it, I laugh at myself before she has the chance to laugh at me. Shaking my head, I extend my hand, “I’m sorry, that was corny. Can I get a take two?”
To my surprise, she takes my hand immediately. A trace of amusement written in the curl of her lips gives me the smallest sliver of hope. Unlike the brunette she had been talking to, her makeup is subtle, timeless. The light brown eyeshadow around her eyes is barely broug
ht out by a darker brown eyeliner, and the pink shade of her lip color makes her lips stand out in the most perfect way. Thank God for having a big sister. Otherwise, I would have no idea about the actual science that goes into picking out the perfect shades to make the perfect combination. Okay, maybe it’s not actual science, but hell if I’ll ever tell a woman that.
“Hi, I’m Bodie,” I start, unaware that half the room seems to be awestruck by the fact that I just walked right up to this woman.
“Hello, Bodie. I’m Sutton.”
Holy hell. The magnetic force pulling me to this woman got ten times stronger the moment she opened her mouth and the sweet sound of her accent left her lips. Before I can embarrass myself further by asking where she’s from, I recognize the photographer and reporter duo from the sports department of the Boston Globe making a beeline for us.
It’s show time, Cambridge.
“Hello gentlemen, nice seeing you again,” I nod, wracking my brain trying to remember their names.
“Hey, Bodie,” the reporter nods casually before turning to the gorgeous woman to my right. Nodding in respect before saying, “Hello, ma’am. Would you mind if we grabbed a picture and quote from you for tomorrow’s print?”
Who the hell is this woman?
“Not at all.” She smiles warmly in response, placing her drink on the mahogany bar top behind us. Standing up, she takes the hand that was just in mine and offers it to the photographer and then the reporter. As they introduce themselves, the reporter holds up a small black recording device turning his attention to the blonde woman.
“I am here with Her Royal Highness, Princess Sutton of Windham,” he starts. “Princess Sutton, when you put on your jersey tonight, did you imagine you’d be sitting here, chatting it up with Boston’s hometown hero, the Bodie Cambridge himself?”
