Stealing Home

by Harlow Cole

  The noise around us died away, muted by the blood rushing through my ears. I could hear my own heartbeat, but all I could see was his glove. He pressed the leather together, opening and closing like he always did. Helping me zero in on my target.

  The unease fell away. That foreign feeling, that had plagued me my first time out, totally disappeared. I turned the ball over in my hand, feeling the laces against my fingertips. I stared down at it for a minute, seeing my skin pressed against the white leather.

  “God, that feels good,” I muttered aloud. My smile bloomed as I heard a muted call over the static in my head.

  “Come on, you pussy. I ain’t got all night.”

  I got set, slightly bending my knees, feeling my weight ground me as both my hands rose up to my chest, preparing for duty.

  I started to turn, lightly lifting my leg.

  “Nice and easy, man,” he called, his voice no longer taunting. “You’ve got this shit.”

  It happened before I could think about it. An easy toss. Form and function instead of power. Muscle memory that could never forget. I curled and uncurled, twisting at the hips, before I hurled the ball forward. I followed through till I tapped my left shin.

  The thwack of it hitting Nathan’s glove combined with Dillan’s voice calling out, “And he’s back, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Nathan’s smile blossomed behind his mask. The sight of it seared into my brain.

  “Again,” he sharply called out.

  I found a rhythm. For the first time ever, slow and steady felt amazing.

  Thirty reps came way too fast.

  * * *

  Nathan and I sat on the bottom row of the bleachers, drinking beers I’d brought over in a cooler.

  “Good thing Dillan had to go to work. Pretty sure this is breaking a half-dozen laws,” I said, popping a cap off another one for him.

  He chuckled. “Dillan needs to break a few laws and go get himself laid. Guy is wound too damn tight. Is your sister coming back for the Labor Day party? Why don’t you let him have a shot at that?”

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  “What? At least, that way, she’s protected from Bobby. You know what’s gonna happen once he waltzes into town and gets a look at her.”

  “Surely law school has turned him into a gentleman by now.”

  He snorted. “Are you kidding? Nothing could put lipstick on that pig.”

  I smirked and sipped my beer. For the first time, being with Nathan felt almost like old times. Comfortable. Like déjà vu I didn’t want to slip away.

  We sat near the bleachers, nursing our lukewarm beers and enjoying the smell of grass and dirt mixing with crisp summer night air. I’d missed all of this. The ball. The cheap beer.

  And the company of my best friend.

  He finally broke the truce by poking at the elephant. “For what it’s worth . . . I thought you went off and forgot all about us. I thought . . . hell, I don’t know what I thought.”

  I picked at the hem of my shorts, unable to face him. “How can I ever make this right?”

  He stopped his bottle halfway to his mouth. “You’re earning it.” He smirked before glass touched his lips.

  I brushed my hand against my arm, realizing he could read the words inscribed there on my skin. “I forgot you took French.”

  “That’s a wussy tat, man. I can’t believe your teammates don’t give you shit about it. Good thing your jersey hides that thing. It makes you even uglier than you already are.” His words didn’t match his broad smile.

  I grinned back at him and shrugged my shoulders.

  We settled into silence again, content to sit beside one another and watch the automatic sprinklers kick water across the outfield. We sat like that till the six-pack drained, and the sinking sun hollered out last call.

  He sniffed loudly, breaking into the tranquility. “Ash will come around,” he said simply.

  I bent my head and picked at my thumbnail. “I don’t know. It’s been two weeks. She won’t return my texts or calls. Doing everything she can to avoid me.”

  “She’s scared of needing anyone. She needed you before and lost you. She needed my mother and lost her. She thought she was managing on her own. Keeping our heads above water. Now, she’s realized she had someone beneath her, holding her up the whole time.”

  I nodded in agreement. “Ash has always been scared to lean.”

  “She’d rather have everyone lean on her.” He paused and then added, “Give my sister some time to get her legs back underneath her. Then, she’ll come around.”

  I looked up at the sky. Newly woken moths fluttered around the field lights, frenzied with need. I felt the same way, as I wondered if my legs were far enough beneath me now to finally say the words I needed him to hear.

  “Nathan, I came back here to fix my arm, to help your family, and to somehow, someway, tell you how fucking sorry I . . .” My voice cracked. Pansy-assed tears, there was no use fighting against, clouded my eyes.

  “Shit. Are we about to have a moment?”

  I turned to look at him.

  He grinned when he saw my watery eyes. His fist jabbed my shoulder. “Damn. We are, aren’t we?”

  He looked down and shook his head. He exhaled through his nose and stared out at the field as he started to speak in a more serious tone, “I don’t remember the accident. Not a single thing about it. My memory cuts out somewhere near the end of our street. Cindi was humming to something on the radio, trying to calm me down. I was ranting. Planning out how I was gonna break you. Chinese water torture. Burn your house down. Leave you in a bloody pulp. That kind of thing.”

  I nodded my head. “I wish like hell that’s how it all went down.”

  He palmed the bill of his cap. “Well, guess now’s my chance to finally say what I wanted to that night.” He turned to look me in the eye. “After I beat the shit out of you, I was gonna drive your ass to my house. I was gonna make you grovel and swear and beg. And I was gonna enjoy watching. But then I was gonna tell you this. My sister is the best damn thing that ever happened to you. I was gonna tell you you’d better fight like hell to get her back. I wasn’t gonna let you give up on her.”

  “I never did.”

  “I see that now. And, sooner or later, she will, too.”

  I sighed and pinched my fingers against the bridge of my nose.

  “Besides, you’ve got another job to do now,” he added, smacking a closed fist into his opposite hand, simulating a ball and mitt the way only true ballplayers do.

  “What’s that?”

  “I assume, sooner or later, those guys who pay you the big bucks are gonna expect you to get your ass back to the city. You need to take Ash with you when you go back to New York.”

  “She’s not even talking to me, man. How the hell do you think . . .”

  He finally turned to look at me again. “She has a scholarship waiting there for her.”

  I blinked. My eyes widened.

  How had I missed that?

  “She doesn’t think I know anything about it. I heard her arguing with my mother about it once. She deferred enrollment. Said she had to care for a family member.” He paused and then added, “I don’t need her holding my hand anymore.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “I called them last week, explained the uniqueness of our situation. They said someone would meet with her, talk out options for financial aid. Maybe even reevaluate the scholarship for next fall. I figure she can show them some of her new stuff. Maybe someone up there will like those shots she took of your ugly mug.”

  “I’ll get her there. I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

  “I know.” He tapped me on the knee with the closed side of his fist. “I know you will. You’ve always taken care of her.”

  I sat there, dumbfounded, searching for a plan that made sense.

  “Come with us.” The words just popped out of my mouth. “She wants to see you. I think it would be good for you to see her.” I intentiona
lly didn’t use her name, shielding him from that pain.

  “I can’t.”

  “Nathan—”

  “No, I don’t mean it like that.” He exhaled a breath. “I’m just not ready yet. I will be. Someday. It’s just . . .” His voice broke. The whites of his eyes quickly grew glassy and red. “When I go to see Cindi, I’m damn well gonna walk my ass off that plane.”

  His smile slowly broke out, blossoming across his face again, the same way it had after I threw that first ball. It looked the same as the one I had grown up with. A perfect match to the one in that photo of us with heads covered in whipped cream.

  My Nathan. My best friend.

  “And you’d damn well better have a front row seat at Yankee Stadium waiting for me when I get there,” he added lightly.

  I swiped at my eyes. I couldn’t hold it in. That same feeling I’d had while standing in that grass, getting ready to throw. Everything foreign and strange fell away. The old familiar snapped back into place.

  “God, I’ve missed you,” I said without thinking.

  I hadn’t even planned for it.

  Vulnerable spilled out without even trying.

  I’d have to send Doc Wolfe a check in the morning.

  He swiped at his own eyes and bumped me in the shoulder. “Jesus, bro, let’s go buy another six-pack or something. We look like a couple of girls.”

  30

  Wanderlust

  Ashley

  “I brought you some dinner.”

  I looked up at my father with tired eyes.

  “It’s my tuna casserole, so don’t get too excited.” He set one of my mother’s old Tupperware containers down on the desk.

  “Thanks,” I said, leaning back from the computer. “I just got to thinking that I never sent all these invoices.”

  “You need to teach me how to do that. Your mom never wanted to show me the program, said I would do it backward and make twice the work for her.” He smiled softly as he spoke of her.

  It broke my heart a little and made me happy for him at the same time. Before, he couldn’t even mention her name without breaking down and leaving the room.

  “I don’t mind doing it. It’s probably easier for me to just keep—”

  “Ashley, honey, you’ve done enough.”

  “I just have a few more left. They’ll be late if they don’t go out tomorrow.”

  “I wasn’t talking about these invoices.”

  My brows furrowed as he held out a hand.

  “I mean, you’ve done enough around here.” His head tilted toward the door. “Come and take a walk with me.”

  I saved my work before I pushed back the chair. I tugged at the end of my braid and followed my father outside, feeling apprehensive about what he possibly had to share. I didn’t have the strength to dive beneath any more white lies.

  We walked to the end of the longest pier, all the way down to an empty slip bench that had a spectacular view of the evening’s pink-painted sky.

  “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” he asked. “I missed cool evenings like this while I was down in the Caribbean.”

  I nodded my head as I sat down beside him.

  “Did your mother ever tell you how we picked St. Michaels?”

  “I thought you found a sale ad for the marina in the paper?”

  “That might have been one more partial truth. Or it was just your mother’s way of being kind.”

  He fell silent again, scratching at his beard, as he stared out at the water. I sat patiently, giving him time to mull over what he needed to say.

  “I was going through a tough time. I’d leave for work every day, feeling even wearier than the last. Your mother claimed my job was sucking my soul out an ounce at a time. But I don’t even know if that was it. I’d checked all the boxes. Great wife. Great kids. Nice house. Steady job.” His index finger made check marks in the air. “I kept asking myself, What’s left? I felt lost. Guilty for my life not feeling like enough. Sad that I just felt caught inside a big, blank space. I’d come to a weird intermission—a place in life where I’d run out of dreams.

  “I couldn’t acknowledge how bad it had gotten until I came home one day to find her with the car idling in the driveway. There were grocery bags on the back seat, stuffed with a few changes of clothes, and she’d hung an ugly dream catcher Christmas ornament from the rearview mirror. She said you kids were packed off to stay with some friends while we went on a soul-seeking mission.”

  I smirked as I leaned my head down to rest on his shoulder. The love filling his voice helped me picture the scene he described so clearly.

  “The whole thing seemed crazy. We weren’t the spontaneous road-trip types back then. At first, I didn’t want to go.”

  “How did she talk you into it?”

  “How do you think?” He chuckled.

  “She gunned the engine and told you to get your ass in the car?”

  “Close. Your mother told me she wasn’t going to wait for me to come home with a girlfriend or a motorcycle, like all the other guys on our block in the throes of a midlife crisis.

  “‘We’re going wandering,’ she said. And we weren’t coming back home until I found what I was looking for.” He smiled and then continued. “We started out in Baltimore. Ate piles of crabs and drank beer till we remembered we were too old for hangovers. We left there the next day and headed east by the flip of a coin. Crossed the Bay Bridge around lunchtime and finally had to stop here for gas.”

  I tilted my head up to look at him.

  “I know.” He laughed. “We started our journey ’cause I was running on empty; We ended up in this town ’cause we ran out of gas.”

  I couldn’t squelch my own smile.

  “Your mother fell in love with all the shop windows. She wanted to roam around, so we decided to spend the night. We were sitting on the end of the dock over by the old Inn, watching all these fancy boats come and go and making up stories about the people on board.

  “Your mother said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to get the chance to talk to them? To know their real stories?’

  “We walked into town that night, and she plucked up a magazine from in front of the real estate office. And there it was. An ad for a cute little house and a For Sale sign overtop a picture of this beat-up, old marina.”

  He swallowed a few times, fighting with images the story had recreated. I laced my fingers through his to remind him that he wasn’t alone.

  He squeezed my hand before he continued, “She had some bills in her purse. She pulled them out to use the backs of the envelopes as scratch paper. We sat there and drank cheap red wine as we came up with a new plan. We just knew. We knew that night, this town was where we fit. We made new dreams.”

  “I’ve never heard any of that. I never knew you’d planned it all that fast,” I said quietly. I paused before adding, “Mom told me once that I was stuck and needed to wander. She really believed in that, didn’t she?”

  “It’s how she lived her life. It’s one of the last things she said to me. ‘When you feel lost, don’t be afraid to wander.’”

  All the months he’d been gone suddenly added up. He’d been following her direction. Keeping one last promise.

  There was a lot of that going around.

  “Did you find what you needed?” I asked softly.

  “As selfish as I was for leaving, I did. I wasn’t sure I could stay here. Not without her. I wasn’t sure what dreams I could have left now. Even when my dreams changed, they’d always included her.” As his voice warbled, he pulled me tighter against him. “But missing you guys, helped me remember that I have something to live for.”

  His cheek rested atop my head. I took a full breath for the first time in months. There could never be a safer place than in my father’s arms.

  “This is still where I belong. And it’s the closest I can be to her right now.” His hand smoothed over my hair. “I’m sorry it took me so long to realize that. I left you here, holding on to this wh
ole mess, all alone. You did a beautiful job, Ash.”

  “Daddy, I let the whole thing fall apart.” My words rubbed against the soft cotton of his shirt.

  His lips pressed into my hair. “Hush, my girl. You did not. You held everything and everyone together. And that’s why I wanted you to hear this story.” He pulled away from me, so I’d turn to look at him. “It’s your turn. It’s your time to wander now. You need to go out and find what sets your heart on fire. Find where you belong.” He paused and then added, “And who you belong with.”

  “I don’t know what I want. I’m not used to having choices.”

  “That’s the beauty of your mother’s idea. You don’t have to know where you’re headed. You just can’t get stuck.”

  We sat quietly. I leaned my head against his shoulder again, letting myself breathe in the familiar scent of his aftershave, watching his fingertips drum against my knee.

  A calmness settled over me. A stillness I hadn’t felt in . . . maybe years. I’d grown so used to living with constant worries, my mind didn’t quite know what to do with the empty spaces left behind. They allowed for feelings to flow too easily.

  “I still love him.” My admission came out so softly, I wasn’t sure he’d even heard me, until he snorted in response.

  “Well, God knows, that boy is certifiably nuts about you.” He shook his head. “Like truly nuts.”

  We both smiled sheepishly.

  “I just don’t know where I belong. I don’t know my own dreams anymore. And I’m not sure where I fit in, in Brayden’s new world.”

  “You don’t have to be sure of anything right now. All you have to do is keep moving forward, one step at a time, until you get your sign. When you see it, I promise, you’ll know.” He leaned forward and pulled something from his back pocket. “I almost forgot. These are for you. In case you need somewhere to start sketching out your own plans.”

  He handed me a small stack of blank white envelopes, tied together with sailor’s twine. Tucked beneath the string lay a tourist-shop blue pen with St. Michaels running up the side.

  “The pen is so you always remember where you came from, and how to find your way back home.”