Full Count (The Catcher Series Book 1)

by Bri Izzo

  The overwhelming support from him forces my chest to tighten as tears fell from my eyes. I have no choice; believing that we loved each other is so obvious. It’s possible that neither of us shared those feelings with the other, but I can feel that they’re present. Feeling it in my chest but not remembering it in my head is incredibly mind blowing. Love doesn’t lie.

  Graciously accepting his offer, I intensify my attention on our clasped hands. For a moment, I feel safe. Even though I’m insanely confused as to who I grew up to be, who he is as a role in my life, and what’s happened to me, I somehow know that everything will be okay, that he’s going to help make sure of that. “Thank you,” I whimper. “But you don’t have to do that.”

  “What if I want to?” he asks, resting his chin on top of my hand that’s intertwined with his again. Watching his eyes pour into me sends a sizzling sparkler down my spine.

  “Why would you? I wouldn’t,” I confess, still trying to move underneath the hospital sheets to find a more comfortable position. I don’t even want to be around for my recovery, so why will Skyler? It’s going to be long nights and lots of feelings of betrayal and forgetfulness and Goddamnit why did I have to just forget the past decade of my life? How is it possible? I’m… Oh gosh, how old am I? I assume I’m a teenager. “How old am I?” I blurt out frantically. My heart is racing - I can hear it on the monitor. The oxygen machine can’t keep up with my panic attack, but Skyler’s voice remarkably brings me back to a little bit mellower of a state.

  “Fifteen. You’ll be sixteen in September,” he tells me with a worried tremble in his chin. “It’s June; you just finished your freshman year.” Before I can ask him anything else or even process what he’s saying, he shoots up from his seat and heads for the door. He looks so distraught, like he’s about to go run in traffic. My heart pulls towards him, like there’s a magnet in him.

  “Sky… please don’t leave,” I beg, already longing for him to return. I don’t want to be alone. I want someone by my side, someone who really cares about me, and I can tell that he does. I want him to be next to me even if I can’t remember our backstory.

  “I just need a minute with Benny. I’ll be back,” he assures me with pained eyes. Before he can manage to even fully exit the room he explodes into tears. I hear him as he turns the corner into the hallway and Benny actually hugs him, and I realize that this process is already killing him. Seeing him this upset isn’t as bad as it probably is for him to see me in a hospital bed and completely clueless as to what’s happened in the last ten years of my life. I see him as a confident, I’m-not-going-take-your-shit kind of guy by the way he made Benny wait until he was ready to leave me, and he’s definitely easy on the eyes, but this is going to be a challenge for both of us.

  A few minutes later Skyler returns to my room. His legs look almost noodle-like the way he’s groggily making his way over to me. Instead of resuming his seat next to my bed, he sits on the edge of it next to me. “My offer to help you through this comes with one condition,” he tells me, lightly grazing his hand over the blanket above my leg. His touch, even through a layer of fabric, is comforting to me. If only my entire body didn’t feel like a semi truck was weighing me down I would totally jump him.

  “Okay, what is it?” I wonder, now fully noticing that the energy between us creates insane chemical reactions. My heart monitor is showing that my heart rate picked up as soon as he re-entered the room. It’s a calmer increase than the display during my panic attack. Whatever this feeling is that he’s giving me, I like it.

  “You can’t apologize to me. Ever,” he demands. His blood shot eyes are still dark and beautiful as they explore my features, but mine are about to overflow with tears. I try looking up at the ceiling to stop them. Some of the water seems to seep back into my eyes, but when I lower my chin to look at him a tear trickles down my cheek.

  “But what if I’m sorry?” I question. I would hate to spend the time recovering with him if he doesn’t know how I’m feeling while going through it.

  “I know you are, and I don’t need to hear it every five seconds,” he tells me with a passionate fire in his eyes. His thumb gently brushes my cheek and erases my tear. “It’s out of your control. I only want you to apologize for things that you can change. Deal?”

  “Okay… deal,” I weep. “If it ever gets to be too much for you, just tell me you gotta leave. I’ll understand.”

  Gently reaching for my chin to guide my eyes back onto him, he firmly states, “I’m not going anywhere, B.” Good.

  “What’s my brother’s stance on us, whatever we were?” I wonder. It’s gotta be awkward that his best friend and sister like each other, right?

  “All that matters is his stance right now. And he’s on his way here, so you can ask him yourself.” Skyler has the confidence of a celebrity on the red carpet, but I can see in his eyes he’s worried for my brother’s arrival.

  I have no concept of the actual time that’s passed because I had to rest, and I’m in a room with closed curtains. A while later my brother walks into the hospital room. He looks so much older than the last time I remember seeing him. His eyes drop and smile sags when he sees me. After seeing him arrive, Skyler stands up and gives him a short greeting before backing into the doorway to let Rex approach me. But Skyler doesn’t step out of my line of vision, and I like that. He’s watching out for me.

  “Hey, B. How you feeling?” Rex asks me gently, taking a seat in Skyler’s chair next to me.

  “Really sore,” I tell him, not trying to think about the pain. Skyler has done a pretty good job of distracting me from it until now. Also I’m pretty sure I’m on some kind of pain reliever - a strong one. More than half of my body is numb.

  “Do you remember what happened?” he questions me with worry tracing his eyes as they scan my body. I wonder how bad I really look.

  “My memory is gone,” I enlighten him, shaking my head the little bit that I can before feeling like it might explode. “Like completely.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” he wonders, his concern deepening. I try to think back by closing my eyes, but I just can’t put my finger on any one particular moment.

  “I don’t know, but I didn’t know my nickname was Buzz if that gives you any idea,” I confess, glancing over at Skyler whose eyes still haven’t left me.

  “Holy shit,” Rex mutters. He sighs deeply as anguish covers every part of him. He likes to be in control, so I know it’s hard for him to be in this situation because there’s nothing he can do for me.

  “Where’s Mom and Dad?” I ask, extremely confused how he is here but our parents aren’t.

  “Mom had a thing, but they’ll be here later,” he vaguely tells me. I should ask Skyler; he will probably tell me the truth. It doesn’t seem right that my parents didn’t come with Rex.

  The hardest part about this recovery will be having the people around me avoiding telling me the whole story about things. I look over at the door where Tiffany, Benny, and Baylee are comforting Skyler. It feels good that once I heard Skyler and Benny’s names that everyone else’s fell into my memory, too. I watch as Tiffany reaches towards Skyler for a hug, and he surprisingly accepts it gracefully. But I can tell from all of their facial features that this is the first time that’s ever happened. He clearly needs it because he squeezes her just as tight. A moment later, Tiffany is walking towards me, and she takes Rex’s place while he stands beside her.

  “Hey, Tiff,” I greet her.

  “Oh thank God you remember me,” she sighs and lets out a worried smile. She’s afraid to touch me, so I reach out my hand for her to hold. At least I can manage that slight movement. “How are you feeling?”

  “Awful,” I admit. “Everything feels heavy.”

  “I’m sorry, B,” she tells me, every ounce of sympathy pouring out of her eyes.

  “It’s fine. No need to be sorry,” I struggle to get out beneath choking back emotions as I watch Skyler from across the room. This athl
etic and rigid guy is trying to hold himself together, but I can see the tears fall before he has the chance to wipe them away. “Tell me what was going on between me and Sky.”

  Rex and Tiffany exchange a questionable glance. “What did he tell you?” Tiffany dodges answering my question.

  “Nothing, but I can tell by the way he’s been looking at me that there’s something,” I quietly observe.

  22 Skyler Swanson

  Cara and Laurie didn’t stay in the hospital long enough to talk to Buzz. They have shit to get back to in Hinsdale by this evening, and her surgery took almost all afternoon. When the rest of the crew arrives at the hospital, Tiffany immediately hugs me. Any other circumstance I would have fucking shoved her away, but I actually need it more than she does. Even if Buzz can’t remember the second half of her life, at least she’s still alive. At least she’s not brain dead. I easily could’ve killed her by guiding her into the wooden dock head first. That’s all I can fucking think about: this is my fault.

  Alex looks furious at me, like I could really do this to Buzz on purpose. Onlooking from the doorway, I just want to know the contents of Alex and Buzz’s conversation. She looks so confused yet so curious. I see her eyes light up when she heard Benny call my name to alert me that our crew was almost there. She had no idea who I was or my name before he said it. I can’t really blame her; the reason I call her Buzz is because I couldn’t remember her real name as a kid. At least she has a legitimate reason.

  “How’s she doing?” her petite, adorable, grandma nurse, Gerty, asks me as she approaches the room. Gerty suggests just talking to Buzz and seeing how much she remembers. Apparently the CT scan proves my prediction to be correct: the accident caused a traumatic brain injury. Luckily it appears to be a mild case, but it’s still extremely risky. Just because she’s alive today doesn’t mean she can’t die from it in a few weeks or months.

  “Better than I imagined,” I tell her. Honestly I’m just surprised she woke up so quickly after surgery. The doctor said that’s incredible. “Once he said my name, I saw a few things click in her head.” I point to Benny and continue, “At least she recognizes us.”

  “Yes, that’s a good sign,” Gerty cheerfully agrees. After giving me an encouraging smile, she scoots past us in the doorway and announces to Buzz, “Hi, sweetie. I’ve come to change your dressing.”

  Alex and Tiffany succumb to us as we witness Gerty slowly remove the gauze on Buzz’s forehead. From ten feet away it looks like she has been shot in the head three times. The blood isn’t nearly as bad as when I was carrying her in my arms since they stitched her up, but it’s going to leave a massive scar. She has at least fifteen stitches, causing the blood on the bandage to look like Halloween costume makeup. The changing of the dressings will be less frequent after the first one since the stitches are doing their job though.

  I have completely zoned out on watching Gerty change Buzz’s bandage, so much that I haven’t noticed Alex glaring at me until he’s almost burned a hole into me. Our abnormally silent greeting when we switched places so he could talk to Buzz at her bedside was not pleasant, so I’m sure he wants to finish it. We didn’t exactly end on good terms last time we talked either. His elbow snaps me out of my gaze, causing me to break eye contact with Buzz from across the room.

  “What?” I mutter, giving him a stop-fucking-with-me look. My eyes dart back to Buzz for a moment out of concern, and Alex doesn’t like it. She looks really upset, like it has finally registered with her that I had been unintentionally looking at her banged up forehead when she woke up.

  “I need to talk to you,” Alex declares, walking out of Buzz’s view and down the hallway near the nurse’s station. I don’t want to leave Buzz’s sight, but I know she’s in good hands with Gerty and it’ll only be for a few minutes.

  The rest of our friends give me worried looks like I’m about to walk right into my own death, but Benny grabs my shoulder first and says, “It’s not your fault. Don’t let him make you think otherwise.”

  Nodding, I let his words sink into my head. I don’t mean to blame myself for her getting hurt, but I was driving the boat. I should’ve been paying more attention; I should’ve protected her. When I meet Alex down the hallway, I surrender before he even gives me the chance to defend myself. Fire is burning in his eyes but he can’t look directly at me, and I’m prepared for the worst. I already know he blames me.

  “She couldn’t stop asking about you,” he starts quietly. I expect a full-on “what the fuck did you do to my little sister” lecture, so I remain silent, allowing for him to say anything. “Don’t you want to know what she was asking?”

  For a moment I do. I want to know what this new Buzz is thinking, but I’m not sure if it is fair for him to tell me. If she wants me to know she will ask me herself. “I don’t know,” I answer. My breathing has been irregular since the moment I saw her dive into the wooden block in the water, and with my mind twirling like a tornado, the air catches in my throat.

  “She wants to know what was going on between the two of you before the accident,” he states, ignoring my unusual actions of fidgeting and bowing my head at him. He isn’t a very emotional guy, so I wouldn’t expect much from him even if I didn’t think he wanted to chop off my fucking head. But he’s using my insecurities to his advantage, and we both know it. His words don’t register very deeply in my mind, mostly because it isn’t anything new to me. But then he adds, “You should tell her.”

  My head springs up out of instinct for his suggestion. “Tell her what?” I wonder. Tell her that I’ve been in love with her since I was nine? It might seem a bit sudden to her.

  “Tell her how the accident happened,” he blurts out. Hey, B. I was so hypnotized by you wake-boarding that I forgot I was driving the boat and led you directly into your fucking wooden block of death. P.S. I love you; bye.

  “I know,” I concede. “She just looked so confused, and I didn’t want to make it worse.”

  “You didn’t want to tell her because you know how it would end,” he snickers. Yeah, that, too. “She deserves to know before you break her heart again.” With that, he shoves his shoulder into mine and storms past me back to her room. As he walks away he mutters, “So much for always protecting her.”

  I slide my back down the wall so I end up sitting in the fetal position on the floor outside some stranger’s room. Or maybe it’s empty; I don’t know. All I know is that Alex is right. All I feel is the serrated knife carving into my chest. This time I really hurt her. I’m supposed to be her protector, her hero, and I failed her miserably. The idea kills me that she may never trust me again, but I can’t blame her if she doesn’t. After a few minutes of drowning in my own messy thoughts, I look next to me and see Benny observing my behavior. Caring what other people think about me is never a concern of mine, no matter what. But this is Buzz’s life on the line, and I know I fucked up.

  “Alex is an ass,” Benny states firmly. I don’t want to talk, to him or to anyone. I just want to rewind to this morning when Buzz forgave me with a kiss on my cheek when she looked at me like she was proud to be not-so-secretly crushing on me for half of her life.

  “He’s right,” I confess. “She deserves to know.”

  “Fine, she deserves to know,” he sternly agrees with me. “But she also deserves to know that you fucking saved her life. You reacted before it even happened.”

  “And it wasn’t quick enough,” I affirm.

  “It was a fucking accident,” he argues quietly. He’s on my team, but what he doesn’t realize is that I’m not even on my own team. I blame myself, too. “You would never purposely do anything to hurt her. We all know that. Alex does, too, but right now he’s just torn because his little sister is looking at him like it’s the first time she’s ever seen him.” My eyes burn. I want to wake up from this hell of a dream happening around me. It’s not possible that this morning I watched my best friend soar into a wooden block and fly back like she just lost a game of Red Rover t
o the high dive. “Sky,” he nudges me, alerting me that he thinks he lost my attention. Maybe he fucking did. My mind is everywhere, but mostly back out on the lake replaying the horrible scene. “I watched you do everything that you could to help her. I had no idea you knew CPR, and you wrapped her head with the shirt off your back. Hell, you had her in your car and down the road before I could even tie up the boat,” he explains how it looked from an outsider’s perspective. “She’s not going to care that you were the one driving. It could’ve been anybody. It was a good thing you were there when this happened; no one cares for that girl like you do, and everyone knows that.”

  For once Benny actually makes fucking sense.

  I’m determined to prove it to everyone when Buzz is released from the hospital a few days later.

  The first night home I just text her and am content with her answer of I’m fine and going to bed so I don’t bother her the rest of the night. No way in hell do I sleep at all that night, but I leave her alone. The second night is a different story. I’m lying awake in my bed wondering whether or not I should call or text her. All I imagine is Buzz’s face as she approached the wooden dock. I have no idea how long it’s going to haunt me, but I know I’m not going to get any sleep again tonight.

  All of a sudden my phone vibrates, jolting me back into reality. Buzz Ferrari.

  “B, what’s going on? Is everything okay?” I panic as I answer the phone. I throw my blanket onto the floor as I stand up, ready to take action if needed.

  “Sky,” she answers with a deep breath like she just finished a race. Something isn’t right. I could never hear her breathing like that over the phone before.

  “Can you talk to me?” I lightly demand. I start one-handedly slipping sweatpants on over my boxers in anticipation for leaving the house to help her as soon as possible.

  “Someone is playing music and it’s making my head throb,” she quietly tells me as if her own voice is piercing her ears. It’s a side effect of having severe head trauma, I’ve learned.