Quit Your Pitchin'

by Lani Lynn Vale

  Apparently, Elf on the Shelf was on sale for Black Friday for a steal at every single retailer in town. I was lucky to find the stupid girl Elf.

  Fuck.

  And, as I walked up the steps to Wrigley’s condo, I hoped that it would be okay.

  My breath left me the moment she opened the door.

  “I only found the girl Elf,” I told her slowly, taking her in. “The boy Elf wasn’t there. Or at the other stores I went to. You can explain this, right?”

  She was wearing leggings.

  Goddamn leggings that fit her curvy hips like a glove.

  When Wrigley had Micah, she’d never completely lost the baby weight, so she was still carrying a few extra pounds around her hips and thighs.

  Her breasts had grown, too, and were still just as big now as when she’d been breastfeeding.

  Let’s not forget to mention that she wasn’t wearing a bra at that moment in time, either.

  She was wearing one of my old t-shirts. One that’d been suspiciously missing when she’d left all my shit on the front porch.

  I swallowed and tried to breathe, thinking about anything but what she was wearing.

  My grandmother. Her marrying and being sexually active with her husband, who was just as old as her.

  Yep, that did the trick.

  “Thank God.” She snatched the bag. “Go into his room and distract him while I put the Elf up.”

  I walked through the living room stiffly, carefully keeping my eyes on my destination instead of Wrigley, and made my way to my son’s room.

  My son who was getting progressively louder the longer his mommy left him in his room.

  About three or four months ago, my son had started the particular stage in his short life where he didn’t like being in his bed.

  So, to circumvent him leaving when we weren’t aware—because he had done that one night and walked straight out of the condo—we’d started locking his door.

  It hadn’t been the safest thing in the world, but it’d kept us from having our hearts ripped out of our chests when we went to check on our son and he was nowhere to be found.

  We’d tried the lock on the outside doors first and quickly realized that when he was determined, he was going to find a way. And that way was climbing from the bookshelf beside the door to reach the lock at the top of the door itself.

  That had been the day that the shelf had fallen with him on it, and he’d been saved from being crushed by me walking in the door moments before it fell.

  From then on, we’d started locking his door.

  Unlocking it, I pushed it open and grinned when I saw my son standing angrily in the middle of the floor.

  That glare slid right off his face moments later when he saw me.

  “Daddy!” he screeched.

  I bent down and caught him before he could hit my legs and start climbing.

  “Hey, Buddy Bear.” I grinned, tugging him close. “Are you being good for your mama?”

  Micah wrapped his tiny little arms around my neck and squeezed.

  “I luh you, Daddy.”

  My throat tightened. “I love you, too, buddy.”

  “Stay.”

  I felt tears tickle the back of my throat.

  “I can’t, Buddy Bear. But I promise we’ll do something fun the next time I have you,” I promised.

  “No.” He squeezed me and cut off my air supply.

  For a tiny little toddler, he had a surprising amount of strength in his arms.

  “Buddy,” I hesitated.

  “Ready,” Wrigley said softly.

  I turned to find her standing in the doorway watching us.

  “Did you change his diaper yet?” she whispered.

  I shook my head. “Haven’t gotten that far.”

  She smiled. “Do that and come out here.”

  I did that and then went out there.

  I’d left Micah in the onesie he’d been dressed in from the night before, knowing from experience that Wrigley would just go and change him since she was particular about what he wore. Oh, and the fact that I couldn’t match worth a shit.

  So instead of our son going out with his shirt not matching his pants, I decided to go with expediency instead of changing him when she’d just go fix him up later.

  “Teeny?”

  “Is he talking about the dog or the Elf?” I whispered.

  Wrigley’s lips twitched. “The Elf, I imagine. He’s started calling the dog by Oosie now, instead of Teeny.”

  Everything was Teeny at one point in time. I was Teeny. Wrigley was Teeny. My grandmother was Teeny. Even the dog was Teeny.

  Now, however, I was semi-glad that Teeny was now the Elf and the Elf only. It was weird to explain to people why my son called me Teeny instead of Daddy.

  I put Micah down and let him look for his stupid Elf.

  And, since she’d hid it so obviously, Micah found it in a matter of moments.

  I started to laugh.

  “You have it eating turkey?” I asked.

  “That was why the dog ate the other Elf’s face. The turkey had attracted her to it. She made herself a midnight snack, apparently.” Wrigley sighed.

  I started to chuckle.

  “It’s not funny, dammit,” she muttered darkly.

  Micah immediately picked up the Elf and started to chew on her hair.

  “Aren’t they not supposed to touch the Elf or it loses its magic?” I questioned, looking at the Elf who was now starting to resemble recently getting out of the shower elfette, and not clean and dry elfette.

  Wrigley shrugged. “I tried to do it the right way last year, you remember. And I know you know how that turned out.”

  I snorted.

  I had.

  Micah had done quite shitty at the leaving the Elf alone thing, but she managed to hide the thing in places that Micah couldn’t actually reach. Apparently, that wasn’t a thing any longer.

  “Well,” I sighed. “I guess I’ll go.”

  I didn’t want to go.

  I wanted to stay exactly where I was.

  Yet I knew that I couldn’t stay very long. My heart couldn’t take it.

  I was still just as in love with her now as I was when I met her. It’d been a long, hellish eight months, and I fucking hated what my life had become.

  “Do you…do you want to stay for breakfast?”

  I shouldn’t.

  I knew I shouldn’t.

  Yet, I couldn’t seem to stop the words from tumbling free of my lips.

  “You know I can’t have anything with excessive amounts of sugar or fat,” I informed her.

  She rolled her eyes. “I know you, G. I also know that you can’t have sweets or bacon. I was present during our marriage.”

  “Were you?”

  The words tumbled out before I could stop myself, and I immediately winced.

  Wrigley turned and her eyes were guarded.

  “Yes, I was present,” she said softly.

  “I’m gonna go,” I murmured.

  Then I turned to leave because if I didn’t, I’d say something I didn’t mean.

  Something similar to what I said to her at the end of our marriage.

  “You’re giving up on us. Maybe I never really meant anything to you at all.”

  Chapter 11

  I’m too old for Netflix and Chill. I’m more of a Prime and Wine.

  -Wrigley to George

  Wrigley

  “Hey, Grams,” I sang into the phone the moment I placed it to my ear. “What are you doing today?”

  Grams clucked into the phone. “Are you back together yet?”

  I pinched my lips between my upper and lower teeth.

  “No,” I drawled. “I’m calling about the game. Are you still wanting to go?”

  “Yes,” she sounded offended that I’d even ask. “I told you I would, didn’t I?”

  I rolled my eyes.

 
; “Today being family day at the field, I wanted to make sure before I told George that you were coming. You know how he gets,” I said.

  The first family day I’d gone to had been eye-opening.

  Everybody had a ton of family there. Most of the players had at least one or two people out on the field with them while they were singing the national anthem. Everybody, that was, but my man.

  My ex-man.

  I still remember that day like it was yesterday.

  ***

  Two years ago.

  I sat in the seat assigned to me, my infant son in my arms.

  Micah was asleep and dead to the world. Dead to the world, that was, until you tried to put him down in his car seat, or pass him off to his Aunt Diamond.

  It was as if he knew exactly what I was trying to do when he was sleeping, and he only wanted one of two people. Me, or George.

  Nobody else would do.

  Not even Grams was a passable alternative.

  Grams, who was supposed to be here over an hour ago but wasn’t due to her flight being delayed.

  The families started to pour onto the field, all of them looking happy and excited to be out there. Even the players looked happy.

  Then there was George.

  He was looking at me with concern.

  I mouthed, “Her flight is late.”

  His face fell.

  Nobody else but me would’ve noticed the quick change in him, but I knew.

  He got that defeated look sometimes when his sister would call for money, or when his brother would call to tell him he had a new nephew but didn’t actually want him to come see him. He only wanted the big fat check that George would send upon hearing the news.

  When we’d called with our good news of Micah’s arrival, nobody had come down. Grams had been sick with pneumonia, and this would be her first time actually seeing Micah since he’d been born over a month and a half ago.

  George was the only person on the entire field that was standing alone.

  It was heartbreaking.

  The players started to be announced, along with their families, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

  Standing up and hurrying to the wall that separated the field from the stands, I waved at the security guard.

  “Can you help me over?”

  He frowned at me, but he didn’t object. Me and Tyrone were tight. He was a big, sexy African American man that was as dangerous as a teddy bear…to me. The rest of the world had to watch out, because it wasn’t often that somebody got pegged with a ball twice in his section—I.e. me.

  “Whatcha doin’ girl?” he asked me.

  Tyrone was an off-duty cop for the LPD—Longview Police Department and was a part of the SWAT team. He worked part-time as a security officer at the stadium in row F because he was triple certified as a police officer, firefighter, and paramedic. He made shit tons of money sitting at a game—a game which conveniently he loved—and made sure that nobody got too out of hand. And if they did get out of hand, he knew how to handle it.

  Tyrone loved me, though, and I invited him to Thanksgiving dinner. He’d accepted, and now we were BFFs.

  “Careful of the dirt, darlin’,” he warned.

  I was careful of the dirt as George’s name was called.

  He was paying attention to the announcer and wasn’t paying attention to me, so he didn’t know that I was standing directly beside him until I was touching his arm.

  He frowned ferociously down at me. That frown literally turned upside down as he saw it was me.

  His eyes went lazy as he took me in. “What are you doing, baby?”

  “We’re family now, right?” I asked him, handing Micah over to him.

  That was when the crowd started to say ‘awwwww’ simultaneously when George took our baby up in his arms and expertly parked him on his shoulder, his tiny little baby butt cradled securely in one large hand.

  I smiled and turned to say hi to Rhys, a fellow teammate of George’s, before wrapping my arms around George’s waist.

  “Thanks, baby,” he whispered.

  I squeezed him tighter. “Anything for you.”

  ***

  Anything for you.

  That saying held true today.

  We may not be married—my fault—but I would forever stand at his side.

  No matter what.

  Why? Because I was a glutton for punishment.

  “Are you even listening to anything I am saying?” she tittered.

  “No,” I admitted. “I was thinking about the first family day, and wondering if this was going to be super awkward.”

  “You have to be there,” she insisted. “Otherwise, who am I going to talk to?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  God forbid Grams talk to anyone that she didn’t want to.

  She was a complete and utter asshole to anybody that she didn’t deem satisfactory. At one point, George had practically begged me to sit next to her at every game she decided to go to because I was able to ‘keep her in check’ according to him.

  I wasn’t. She still did what she wanted. She just had a buffer in between herself and the rest of the people.

  “I’ll be there,” I promised.

  And I was, two hours later.

  I got so many nasty looks that I was nearly disappearing into the seat.

  If it wasn’t for Micah, and the promise Grams had extracted out of me, then I would’ve turned around and walked straight the hell out of the stadium thanks to the evil glares I was getting.

  I took a seat in my usual spot—the one I used every single time I came to a home game—and crossed my legs.

  Halfway to the stadium, Micah had fallen asleep.

  That meant I’d have to carry him instead of him walking, and the boy wasn’t light. He was his father reincarnated—at least to me.

  Technically, according to the doctors, he was actually on the smaller side for his age. But he seemed big when I had to lug him a mile down the road.

  He was also drooling down my cleavage.

  It felt oddly refreshing due to the overheated state of my skin—embarrassment of what I’d overheard, i.e., leaving George, had made me light up like a raspberry.

  I was stupid.

  I’d heard it over and over again over the last eight months since we’d been divorced.

  The dumb broad who let baseball’s sexiest man go.

  Wrigley lost out on the love of her life.

  George moving on, leaving Wrigley in the dust.

  Furious George angry and alone, Wrigley to blame.

  I was getting it from newspapers. I was getting it from random people coming up to me at my son’s doctor appointments or at his daycare. I was getting it from my fucking grandmother.

  Seriously, I just couldn’t escape it.

  Which became why I was able to tune everything out.

  “All right, whore. I’m here,” Grams said as she sat down at my side.

  I blinked, then blinked again. “Did you just seriously call me a whore?”

  “Sorry, I heard some lady say that about you as I came down, and I thought it was funny. Did you not like being called a whore?” She batted her eyelashes at me.

  Fake eyelashes.

  “Are you wearing fake eyelashes?” I questioned, brows furrowed as I studied her.

  “Yes, I’m also wearing chicken cutlets in my bra.”

  “Why?” I queried.

  “Because I’m going to be on national television, and I don’t want to be seen with no eyelashes and small breasts,” she said slowly as if she was spelling out the obvious.

  “Okay,” I hesitated. “But Grams, you have big boobs as it is,” I looked down at her shirt. “And they’re not real chicken cutlets, are they?”

  She flipped me off, making the woman I could hear two rows behind me snicker.

  I turned and glared at her.

  “Can I help you?”

&n
bsp; The woman smirked. “No. Not unless you want to give me George’s number.”

  I choked on my spit. “I’d rather shit myself.”

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “I wouldn’t leave him. He deserves someone that’ll stay by his side, through thick and thin.”

  “You wouldn’t know what to do with a good dick if it slapped you in the face. And my George is a good dick. You’re not. Go fuck yourself.”

  I pressed my hand against my forehead. “Grams, this is family day. You can’t say stuff like that with all these kids around.”

  “I can do what I want. I’m an old woman, people almost expect it out of me at this point,” she countered.

  I just shook my head, picking my battles.

  At this time, there wasn’t a kid in sight but mine, and he was sound asleep on my chest.

  And, as I looked down at his face, I realized that he was still, indeed, drooling.

  Just like his father.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be with the other families?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she shrugged. “But I went in there, and they were all too loud, making my ears ring. I have these hearing aids in, and they make me hear stuff that I didn’t even hear when I was younger. Like the young girl talking in the corner about her STDs. I decided, for the sake of the families in there, that I should probably just wait out here. If I didn’t leave, I’d probably be in trouble.”

  Now I was curious which young girl she was speaking of.

  Dammit!

  What a time to be out of the loop!

  I immediately felt like absolute shit for thinking that.

  The reason I was out of the loop was solely on my shoulders.

  I’d done that to myself, not anybody else.

  I frowned and looked down at my son’s crazy mop of curls—just like his daddy’s hair when he allowed it to grow out in the offseason.

  “Attention, ladies and gentlemen. The time is nigh!”

  I rolled my eyes.

  The announcer hadn’t gotten any less annoying since the last time I’d been at a home game. I kept hoping that one day they’d realize how nasally he sounded and get rid of him, but today had obviously not been that day.

  “God, is it just me or does he sound like he needs to blow his nose?”

  I grinned but didn’t turn toward Grams. “It’s not just you,” I promised.

  “Ugh,” she said. “Seriously, I want to clear my throat toward him each time he says an R.”