Home Run King

by Stella

  There was no way I’d get any sleep.

  As I stared at the ceiling in the hotel room, my phone rang next to me. I nearly jumped out of my skin to answer, hoping it was Katie—even though I’d told her to take it easy and rest, not to worry about me. Coby’s name flashed on the screen, so I quickly answered, knowing he was calling me with an update.

  “She told you it was a minor accident?”

  I wasn’t sure why he’d start with that, but I figured I’d play it out and see where it went. “Yeah, she said it was a fender bender. Why?”

  “I’m staring at her car right now. Hold on, let me take a picture of it.” There was some rustling on his end of the line, some tapping, and then he was back. “There, I just sent it to you. She didn’t want to tell me where her car was towed, but I finally got it out of her and came down to see what I could do about getting it fixed quickly. I expected a crumpled bumper or, at the most, a little bit of frame damage. Not this.”

  Just then, his text came through, and I tapped on it to pull up the picture. The rear fender looked tucked beneath the car, the trunk caved in…and that was just the back. On the front, her hood had buckled, and the bumper was missing.

  “Holy shit. Have you talked to Ellie? Is Katie okay?”

  “I did, and she is. Ellie said her nerves are fried, but that seems to be about it. Other than a little discomfort in her neck, but she said it’s nothing she can’t handle. I don’t know what to do, man. The shop said she doesn’t have insurance, and with as old as the vehicle is, he doesn’t think it’s worth it to fix. Right now, it’s a pile of garbage.”

  I couldn’t fathom why Katie would drive around without car insurance, but asking Coby would get me nowhere. I’d ask Katie, except I didn’t want to disturb her if she was resting. I hated being so far away, so helpless and useless. It was like I couldn’t do anything, and likely, I’d feel the same if I were home, but at least I could see with my own eyes that she was okay.

  “Just leave it. I’ll deal with it when I get back. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.”

  “Anytime. You know we’re always here to help.”

  I tossed the phone back to the mattress to prevent me from obsessing over the picture. This would be a long twenty-four hours.

  All the lights were out when I crept up the stairs to my room. It had been the worst and longest day of my life. I wasn’t sure how much sleep I’d gotten the night before, but I could tell it wasn’t much. I was sluggish during the game today—although we managed to pull out a win—and my head felt like it was trapped in a vise. The only thing I could think about since Katie’s accident was getting home and wrapping her in my arms.

  Normally, if she were in bed when I got there, I’d wake her up and then keep her up until the sun lightened the sky. But not this time. Instead of dropping my bag by the bedroom door, I carefully set it down and toed off my shoes. I tugged my shirt over my head, stepped out of my jeans, and slid beneath the covers with my boxers still on. And when I settled into my place next to her with my arm wrapped around her and my hand on her hip, she curled into me like it was natural. Granted, we’d slept like this every night I was home since the beginning of the season, but she was always awake when she draped her leg over mine and snaked her arm up my chest. This time, she remained asleep as she made herself comfortable on me.

  Again, I refused to overthink it and just let sleep take me under.

  In fact, it was probably the best night of sleep I’d gotten in a while, and by the smile on her lips the following morning, I could tell she felt the same.

  She traced her fingers down my chest until her hand disappeared under the blanket. I was still waking up, so when she wrapped her fingers around my hard cock and began to pump me in her fist, I couldn’t think about anything other than how amazing it felt.

  Until life smacked me in the face.

  “Stop, Katie. You were in an accident like less than forty-eight hours ago. You need to take it easy.”

  “I’m not crippled, Gage. Aside from a slight kink in my neck, I’m virtually pain-free.”

  “You aren’t allowed to do anything until you’re completely pain-free.”

  “That’s impossible. As long as you’re in my life, I’ll always have a pain in my ass.”

  I shook my head and laughed. “Trust me, I’m dying to spread your legs as much as you are, but I’m not risking it. I’m home for a whole week, so hurry up and get better so I can leave you with a reminder of why they call me the King before I’m gone again.”

  “I don’t come to you for sex because you’re any good at it. I do it because I’m pregnant and horny, and no one else will touch a woman who’s carrying another man’s child in her womb.”

  “Why not? That’s the best time to fuck. I mean, no risk of knocking up the chick? Hell yeah.” It seemed she did not see the value in the point I made. “But if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll take care of you in other ways.”

  I was in the midst of crawling between her thighs when she stopped me. “Sorry, Gage, but as much as I like what you do down there, I’m way past that. I need penetration. Stat.”

  I stuck my fingers into my mouth and pulled them out with a pop. “I got ya covered.”

  “Nope.” She smacked my forehead with her palm and locked her elbow to keep me from advancing. “That’s not good enough.”

  I shrugged and backed off the mattress. “Oh well, can’t say I didn’t try. I’m gonna go make breakfast and then we’re going to have a little chat.” I didn’t miss her groan as I walked out of the room.

  Within thirty minutes, I returned with a tray of food. I set it on the bed, passed Katie a plate and a hot mug, as well as her vitamins, and took a seat next to her.

  She held the mug between both hands and stared at the piping liquid inside as if the steam had hypnotized her. Her attention bounced between me and the cup a few times before she hesitantly asked, “Coffee?”

  “Yup. I felt bad. You’re like an injured bird, and this was my way of taping popsicle sticks to your wing.”

  She was leery, as she should be. I gave her coffee, but that didn’t mean it was caffeinated. Although, I had no intention of telling her that. It was like having my own personal entertainment every time I saw her close her eyes right before taking a sip, and then humming to herself as if she were tasting heaven.

  “All I had to do was get into a car accident to get back my java? Why didn’t I think about that weeks ago?”

  “If you think you’re being rewarded for that, think again. Honestly, I only brought that back for you because we need to have a serious talk and I wanted you to be levelheaded.”

  She set the mug on her nightstand and shifted on the mattress to sit up higher, concern creasing her brow. “A serious talk? I wasn’t sure you knew how to have one of those.”

  “Of course I do.” I let her have her laugh before starting in on her. I purposely didn’t bring this up over the phone because I wanted to be next to her when I asked something that could potentially upset her. “Coby showed me a picture of your car.”

  “I figured he would. That was why I didn’t want to tell him the name of the body shop. It looks way worse than it was. I guess I was hit in the right spot in the back to shove me under the bumper of the SUV in front of me. I promise…I was at a complete stop, and the old woman couldn’t have been going more than a few miles per hour.”

  “Actually, I spoke with the mechanic, and he said looking at the damage to both cars, he’d guess she was going at least ten. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. The damage to the car is neither here nor there considering you and the baby are okay. My question is why you don’t have insurance.”

  She immediately dropped her gaze to the plate of untouched food in her lap. Her tongue peeked out and slid along her bottom lip, wetting it just enough to make it glisten in the sunlight dancing through the blinds.

  When she finally did speak, her voice was raspy, scratching over every other word. “It’s no s
urprise that I was upset after Granny died. I guess I had missed a few payments, so they dropped me. And I just hadn’t thought about it too much since then.”

  It was plausible, and truth be told, there were many things in my life that I’d let fall to the wayside after Granny’s death because I just didn’t have it in me to care about much. Actually, that was the reason Missy had left, saying I’d given up and she couldn’t sit back and watch me become a shell of who I was. I guess her solution was to turn her back on me during one of the worst times in my life so she wouldn’t have to “sit back and watch” it.

  “Well, I guess that answers that.” When she continued to stare at me without saying a word, I asked, “What?”

  “Was that all you wanted to talk about?”

  “Yeah.”

  She nodded slowly. “Awesome. Good talk.” And then she began to shovel her breakfast into her mouth and swallow it down with the decaffeinated coffee I’d cleverly poured into a regular bag.

  Katie was in the bathroom with the shower running when her phone lit up on the mattress next to me. We’d spent all morning in bed watching TV, and when I denied her a round of Sir Nix A-Lot for the hundredth time, she said she needed to wash off the scent of desperation from her skin. She hadn’t been in there long, so I decided to answer her phone in case it was the doctor’s office—I mean, I couldn’t imagine anyone else calling her.

  “Hi, may I speak with Kathryn Crisp, please?” a young-sounding woman asked.

  “Um, she’s busy at the moment, can I take a message?”

  “Oh, sure. My name’s Georgina Hattleberry, and I’m calling from Morrison’s Feed Supply regarding Kathryn’s job application. If you could please have her call me back at her earliest convenience, we would love to get her in for an interview providing she’s still interested.”

  “Hold on, I’m taking notes.” I wasn’t. I still had the remote in my hand and hadn’t budged from my spot on the bed. But she didn’t need to know that. “And what did you say this job was for?”

  “Oh, I didn’t. She had applied for a cashier position, but we have an opening in the back unloading the trucks of fertilizer and seed. I can discuss the logistics with her later.”

  “Thank you very much, Georgia Haddyson.”

  “It’s Georgina Hattleberry.”

  “That’s what I said. I’ll make sure Katie gets this message, although I’m not sure you’ll hear back from her. She already has a job.” And then I disconnected the call.

  My emotions were as all over the place as my distracted thoughts tended to be. In one breath, I was angry that someone would entertain the idea of a pregnant woman lifting heavy bags of cow shit. Then I wondered if Katie had even told them she was pregnant, which in turn made me question if she was ashamed of it. Although, that thought was fleeting because I knew in my heart she wasn’t—the jury was still out if she was ashamed of me, though. And before I could fully let go of the hurt, I was hit with a wave of sadness I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid.

  The only reason Katie would be looking for a job was if she were planning to leave.

  Abandonment and I went way back, to the playground days when “butthole” was the worst insult you could call someone. Correction, I found out one day in fourth grade just how bad the name “pencil dick” was. In my defense, the kids in the class weren’t offended—the principal, on the other hand, didn’t appreciate being called one. That same day, I also learned how hard it was to get the taste of Palmolive out of my mouth. There was a reason I never allowed that shit in my house. If it stuck to cups as well as it did to a tongue… No thank you. I didn’t care for a side of soap with my OJ.

  Anyway, over the years I had become a master at avoiding any situation where I could possibly be abandoned. I didn’t do relationships for that very reason. If I slept with some chick and then walked away, I eliminated the chance of her leaving first. Missy had been my only girlfriend, and even though it had taken her three and a half years, she eventually proved me right. Granny was the only woman in my life who had never abandoned me—not even when I’d given her multiple reasons to. And “multiple” was a drastic understatement. Regardless, she was always there, even when I didn’t want her to be…such as the time in third grade when I slapped my teacher on her ass and asked her to be my sugar mama. Yeah, I really didn’t want her to be there that day.

  I slipped on a pair of jeans and pulled a T-shirt over my head. No matter how badly I just wanted to walk out the door without a word, the running water in the bathroom wouldn’t let me. It called to me like a song, so I cracked the door, stuck my head in, and told Katie I had to run into town but I’d be back.

  And the whole time I was in the car, driving away from one girl in search of another, I couldn’t stop thinking about how badly my mother had fucked me up. Seriously, I couldn’t remember a single moment of my life when she was there. Not one. She had me at fourteen, and two years later, she dropped out of school and left. It took nearly twenty years before I saw her again. And even though I don’t remember the day she left or how I felt when she was no longer around, at some point in my life, I realized I wasn’t good enough for her. I realized my own mother didn’t want me. And if the woman who gave me life could turn around and walk away without blinking an eye, anyone could. Granted, I know now that she loved me—she was just a kid herself—and Granny had never told me otherwise when I was growing up, but that never erased the feeling of not being enough. It never eased the fear of abandonment. So now, even entertaining the idea that Katie was about to do the same, had me running—straight into the arms of the only living female I trusted to never give up on me.

  “Gage…” Ellie practically rolled her eyes when she opened the door. “Coby isn’t home.”

  “That’s good, because I didn’t come to see that blind fucker.”

  “Well, I just got both boys down for a nap so—”

  I held my hand in front of her, fingers spread like I was about to palm her face, and made a noise that, in my opinion, perfectly resembled that of a car coming to a screeching halt. “Errrrk. I didn’t come to see you, either.”

  When I stepped inside, pushing past the arm in my way, she closed the door behind me.

  “I’m here to speak with my advisor.” I didn’t get ten feet in before my best friend came barreling down the hall, a string of blue feathers flying behind her. “There she is!”

  “Age!” Corinne ran and jumped into my arms.

  I lifted her, took note of her feather boa and red lips, and turned to Ellie. “See? She’s already dressed for our meeting. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have important business to discuss.”

  “Gage, it’s her naptime.”

  “She can sleep when we’re done. It won’t take long.”

  With Corinne in my arms, I headed down the hall to her playroom and set her down next to her princess table. I’d given it to her for her second birthday—it was a selfish gift, really, since every time we hung out, we didn’t have a place to drink our tea and discuss business.

  “You get the tea ready while I grab our thinking caps.” Sitting on a shelf were two wide-brimmed, old-lady hats. I set the pink one on her head and pulled the blue one onto mine. Then I grabbed our “hater shades” from the hanging basket and took my seat at the table. “Here, put these on so your mama can’t see us.”

  She took the pair with the swirl pattern on the lenses and left me with the eyeball ones—the springs that kept the large eyes attached to the glasses were stretched so far out the eyes dangled past my chin.

  My knees were practically in my face, and the chair could only hold one and a half of my ass cheeks. “I think you need a bigger table. We’re kinda outgrowing this one. I guess I didn’t imagine how much bigger we’d get in a year.”

  She handed me a decorated teacup and smiled, the glasses that were too big for her face making me laugh. “I got bigger! I free!” She held up four tiny fingers and then used her other hand to hold down the last one, leaving three w
iggling in the air.

  “Nah. That can’t be true. You don’t look a day over two.”

  “Realwy, Age. I free.”

  “Enjoy it, kid. There’s a bunch of money in the Botox business from women who want to have skin like yours. Then again, they can’t smile or move their foreheads. Seems kinda pointless. No one can tell if they’re happy or pissed off.” I tapped my finger on my chin and watched the excitement dance in her eyes. “Actually, now that I think about it, maybe your mama needs some…then I wouldn’t always feel like she’s mad at me.”

  “Mama needs it?” She cocked her head to the side with her plastic cup close to her lips, as if she was in the midst of taking a sip of tea and stopped to ask her question.

  “Yeah, but don’t tell her I said that. Tell her Daddy said it.”

  “Kay.”

  “All right, let’s get down to business. We don’t have long before your next appointment. I wanted to talk to you about Katie.”

  “I wike Eighty.”

  “I know you do. That’s why I came to you first. I know you’ll give me an unbiased opinion. So, I found out today that she’s looking for a job. I mean, I know that with Granny gone and all, she doesn’t really have a lot to do, but it’s not like she did when Granny was alive, either. She basically drove her around anywhere she wanted to go and occasionally cleaned up here and there. So really, her life now isn’t that different from before—except the whole baby in her tummy thing.”

  Corinne watched and listened while sipping her tea.

  “Anyway, I’m worried that she’s looking for another job so she can move out of the house. And I don’t want her to. I like her there, and I don’t think I can live alone again. Not to mention, once the baby comes, I don’t want to be in a different house than my son.”