Wild Pitch (Dominating the Diamond Book 1)

CHAPTER 36

“That game was amazing!” Leila shouts the moment I walk back into the wives and girlfriends box with Ramirez and Dante.

“Good game, bro. See you tomorrow morning for pre-game breakfast, Ramirez?” Dante pats her on the back when she nods confirmation, swats me on the ass with a grin, and darts off to sweep his youngest up into his arms.

“Oh yeah? You’re getting breakfast invites without me now?” I poke her shoulder, but the truth is, I’m happy for her. Dante’s been cool with her since the All-Star Game, while I was still trying to not be weird, but I’m glad to see her building real friendships on the team.

“You don’t know who I know,” she says, sucking her teeth and swatting my hand away.

“You did so good, Tito.” Leila reaches us first, but my mom and Ramirez’s moms aren’t far behind. “You should play first more often.”

“Who told you to say that? Oliver or your mother?” I ask, reminding myself that I’m not allowed to glare at my niece.

“Nobody had to tell me to say anything, you big baby. But those double-plays to keep the game a shutout? You were badass!”

“Language!” my mom says, but there’s not the same bite she would have had for Vanessa or me. Leila gets the perks of being the first and only grandchild, and she knows it.

“Your team is going to make it to the play-offs; I can feel it,” Leila says after a sheepish apology to her lola. She toys with the necklace her partner gave her last Christmas, and I know she’s about to say something a little out there. “Gray taught me some candle magic, and things are very promising for your team.”

I smile and kiss her forehead. Gray is always energetic, with new interests and passions every week that they can talk about for hours on end, with a voice that carries and a laugh that’s even louder, and they’re fantastic. And they’re good to Leila. And I don’t need to know what candle magic is to know how well-intentioned the endeavor was for the both of them.

“Thanks, favorite niece.”

“Is that nice enough for you?” At first I think Leila is teasing, but the look on her face is so earnest that I’m not sure what she’s on about until she looks pointedly at the woman standing beside me. “You and your moms should come over for dinner. We always make too much food when we come visit Tito Mattie anyway.”

Ramirez freezes and looks to me. As if I know how to handle this. I can’t rescind my niece’s invitation, especially not in front of my mom. Oliver and Nessa are out for the night, taking advantage of being in LA and having my mom and me around to watch Leila, so at least we won’t have to deal with my ex situation or explain to Ramirez why he’s still around so much. My niece isn’t exaggerating about how they always insist on cooking way too much when they visit. Or when I visit them. My mom is half-convinced I don’t know how to feed myself when she isn’t around, as if she didn’t teach me from a young age how to hold my own in the kitchen.

I’d take nearly any excuse to have Ramirez at my house again. I just wasn’t planning the next time she came over to be with both of our families. It’s kind of a big step for a first date, if that’s what we’re calling this. A step I haven’t made with anyone in over three years.

“We wouldn’t want to put you out,” Mrs. Ramirez says. The parent that Ramirez calls Mom is taller than her wife. A first-generation Colombian-Lebanese woman, Fernanda is lighter-skinned with freckles, dark-brown curls, and hazel eyes. Her limbs are long and lean, and she moves with the combined grace and power of an athlete.

“Leila’s right,” my mom says. “It would be nice to have company at Mattie’s place. He doesn’t invite people over enough; I keep telling him he needs someone to help him make the place homier.”

I try not to let my eyes go wide. I try even harder not to look at Ramirez, but I need to know her reaction.

“It is a bit–sparse,” Ramirez says. Her voice is smooth and warm, and she’s blushing but calm when I spare a glance her direction. Without looking away from my mom, she smiles, too, and somehow, I know it’s meant for me.

“That’s right. You were there the other day.” My mother plays coy, but she’s a terrible actress. This suddenly seems a lot less like Leila’s idea for the sake of getting to know her new favorite ballplayer, and a lot more like some sort of dating entrapment situation the two of them cooked up.

“?Aww, mija! I didn’t realize you were making such good friends with your new teammates already,” says her mama.

A couple inches shorter than Ramirez, her mama, Ruby, is a Chicana with the same medium-brown skin and eyes the color of midnight. She wears her straight black hair in a thick braid down to her soft waist. Her build is heavier-set than her wife, and she is clearly still an athlete. Her arms are large and softening with age, but her shoulders are defined when she raises one arm to wrap around her daughter, and her bicep flexes when she tucks a stray hair behind her ear.

Ramirez blushes something fierce, and her mom gives her a knowing look.

“If your moms want to take advantage of their trip and go out on the town with you, we’ll understand,” I say. “But if you don’t have plans, we’d all love to have you over.”

Having three moms in my kitchen is a sight to behold. They immediately shoo the three of us out of their way so they can pick through my pantry, even though my mom is the one who picked out all of the staples to restock my home when I took her to the Asian market two days ago. Leila and Ramirez take seats at the small table in my dining nook, and I make it past my mother’s berating to grab drinks out of the fridge.

It doesn’t take long for our mothers to make small distinct piles on the counter–clearly having agreed on some sort of menu. In no time at all, the sounds of chopping and hot oil form a calming background to the excited conversation between my niece and my–teammate? Friend? Girlfriend?

Girlfriend. She isn’t, at least not until we can have a serious conversation. But it’s so easy to think the word. So easy to fall into feelings that a part of me genuinely thought had died with my relationship with Oliver.

The smell of garlic and onions is as comforting as it is pervasive. My mom sets a dish of dumpling wrappers and a bowl of ground pork and vegetable filling on the table. After telling us to go wash up, she goes back to the main kitchen to bond with the Ramirez moms while cooking some sort of caldo and a few side dishes by the smell of things.

We fight playfully for space at my sink, and for the first time, I actually miss the huge, open kitchen at my old place. Ramirez splashes water in my face while my niece’s back is turned, and I follow them back to the table trying not to grin like a fool.

Leila launches into more questions and stories, and the way Ramirez laughs so easily makes my heart ache. My niece tries to teach her how to make the lumpia, but I take advantage of the opportunity to lean over her, to put my arms around her, to touch her hands and help her roll the fragile wrapper.

“You should come to my debut,” Leila says out of left field as I stand to take the platter of lumpia to the counter to start frying. “It’s like a sweet sixteen or a quincea?era, but Filipino.”

“I–” Ramirez starts to turn toward me but shakes her head and answers for herself. “That sounds like fun. Text me the date and details, so I don’t forget, and I’ll see if I can make it.”

“Really? My friends are going to be so freaking jealous.” Leila jumps up and runs around the small table to give Ramirez an awkward hug, both of them holding their hands out to the side so they don’t get pork mixture all over the place.

“You’d better thank your niece later,” my mom whispers. She takes the platter, sets it beside the stove, and follows me to the sink. She stands on her toes to kiss my cheek, and we watch Ramirez and Leila’s reflections in the window while we wash our hands together. “Here, come help me.”

“You’re cute together,” the taller Mrs. Ramirez says. She keeps stirring the large pot of caldo while my mom holds me captive, filling up a small bowl with chicken broth and a hunk of potato.

“Oh. Mrs. Ramirez–”

“Please, call me Fernanda,” she insists. She nods her head in her daughter’s direction, where Ramirez and Leila finish drying their hands and sit back down at the table with fresh guava juice, chatting as if they’re old friends. “You’re good for her.”

“I’m not,” I say before realizing how that sounds. “I mean. She doesn’t need me. She’s perfect all on her own.”

“Oh, sweet boy. I know that her success is her own. But she’s always needed a nudge to push her out of her shell,” Fernanda says.

“Especially after the Scorpions,” her wife chimes in. “If I had known what that team would do to her, I would have rather seen her never get pulled up to the league at all–”

“Ruby. It’s not our story to tell.” Fernanda cups her wife’s cheek and returns her attention to the pot before her.

“How could it be, when she still won’t even tell it to us?” Ruby wrings her hands and takes a deep breath.

“Here, Mattie. Take this to the girls to taste. All three of you.” My mom puts the small white bowl and matching spoon in my hand and pushes me out of her kitchen once more.

It’s not odd that she only gave me one bowl and one spoon, but it does tell me that she’s already accepted Ramirez. Part of me worries over that fact as I take my seat at the table and slide the bowl to my niece. Once my family accepts someone as one of us, they’re one of us for life, short of doing something actually heinous. Oliver and I broke up three years ago, and now he’s more entrenched in our family than ever.

Usually that thought would frustrate me at best and leave me wallowing in my own self-enforced loneliness at worst. Watching Ramirez promptly burn her mouth with a spoonful of broth while Leila laughs and slides her glass of juice closer, I can only be grateful for my family’s fierce loyalty.

Ramirez doesn’t slide the bowl over to me. She raises one finger and curls it, raising her eyebrows expectantly until I’m close enough for her to raise the spoon to my lips. I’m about to burn my mouth on this soup, and I don’t even care. My eyes are on her, and I know that I am giving Leila and my mother the wrong impression of what’s going on between us, but I don’t care about that either.

Because I want this to be the right impression.

We insist the caldo is perfect as it is until my mom calls Leila over to set the table.

“I hope it’s okay. Agreeing to go to Leila’s debut,” Ramirez says during our brief moment of semi-privacy. “If it’s a big deal, I can be busy that day–”

“No. I’m glad you said yes. My family is probably going to make it weird, to be perfectly honest, but I’m still glad you said yes. For Leila’s sake. And for mine.”

“How are they going to make it weird?”

“They’ve been pressuring me about finding a date for months.”

“Oh, I see.” Ramirez leans in and bumps me with her shoulder. “I thought Leila wanted me to come because I’m apparently some sort of celebrity, but apparently she was taking pity on her uncle. I should have known my head was getting too big when I almost fit into your cap.”

“For the record,” my niece interrupts as she sneaks up on us with a stack of bowls and small plates, “I want you to come no matter what, Sierra. Making sure my tito isn’t a sad hermit is just a bonus.”

“You’re lucky, you’re my favorite niece,” I grumble.

“Tell us more about this debut.” Ruby comes to the table with a serving platter of mango and tomato salad in one hand and a platter of kamote salad in the other.

The sweet potato leaves are perfectly wilted, fragrant with vinegar, garlic, and fish sauce, and the mango salad is crisp and vibrant. Both are staples in my family, bringing back memories of family gatherings, large and small.

“She’s trying to live vicariously since this one–” Fernanda pinches her daughter’s cheek until Ramirez blushes and scrunches up her nose in a fake pout, “refused to have a quincea?era.”

“I just really did not want to draw attention to how few friends I had that weren’t teammates, but thank you for reminding me how incredibly unpopular I was in high school,” Ramirez says, but her tone is light and humorous, not wounded.

“You weren’t unpopular, you were single-minded,” Ruby says. “If you had wanted–but anyhow, we were talking about Leila.”

My mom is the last to join us at the table, but we all wait until she has served herself. I make sure her bowl is full and she’s started nibbling on the mango salad before I load up my plate and check on Ramirez. There’s a small lull in the conversation as we all tuck into the food–the crunch of pork lumpia dipped in sweet chili sauce the only sound until Ramirez takes her first bite of the kamote salad and can’t contain her delight.

We polish off our meal talking about Leila’s debut and complimenting the spread of caldo de pollo and Filipino side dishes. By the time Ramirez and I begin to clear the table, we are all stuffed and satisfied, but I know none of us are getting out of here without breaking into the leftover cassava cake.

The sun is setting as we move our small party outside. Leila wastes no time changing into her swimsuit and hopping into the pool. Ramirez and I settle at the edge of the water, soaking our legs and floating in and out of conversation with our parents and my niece. The stars never really come out in Los Angeles, but the night sky blankets us, and a part of me desperately wishes we were alone.

As if they’ve communicated in some unspoken language, our moms disappear into the house with a towel-clad Leila dripping on my floor in their wake.

“They’re watching us from the kitchen window, aren’t they?” Ramirez asks.

“Does it matter?” I answer her question with a question, and she rolls her eyes. But when I drape one arm around her, she leans into my body. We fit together like we’re meant to mold together, and I tell myself to get a grip before I start thinking of us as two halves of a whole.

“Yes.” She tilts her face toward mine and cups my face in one hand. “If they’re watching, I can still do this–” Her lips are soft but aggressive. Warm and demanding, she pulls me in like a women intent on consuming my very soul, and I couldn’t deny her if I tried. I yield to her kiss. I moan into her as her fingers tug my hair, her nails scratch my scalp, her tongue plunders my mouth. I think I sigh when she pulls away, and I struggle to focus as she continues unfazed, “but I can’t climb into your lap and see how long it takes your pretty dick to get hard for me.”

I cup her face in both hands and pull her in until I can kiss her forehead in my frustration.

“You are going to be the death of me, rookie.”