Wild Pitch (Dominating the Diamond Book 1)

CHAPTER 47

Another inning flies by, and the dug-out is unnervingly quiet. Everyone is afraid to jinx what’s happening on the diamond with two little words because few people are more superstitious than a predominately Latine baseball team. I am simultaneously the center of attention and ostracized by every single person in a gray and red uniform. I walk in to rest at the end of the sixth inning. Skip and Dante tap my baseball cap in recognition, but everyone averts their eyes when I walk by. When I take my usual seat on the bench, missing the catcher who should be sitting next to me instead of halfway across the country, teammates on either side slide away from me in a unison that would be comical if the stakes weren’t already so high.

Three syllables, temporarily scrubbed from the collective memory of my team and our fans alike, make me think of another terrifying three-syllable phrase.

I tell myself it’s too soon. I tell myself to get my head in the game where it belongs. My relationship with Mateo is the last thing I expected to fall into my lap, but there could not be a worse time to be worrying about him, or thinking about falling asleep on a video call with him, or reliving what happened before.

The scoreboard only tells a portion of the story that no one wants to speak out loud. The Scorpions enter the seventh inning with a whopping goose egg on the board, and I am filled with more than pride and hopes of a wild card game in the play-offs. I am fueled by spite and the desire to show my team exactly what they could have had. Six innings in as the starting pitcher, and I am proving to everyone that I am a pitcher in my own right, no matter who is behind the plate.

We don’t score in the top of the seventh, but we still have a comfortable lead as the stands come alive for the seventh inning stretch. I shouldn’t check my phone; I shouldn’t even have it in the dug-out. If Team Captain Reyes were here, he’d have my head for checking it in the middle of the game. If Mateo were here, I wouldn’t need to have my phone with me at all.

Reyes:

You won’t see this until after the game, but I’m proud of you

Reyes:

And I miss you too

I sneak a look at the picture of his family crowded around the television in a small but meticulously kept living room, smiling and all dressed in red. Knowing I can’t sit and stare at him unless I’m trying to get caught, I scroll away.

And make the mistake of checking social media. It’s impossible to miss the way the name Mateo Reyes is trending. For a split-second, I’m sure it’s about me. Positive that someone must have seen us looking far too cozy on and off the elevator. Certain that someone heard us screaming each other’s names in the hotel.

That should be reason enough for me to shut down the app and stow my phone. I should absolutely not dive deeper, searching for the compromised pictures of us that I’m convinced must exist.

The picture I find instead is so much worse.