CHAPTER 50
Even with anger and hurt warring on her face, Sierra takes my breath away. She stands beside the narrow end table, nervously toying with a velvet pumpkin. Her long hair is wrapped in a towel, and her body is swathed in a fluffy, gray robe, but she is still the most beautiful person I can imagine laying my eyes on.
“What are you doing here?” The ice in her voice snaps me back to the reality that brought me here. It makes me notice the dark circles under her eyes and the hint of puffiness that makes me wonder if she’s been crying. “Don’t you have a World Series to go win?”
I take a deep breath. She knows how I hate the accusation that baseball is all that matters to me. Taking that meeting was the most foolish thing I’ve done in years, but I wonder if she knows how much it hurts that she still thinks any of this was about a Series ring being more important than her.
“Yeah, I do actually. The same one we’re going to win together.”
Her face flickers through a series of emotions, and there’s a part of me that almost wants to smile. Everything she feels always shows so clearly in her big brown eyes and the set of her full lips. It would be adorable if I weren’t watching with my stomach in knots as her face falls, then knits in confusion, then restores her mask of distanced anger.
“How’s your mom?” she asks. Her voice is softer than before, pitched low with genuine concern, but the distance she’s keeping between us couldn’t be more obvious if she were shouting the question from another room.
“She’s doing well. It’ll make her smile to know you asked. She’s staying with Vanessa and Oliver until her hip heals.” I rake my fingers through my hair and fidget with the ballcap in my lap, trying to dispel some nervous energy. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“There’s nothing to talk about. Not anymore,” she says. “If you wanted to tell me before you could have. I don’t need you to come try to do damage control now that your decision is made.”
“I’m not leaving the team, rookie,” I say, when what I really mean is, I could never leave you.
“Aw, did the trade fall through? Too bad.” She crosses her arms, but I dare to see the flicker of relief in her eyes. “You’re wasting your time here. You have the rest of the team to win back over after trying to leave us all behind for a better shot at–”
“I was never trying to get traded.” I take a deep breath and rise from the sofa to try to keep my voice from rising. “And it was never about the ring–”
“Then what was it about?” she interrupts me right back, not bothering to keep her voice measured anymore.
“My mom.” I step toward her and hesitate. “I accepted the meeting because of my mom. Because she went in for hip surgery, and I couldn’t even get to the hospital in time to see her before she went under anesthesia. Because she fell at home alone, getting out of the tub instead of a proper walk-in shower, and I don’t know what would have happened if her neighbor hadn’t been home to hear her scream. I should have been there for her, and I sat for hours in that hospital waiting room feeling like an awful son, and I know you told me not to feel guilty, but I couldn’t turn it off.”
Her face loses its last traces of anger, but her arms are still crossed defensively. Ignoring the fact that her moms are still in the room, I close the distance between us. The last two steps between us feel like a giant leap that will make or break us as I stop and hold out my hands. When she doesn’t accept me–but doesn’t shut me down either–I keep my hands between us and bow my head.
“It was a moment of weakness, and it was only a meeting. Please–”
“Do you really feel like you need to move to be closer to your mom?” she asks, and concern has replaced the anger in her voice and expression, even if the hurt is still there.
“It’s complicated,” I say. “But the way I feel about you isn’t.” I lift one hand a little closer, begging her with my eyes to accept the gesture. “Please, Sierra.”
She takes my hand, but after a quick squeeze she pulls away. I’m on the verge of overthinking when she gestures to her robe.
“Let me change.”
She hasn’t forgiven me yet, but I allow myself to be hopeful. Smoothing things over with the rest of the team was easier. I was there waiting in the locker room when they came back from Texas without her. I explained away the rumors, lucky that Skip and Jamie had my back to confirm that there was never a trade deal in the works and that my no-trade agreement is as ironclad as ever.
I’m not the first player to ever have a family emergency, and I’m not the only one to ever feel like all my time traveling for baseball has made me a bad son, a bad husband, or a bad father. At least I’m lucky enough to have my mother in the same state, only a quick flight up the coast. My teammates were quick to empathize. I have been on this team over a decade, and my relationships with each of them have earned their respect and, more importantly, their trust. Even Williams begrudgingly accepted my return and had the decency to wish my mother well.
Sierra is the only one left to make things right with, and I have to do it here and now, by myself. I can’t rely on Dante to help smooth things over. We can’t go back to the team with ice between us.
She reappears in loose joggers and a long-sleeved baseball tee. Her hair is still damp, but she’s pulled it back into her usual ponytail, complete with a black ribbon to match her outfit. She has a corduroy bag over one shoulder, and I’ve been around women long enough not to wonder why she needs such a large bag to go for a drive with me.
Sierra kisses her moms goodbye. To my surprise, both of her parents summon me over and pull me into tight hugs before they set us free.
“You’re driving a truck?” Her voice rises in disbelief as she glances from the red pick-up truck to me.
“It’s all they had available on short notice.”
I hold her door open while she mutters some joke and makes herself laugh. We drive out in near silence, and for the first time in a long time, the quiet is uncomfortable. She messes with the radio until she finds a local station that satisfies her. With the cool breeze rolling in, she leans back in her chair with one arm out the open window.
“You really are from Texas, aren’t you?” I tease when she starts quietly singing along with the country songs.
“Mhm,” she answers noncommittally, without taking her eyes off the landscape flashing by. “Where are we going, Reyes?”
“We’re almost there.”
We pull up to the most isolated parking I could find at the city lake in time to catch the sun setting over the water. Sierra leans against the tailgate as I spread out a thick sleeping bag in the grass a short distance away. I complete the picnic spread with a couple of blankets and a full wicker basket.
“You wanted to talk, viejito. Can we please just talk?”
I stop fussing with the food and raise my arm, wordlessly begging her to come sit with me. “Do you remember our first game together?” I ask, trying not to sound too relieved when she sits beside me and lets me wrap my arm around her shoulders.
“Yeah. I thought you were a dick.”
It feels good to laugh. It feels even better when she leans into me.
“I thought you were beautiful. And dangerous,” I say. “I hated it.”
“Gee, thanks,” she says with a snort and rolling eyes.
“I didn’t think, then, that I could fall for anyone the way I’ve fallen for you now. You were this incredible temptation that I was afraid to make bad decisions with. The harsh truth is, if I’d met you five years ago, I can’t promise that I wouldn’t have done exactly what you think I’ve done; I can’t tell you that I wouldn’t have considered a trade for selfish reasons or put baseball ahead of you. But I can promise you, right here, watching the sun set over the water just like we did that very first night when I knew you were going to be trouble, that baseball is still my life, but it doesn’t matter without you.”
“That’s a lot of pressure to put on a girl on an empty stomach,” she says. Her laughter is forced, and she avoids looking at me, but tonight is all about accepting each win, no matter how small.
I open the basket and spread bread, fruit, cheese, deli salads, and a couple of beers out between us. We eat and watch the sky grow darker as the last rays of sunlight dance like fire on the crests of small waves. She asks more about my mom, my family, and Leila’s debut, but whenever the conversation veers toward us, or her, or something more serious, she steers us back to the superficial stuff.
She asks if I’ve spoken to Dante yet, and I give her the rundown of the team’s reaction, hopeful that it will help her believe that I’m not going anywhere. When she asks if I miss the Bay Area, I know that it’s a test.
“Yeah, sometimes,” I answer. “But I’ve been in LA so long, it’s home. I’ve just never been able to convince my mom to move down here. She wouldn’t even move out of the little duplex we grew up in when I wanted to buy her a place after I got signed.” I lean back on my forearms and look up at the sky. “That’s part of the problem. Do you know how many stairs are in that place? I understand her nostalgia and her need for independence, but I would feel so much better if I could only convince her to move.”
“She’s staying with your sister now, isn’t she?”
“Nessa does the best she can, but her work hours are terrible and keep getting worse. Oliver is doing most of the caregiving right now. Five months ago, I would have hated that, but even if I’d moved home, I’d have to give up baseball if I wanted to be her primary support. We travel too much, no matter the team. Now that I’m done being mad at Oliver, I’m grateful he can offer my mom what I can’t at the moment. Especially since Leila’s being recruited for UCLA baseball. It would be nice to have more family nearby, even if she’ll be too busy to hang out with her uncle.”
“She is? Wait–UCLA baseball?”
I smile up at the woman who’s nervously tapping her short nails on the neck of the beer bottle.
“Yep. You aren’t the first to break barriers in the sport, and a lot of athletes had to lay the groundwork for you to be where you are today, but you are helping propel change, rookie. You’re proving to anyone who had doubts that gender doesn’t determine who can win on the diamond, much less who belongs there. There are always going to be people who disagree, but you don’t show up for them.”
“Easy for you to say. Your fans didn’t turn on you when they thought you were leaving as much as they turned on me over a single picture and speculation that I’d broken up the team.”
“Which is bullshit. But it hasn’t always been this way for me, and it won’t always be like this for you. Do you think people didn’t talk just as much shit about what it meant to have a bi man in the locker rooms? All my talent didn’t stop the harassment when I dared to make my serious relationship with a man public. There will always be people who think I don’t belong either. Plenty of them crawled out of the woodwork even now to blame me and my ‘cock-sucking lifestyle’ for our alleged split.”
She turns to me with wide eyes. Her mouth opens, and I can’t blame her when she bites her lip, unable to find what to say. Her clear surprise confirms my suspicion that she’s blocked all social media for the last twenty-four hours.
I sit back up and reach for her hand. “I’m not trying to downplay your experience or play oppression Olympics. I just want you to know that you’re making a difference even when you feel like you’re taking ten steps back. That’s what infuriates them the most.” I give her a few minutes to mull over my words. She traces patterns into the back of my hand. The song of emerging nightlife blends with the dull, incessant roar of city traffic. “You haven’t been checking social media, have you?”
“Duh, no,” she says. “Do I look like a masochist?”
We both laugh, and I catch the way her gaze flicks down when I lick my lips.
“Definitely not, mami,” I say. “I want you to watch this. It’s why I didn’t get here sooner.”