Wild Pitch (Dominating the Diamond Book 1)

CHAPTER 55

A lifetime passes in a couple of days. I make the flight back to LA lonely but more determined than ever to focus on my game. Sitting on the plane and half-expecting Reyes to show up on the same one, I have a taste of what he meant about his drive to win. With his cautionary tale about what went wrong with Oliver, I stare out the window and know what it means to need the win in order to make what I’ve lost worth it.

Mateo isn’t on my flight. I don’t run into him in the airport; I don’t text him when I make it home safely.

He’s on my mind the entire time.

I hate being back in my apartment. It’s too empty. Too quiet. Small as it is, there’s far too much room for my thoughts. From here on out, every game I play will be the biggest game of my life, so I can’t afford to spend my final night before the first game of the Wild Card Series tossing and turning.

A surprising calm blankets me from the moment I wake up until I step onto the team bus. Mateo sits in his usual seat with his headphones already on, his cap pulled low over his eyes, and his face focused too intently on the window.

“Sit down, rookie, you’re holding up the whole team.”

I swallow my sigh of relief and sink into the seat beside him. He snaps down the tray table and drops a binder in front of me.

“Ready to go over their line-up?” he asks, and I could almost cry from the normalcy of it all. Part of me aches for more, but this has to be enough. At least for now–not that I dare to think too far into the future. My mind belongs in the present, and the present is for baseball and baseball only.

The locker room is bursting with noise, but I sit a while longer in my isolation. It’s almost a reminder of my earliest days on the team, when I still hid out in my locker room, eavesdropping on the rest of the team and thinking that I would always remain an outsider.

“Open up, Ramirez!” Dante pounds on the door. “We won’t pour anything on you, I swear.”

“Yeah!” Castillo’s voice is more muffled, but his next words are almost as clear as the laughter in them. “We’re all out of water anyway.”

There’s more shouting, and I know they aren’t going to stop until I play along. I roll my eyes, zip up my bag, and try to focus on our win instead of the fact that Reyes didn’t visit the mound once or give me a single movie-worthy pep talk.

We win the next game in an absolute blow-out and advance to the three-game Division Series. Being underestimated as we claim the division title is one of the advantages to coming into the post-season seeded dead last. The other team makes the mistake of assuming I’m a one-hit wonder. Their line-up steps up to the plate believing that my no-hitter was some fantastical fluke, a deal with the devil, fueled by petty revenge that they assume I couldn’t replicate for any team but the one whose jersey I used to wear.

And I relish proving them wrong.

The team we face in the League Championship doesn’t make the same mistakes. It takes six games for us to clinch the victory, and for a few ugly innings, it looks like things aren’t going to go our way. No one loses focus when our chips are down, none of us crumbles beneath the pressure of the scoreboard. If returning home and facing the Scorpions hadn’t already shown me, these games prove to me once and for all, that this is what a team looks like.

If I was worried about how my teammates would treat me in light of the Mateo rumors–both the nonexistent trade and our secret relationship–they waste no time relieving me of my fears. No one pries for information; there’s not a single crude joke or insinuation. Even Williams is quiet and oddly polite. I suppose it’s hard to be an insufferable ass when we’re days out from game one of the World Series.

Days out and headed north to Mateo’s hometown, to face the team that attempted a last-minute trade when he was at his most vulnerable. Reyes and I spend the short flight playing mahjong. But when we arrive in San Francisco, he makes no mention of inviting me to visit his family.

From my hotel room, I catch a glimpse of him hurrying across the parking lot to climb into a waiting car. Part of me is irrationally jealous, thinking of his history of one-night-stands and the number of fans who would be ready and willing to pick him up at a moment’s notice. I know how ridiculous I’m being. Not only is it wild to assume that he’s getting into the car of some stranger, fan, or ex, when I know how much visiting his family means to him, it’s also none of my business if he is. I know that I’m the one who called things off.

It doesn’t make it hurt any less.

Before I flop down on my bed in frustration, I see Dante hurry across the parking lot and climb into the same car. I didn’t think I could feel any worse, but realizing I don’t even get invited as a friend anymore definitely made it worse.

My phone buzzing on the nightstand rattles me out of my pity party.

“Mija, how do we get to the hotel? Your mom is lost, and she refuses to ask for directions.”

“Hi mama.” I sigh into the phone, but the sound of my mama’s voice is healing to my aching soul. “Am I on speaker?”

“We’re fine, Sierra. We have the GPS,” my mom says.

“Then why does Mama think you’re lost?” I ask, because this is far from the first time this particular scenario has played out between the three of us. It’s a toss-up whether they’re actually lost, and Mom is being prideful, or whether Mama is overreacting while reminding Mom of all the times they actually were lost.

“Because the GPS was taking us through too many tolls, and I know a shortcut,” Mom says.

I drop my face in my hands and try not to laugh. A second later, I hear the robotic voice with an inexplicable Australian accent because Mama thought it was funny and then neither of them could change it back.

“Redirect us to the normal roads without the tolls!” my mom argues with the navigation.

“Where are you now?” I ask, pulling out my tablet to access maps and the app to track my moms’ phones.

“Oh, wait! There it is!” Mama shouts.

“A pues. I told you I knew what I was doing,” my mom says. “And see? No tolls.”

“We’re in the parking lot, mija,” Mama says, and I can picture her waving off my mom’s I told you so. “Come downstairs, and we’ll go to dinner. You must be starving after all that traveling. They don’t even give you snacks on the plane anymore.”

I stay on the phone as I pull on a hoodie to combat the evening breeze coming off the Pacific.

Not much can keep my mind from drifting to Mateo, but there’s nothing like an evening with my moms to keep the loneliness at bay.