Chapter 19
NINETEEN
COLBY
Jayden and I leave my room at different times. I slip out early, arriving at the field before the rest of the coaching staff. Coach Shuster seems impressed, giving me a thumbs up when he walks in and catches me reviewing Adriel’s at-bats.
“Glad to see you on it,” he says. I salute him and drop my focus back to the iPad, replaying his last turn at the plate. Coach Shuster moves on to managing his pitching rotation for the next two games.
He’s right. I am on it. On getting Adriel out of here. On removing the thousand-pound weight that came along with him. The one smothering both Jayden and me.
I see plenty for Adriel to work on. Ways he can get more out of his swing and get the attention he craves from the right people.
The trick is, will he listen to me?
He likes to pretend he’s my fan. He’s always treated me like his little sister. But he still sees me as lesser than him, his brother, and his dad when it comes to knowledge about this game. I see it in his expression, and the breathy laugh he let out when Coach introduced me to him formally.
“Pfft, yeah, I know Colby. She’s all right,” he said.
Coach thought he meant that in a good way, that I’m all right in the cool way that word can be construed. But no. He meant it as mediocre. I’m the little softball player whose dad used to ride his tail during practice. Inferior thanks to my sex, and definitely not qualified to tell him what to do.
Well.
Here goes nothing.
I carry the iPad out to the field, where the Little Rock field crew is setting up the equipment for BP. I drag one of the folding chairs from our dugout toward the rolling backstop and prop my feet on the crossbar, doing my best to appear relaxed and ready.
“Coach.” Jake nods at me as he drops two buckets by the portable mound.
Coach Bastion wanders toward the screen, circling his arm in some sort of half-assed stretch routine. He’s in his late fifties, and he’s thrown a lot of BP over the years, so he probably doesn’t have a lot of cartilage left to tear.
He eyes me as he stretches his arm across his chest, a move our training staff has insisted the guys stop doing because it puts strain on the wrong set of muscles.
I wonder if he knows that and is just doing it to be stubborn, or if nobody’s told him yet.
Either way, I hope his arm fucking hurts today.
“Jake, give me a few bunts,” he says, grabbing a ball and working it in his hands.
Jake steps in to give him a target, and Coach Bastion throws about a dozen pitches, slowly narrowing in on the strike zone.
“All right. Swing away,” he says, finally feeling ready, I guess.
Jake nods, then glances at me.
“Remember what we talked about,” I tell him. He adjusts his back foot a few inches, and Coach Bastion rolls his neck, clearly annoyed that I’m giving input. That I exist.
Jake takes a hack at the first pitch and sends it to the fence, and while I’d love to shout something out loud, I take pleasure in my tight-lipped smirk as I drop my gaze to the iPad so I can record Jake’s progress.
Adriel comes out of the clubhouse alongside his brother, and I will myself not to look up and acknowledge either of them until they are both standing behind me doing their stretching routine.
“I hear you’re going to make me a hitter again, huh?” Adriel says. There’s a noticeable snarkiness to his tone.
“No, you’re going to make yourself a better hitter,” I respond, again avoiding meeting his eyes. I clip the small camera that feeds into my iPad to the screen, then sit back and wait for the data points.
Coach Bastion chuckles from the mound. I don’t look at him, either.
He and I haven’t really crossed paths since I helped him in after his bender.
And while I don’t love that he made a verbal note of where I was, tacking on his little suspicious commentary, I also know he doesn’t want me sharing his sad state with our boss.
We’re at a stalemate for now, he and I. But Adriel could tip those scales.
Adriel steps into the batter’s box, and goes about his usual routine.
First, two rotations of the bat before reaching it across the plate to ensure he’s covering everything.
Then he pauses, holding it there before slowly bringing it to his shoulder.
He doesn’t look at the pitcher—aka Couch Bastion for now—until he tilts his bat steeply over his shoulder, so it’s almost pointed at the ground as if he’s slung a sack of potatoes over his back.
Coach Bastion throws him a meatball down the middle of the plate, and Adriel drills it right back at the L screen. Coach Bastion whistles, and Adriel eyes me, smirking. Rather prideful. I don’t flinch.
The same routine goes on for a dozen pitches, and Adriel puts a hard bat on each one, nailing the ball around the field. When he’s done, I pull up the stats as Adriel saunters around the backstop, stripping open the Velcro from his batting gloves.
“Come here for a second,” I say, waving a hand but not looking up.
Adriel takes his time, instead bantering with one of the other infielders, along with our strength and conditioning coach.
My gaze briefly slides to Jayden, and his pursed lips reflect a certain amount of apology on his brother’s behalf.
I flit my gaze back to Adriel and snap my fingers. I’ve always been a loud snapper.
“Pfft, I’m coming,” Adriel says, a half-hearted laugh bubbling out of his mouth as he drags his feet over to me.
“I’m sorry, is this an inconvenience?” I say, remaining in my seat to show I’m unaffected.
It’s a facade, because inside, my pulse is raging, and I’m waiting for the group of men surrounding me to pepper me with jokes, to mock my reply to him.
Thankfully, nobody does, and Adriel is forced to relent and let down his guard.
“What’s up, Coach?” he snaps. His lip ticks up, a bit of a sneer. How my father ever put up with him and his attitude, I’ll never know.
“You always like this?” I say.
A burst of air leaves his nostrils, and he says, “Fine, what?”
I make the same sound, shaking my head before balancing my iPad on my knees. Adriel steps in close, crouching with a hand on the back of my chair.
“Here’s the hit track for that round.” I filter the data and show him how only one of his swings was on target for a base hit. The others were likely line outs, or deep line drives for a fly out to left field. He moves his jaw and bunches his lips.
“So, like . . . how does this thing know?” He gestures toward the camera, then taps the iPad screen.
“Well, first . . . physics. It reads the launch angle, and I’ve programmed it with the highest percentage of fielding locations and the error percentages of the players you’ll face this weekend. So, it knows. I know.”
He flits his eyes to me, his mouth a hard line, and after a beat, his shoulder twitches in a faint shrug.
“So what?”
I laugh softly, then stand. He straightens up tall next to me. I nod to my side, urging him to step away with me. He’s always had an ego. And he’s always been the big brother. But when I was a kid, he was pretty good to me.
“You know this whole thing is a business, right?” I keep my voice low, my tone serious.
He shrugs, but utters a less abrupt, “Yeah.”
“Well, like it or not, you are a product that this organization is investing in. And if the live data doesn’t translate into them getting their money’s worth—aka runs—they are going to cut their losses.
And the other teams you’re courting will lower their bids to pick you up.
Because I gotta tell ya, Adriel. When team owners are deciding about spending millions, they are far less likely to shell out based on potential than hard facts.
So, maybe consider taking a closer look at my little physics project here and then be open to a few adjustments. ”
Adriel sways in his stance, his hands pushed in the back pockets of his baseball pants as he chews at the piece of gum he’s been annihilating since he stepped out on the field. Eventually, he gives me a tiny nod.
“Like what? Adjustments, I mean.”
My chest opens up. I’ve been holding in a lot of air, but I do that when I’m bracing for a fight. And I have had plenty to get where I am. No doubt there are a lot to come too. I’ll take this one small win.
I hold the iPad in my palm and pull up video from his last few at-bats in Texas. I pause the screen when he lets his bat dip over his shoulder, and tap on it.
“Yeah. It’s just a mental thing I started doing,” he says.
I figured.
I pull up a video from last season, when he wasn’t letting the bat fall so far over his shoulder, when he was hitting over three hundred. I freeze the frame and flip back and forth between the two, then pop my gaze up to his.
“It’s a millisecond in time, and that millisecond, when you’re facing a guy throwing ninety-eight, ninety-nine . . . over a hundred? It’s ages.”
I can tell by the way his eyelids flutter as he nods that my words are sinking in.
“Okay, yeah. I hear ya,” he says.
“Just pay attention to it. That one small thing. And see if we can get that millisecond back.”
His eyes meet mine, and he spits his gum off to the side before grinning.
“You got it, Coach.” He spins on his heels and heads back to the cage to take another round, and I hunt down his fucking piece of gum so it doesn’t get stuck on the bottom of someone’s turf shoe. I head to the dugout to toss it in the trash, then walk to the water cooler to wash my hands.
“How’d that go?” Jayden says.
I tense at the sound of his voice so nearby. My mind immediately races to worry. Everyone’s watching.
I shrug.
“We’ll see how this round goes. But I think . . . good.” I turn and find Jayden isn’t alone. He’s standing with Jake, which somehow gives me relief. It feels dangerous to be alone with him.
I follow them back to the field, and the three of us lean against the backstop to watch Adriel do his best. His first swing is the same, and I clear my throat when it ricochets off the third base line screen. He pivots to give me a sideways glance and smirks.
“Yeah, I got it,” he says.
He adjusts his hat and steps back for a moment, retightening the Velcro on his gloves before moving in for another swing.
This time, Adriel skips the part in his routine where he lets the bat sink down on his shoulder.
In fact, he keeps it from touching his shoulder completely.
And when he meets the ball out in front of the plate, he sends it over the left-field wall and onto what looks to be a very lovely walking path.
“Hope nobody’s taking a walk right now,” Jake remarks.
I chuckle, and Jayden leans into me for a second.
“Nice job, Coach,” he says, stepping to the side to take a few warm-up swings for his round.
His gaze lingers on me, and for a moment, I revel in the attention.
But I quickly remember where I am. Who we are.
And when I turn back to face Coach Bastion, I can’t help but feel a different type of heat coming from his stare.