Chapter 29 Olivia
TWENTY-NINE
olivia
Me: Let me know when you land.
Nate: I’m in Charlotte. Found my gate.
Me: Awesome. Get some sleep on the next flight. Your team has been stinking up the place; someone better make something happen.
Nate: Who the hell can sleep on a plane?
Me: The guy who wants to see how I’ll reward a home run…
Nate: Um—not fair. I’m sitting next to a 97-year-old woman and hiding a tent in my gray sweatpants.
Me: I’m rolling around naked with my favorite vibrator, thinking about you.
Me: Gray sweatpants. Fans self.
My last text was definitely uncalled for, but how was I to resist the image of him in gray fucking sweatpants? There was a lot about Nate that was difficult to resist, even though I should.
Nate: Pics or it never happened.
Should I?
Fuck it. I sent him a photo of my torso, legs spread wide, and my favorite vibrator between my legs.
Nate: It’s hot, and all, but I prefer watching your face while you get off.
Me: No chance of that. Maybe text me when you’re in the privacy of your hotel room.
Nate: Privacy, yeah. They pair me up with Austin at every hotel. Not private.
Me: They don’t trust you on your own?
Nate: I guess the last time they left a rookie my age alone, he damaged the hotel and had an orgy.
I laughed. Nate was a lot of things, but he wasn’t an irresponsible douchebag. Other than his issues figuring out how to book flights and pay his bills, Nate was much more mature than men much older than him. It was probably why I lost track of that and let myself go around him.
Me: Austin has a bachelor party the night you get back. And I might be able to arrange a sleepover with Cooper out of the house…
Nate: Does that mean I get to make you scream?
Me: That means I expect it.
Nate: Game on.
Nate: The plane is boarding now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Good night, beautiful.
Me: Goodnight, sweet cheeks.
I let the television play in the background as I finished up the paperwork from earlier that night. While I had to run back to the ball field earlier than planned, the showing had resulted in an accepted offer, which meant I had some tasks to complete the deal.
After leaving the moms at the ball field, I’d been frustrated. No matter what I did, I would never fit into their clique, not that I wanted to after seeing how they treated people. But Cooper was almost old enough to realize that his mother was an outcast.
Jesus. I could only imagine what they would think or say if they knew what was going on between Nate and me.
The part of me that gave zero fucks about their opinion was frustrated that deep down I felt flung back to high school—the days where their opinions would have been the difference between—well, everything.
“Mom?”
“Hey, bud, what are you doing up?”
“Do you think Dad is mad at me?”
“Why do you say that?”
“The weekend when I came back, it was because I wouldn’t eat his girlfriend’s dinner. And he was pretty mad at me.”
God, I seethed inside, but somehow managed to quell my reaction. “We all have bad nights. Things come up; he’s really busy at work.” Yeah, lying for Jason had become second nature.
“Mom,” he said, his frustration clear, “Nate was supposed to be on a plane to California and missed it to go to my game. Dad was two blocks away.”
Why couldn’t I be raising an oblivious kid?
If only Jason could put his son first once in his life—he was now at the age where he wouldn’t buy into the usual excuses anymore.
I’m sure the stories he shared with his newest girlfriend painted him as the saint in the situation.
In the meantime, a man who had been a stranger up until this summer was going to all of his son’s baseball games in his place.
And yeah, Coop noticed that one of them was willing to sacrifice while the other wasn’t.
But Nate wasn’t just going to his games and sitting on his phone, keeping himself entertained and passing the time anyway except for paying attention.
He sacrificed making his flight to stay until the end of the game—because he couldn’t miss a damn moment.
I bet if I asked, he could give me a play-by-play of what Cooper did on the field.
“I’m sorry, Coop. Your father loves you; he doesn’t always know how to show it.” I struggled to say the right thing in these situations, but it always meant that I was making excuses for Jason. Sometimes I worried that my excuses would only lead to Cooper’s increased disappointment.
Cooper shut down, clearly done with the conversation, so I changed the subject, and we talked over the weekend schedule. Jason’s last-minute change to the schedule created complications with my work, but thankfully, Cooper was mature enough to spend some time alone at home.