Chapter 7 #2
Olson get was when the Tide had made the playoffs. Admittedly, they’d all gotten a bit misty-eyed that night.
“That’s cool,” Emmy said for lack of a better response. She simply could not believe she was discussing love lives with Gabe
Olson. She stabbed another bite. “Do you want it to be official?”
“That’s rather personal.”
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
“Fair,” he said, then filled the air with a contemplative pause. “I don’t want to say, because I don’t want to jinx anything.”
Emmy normally would have rolled her eyes because the seriousness of his tone matched with a silly superstition like jinxing
was worthy of an eye roll. But. She admittedly felt the same way about Axe Murderer, so she gave him a pass.
“I get that.”
They ate in silence again, and when Emmy took a swig of her coffee, she realized he had nothing to wash down his breakfast
with.
“Do you want some coffee? Juice?”
“I’ll take some coffee, sure.”
Emmy shifted to slide off her stool and immediately winced.
He popped up when she made a pained sound. “I’ll get it. Sit tight.”
She was in no position to protest, so she lowered herself back to sitting. “Thanks. Mugs are in that cabinet.” She pointed
and watched him circle the island into her kitchen. His shirt was tight enough she could see the muscles in his back. She
gobbled another bite of chilaquiles for distraction.
“You know, if it’s any consolation, my shoulder is wrecked from last night,” he said as he chose a pod from her K-Cup selection.
“You’re not the only one who got hurt.”
She tilted her head in question. “From pitching?” As soon as she said it, the image of him lunging on the mound hit her in
a place that would have made her sit up and cross her legs if not for her injury.
“Yes.” Gabe moved his shoulder in a circular motion and squeezed it with his other hand.
“You threw, like, five pitches.”
“Yeah, well...” He trailed off with a sad shrug. “That’s what happens when you have a career-ending injury and then get
drunk and go act like it never happened to try to impress your co-workers.”
Emmy slowed her chewing and looked at him in surprised interest. “Wait, what?”
His coffee finished brewing with a gurgle, and he turned around to gather it. “I played ball in college, right?” He turned
back to face her from the other side of the island. He propped himself on his hands in a way that popped out the muscles in
his arms.
“Yeah...?” she said with an upward inflection, curious to know where he was going and needing a distraction from the sight
of his arms. His personal life was as mysterious as hers.
“Well, I was also a cocky piece of shit in college who thought he was invincible. I got in a car accident and broke my collarbone.” He reached for his shirt’s collar and pulled it aside, revealing the contoured curves of his muscular shoulder and part of his chest. Emmy almost gasped at the visible scar cutting a three-inch line over his skin like a little railroad track.
“Changed everything,” he said with a single shake of his head.
Emmy reeled. Several pieces shoved their way into place. “Is that why you—?”
“Never went pro? Yeah. Well, assuming I could have made it, but the chances were looking good. Kind of let down the whole
family. It was my parents’ dream to see me play professionally.” His face bent into a sad shape Emmy could tell was well worn.
“Wow, Gabe. I’m sorry.”
His sadness shifted into something softer and warm.
“What?” she asked at the curious new look on his face.
“I don’t think you’ve ever called me by my first name before.”
A heat wave washed over her. She hadn’t even realized she’d done it, and it brought back the memory of how she’d liked the
sound of her first name coming from his lips last night, which then, of course, made her think about his lips. She quickly
deflected with a scoff. “That’s because you all have trained me to only use last names at work. I bet half the people in the
organization don’t even know my first name.”
This pulled a tiny laugh from him that Emmy hated to admit she liked the sound of too. “That’s probably true. I guess it’s
just part of the culture.”
“Boys Town,” she muttered into her coffee mug before she took a sip.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. There’s milk in the fridge if you want it for your coffee, but fair warning: it’s oat milk.”
He scrunched his face into a sour pinch. “I’ll pass. I take it black anyway.”
“Black like your soul.”
He threw his hands to his heart and dramatically pouted. “You wound me, Jameson.”
She sputtered a dramatic sound, half grinning despite herself, and spun on her stool to lift her leg. With both hands, she pointed at the inkblot on her thigh. “You literally wound me, Olson.”
Gabe blushed in shame, and Emmy couldn’t help noticing his eyes trace the outline of her thigh from her hip to her knee. He
bit his lip, and she dropped her leg.
“Sorry. Bad joke,” he said. “Anyway, my arm is out of commission for a while.”
“Well, good thing there isn’t a pitching contest involved in getting promoted at work.”
He smirked at her, but it was half-hearted. Beneath the customary sass, she could see the vulnerability she’d glimpsed before.
For some inexplicable reason it compelled her to expose some of her own vulnerability.
“My brother played baseball,” she said quietly.
Gabe turned to her with an intrigued look. “I also did not know you have a brother.”
“Had,” Emmy said on a near whisper.
“What’s that?”
She took a breath and forced herself to walk through the door she’d opened. “I said had . I had a brother. He died when I was a teenager.”
His face fell into a look of sincere sympathy. The kind that stabbed right at her wounded heart, and one of the main reasons
she didn’t talk about Josh much. “I’m so sorry, Emmy.”
“Thanks. My love of the game comes from him. He was older, and I grew up watching him play. He and my dad were always playing
catch in the backyard, and I used to make them let me join.” She softly smiled at the memory even though it had grown faded
and blurred.
If she looked hard enough, she could see Josh’s smile, feel his big hand mussing her hair, smell the leather of his old glove he gave her.
But if she looked too hard, she saw too much, and her heart circled back around to hurting.
His injury, his recovery, the struggle she didn’t understand—the struggle none of them understood, honestly—until it was too late.
“What position did he play?” Gabe asked, and she appreciated the question much more than the one she usually got: How did he die?
“Shortstop. He was one of those ballerina-on-the-field types.”
“Ah, yes. I know those. The ones who can catch anything and look good doing it.”
A warm smile lifted Emmy’s face. “Yep, that was Josh!”
Gabe did a double take. His eyes bugged out and then zigzagged over the island like he was putting pieces together before
he looked up at her. “Wait, your brother was Josh Jameson? Josh ‘JJ’ Jameson? How did I not know that?!” He looked more disappointed in himself for not making the connection than in her for not telling
him about it.
She shrugged a shoulder. “Because I don’t talk about it.”
“Um...” Gabe trailed off, and she knew he was remembering headlines from over a decade before.
Superstar Shortstop’s Bright Future Cut Short
Josh Jameson Remembered for His Brilliance on the Field
All-Star Rookie Found Dead of Overdose at 23
Those headlines simplified the truth about how Josh had hurt his back making one of those highlight-reel-worthy catches and had been prescribed painkillers to recover.
And how those painkillers woke a sleeping darkness in his brain that consumed him.
The news didn’t cover how Emmy’s mother begged him to end his season and go to rehab, or how her father pushed him to fight through it, and how this drove a wedge between them.
Or how Emmy and Piper, only sixteen and thirteen at the time, couldn’t understand why their beloved older brother had become someone else.
How his moods darkened, and his temper grew short, and why he’d call them in the middle of the night from the road, leaving slurred messages about how much he loved and missed them, and had they watched the game on TV that night?
Of course they had. They watched every game just to see him.
He always winked at them from the batter’s box. And then one day, he wasn’t
there. Someone else took the field at shortstop, and her parents got a call Josh had been found in his hotel room that morning.
And then, he was gone. Just like that.
Emmy’s mother disowned the sport. Her father retreated into himself, taking blame for pushing his son to keep playing, having
no idea he was driving him deeper into his addiction. Piper took their mother’s side, shattered by the loss. Emmy shattered
too. Into a million tiny pieces she could only begin to put back together by devoting herself to the one thing she and Josh
loved most. Baseball.
She felt Gabe eyeing her, not really sure how to come back from delving into her painful past. In fairness, she didn’t know
either. And that was part of the reason she avoided the topic.
He eventually cleared his throat and nodded at the TV she’d left playing across the room. “What were you watching?”
She turned to see a shot of an attractive couple handcuffed to each other while struggling to assemble furniture. “ Name Your Price ,” Emmy said.
Gabe circled back around the island to his stool. “Is that the reality show where they make people do shitty things for money?”
Emmy snorted a laugh. “Yeah. I love this show. In this episode, these exes are trying to live locked in the same house together
for a month for a million dollars. He’s an actor, and she’s an entertainment writer, and they had this big dramatic breakup
that went viral a while ago.”
They swiveled their stools to face the TV as they finished breakfast. They forked mouthfuls and laughed at the contestants’