Chapter Twenty
Reed
“But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, it’s a part of our past…It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again.”
—Terence Mann, Field of Dreams
Pitchers didn’t have to report for practice Monday, and apparently Eliza didn’t have rehearsal till later in the afternoon, so we met up at the old ball field at Clairview Elementary School. The one in Fairfield was in much better condition, but she had said it was too “risky.”
I knew risky.
Risky was throwing too many games without enough rest time in between.
Or trying a forkball when the bases were loaded.
Or hoping a knuckleball could save your ass when you’ve all but ripped apart the tendons in your shoulder.
Hanging out at a ball field in the same town as your families shouldn’t have been risky. Then again, eating at the same restaurant at the same time shouldn’t force one family to have to leave either. After we left Angelo’s, Granddad was angrier than I’d seen him in a long time.
But Eliza had offered her family’s table to us.
Had he noticed? Had her father?
Did it really matter to either?
My gut told me Granddad wasn’t the one to really worry about as far as “risks” go. But it also told me that, unfortunately, this was going to blow up in our faces sooner or later.
“You gonna start throwing, or should I come back later?” Eliza called from home plate.
“Sorry.” I shook my head to focus. “Zoned out for a sec there.”
She took her stance, and I grinned like a fool.
Damn. There was nothing hotter than a girl who knew how to play the game.
I brought my hand behind my back and rolled the ball around till the laces were perpendicular to my fingers for my four-seamer. I stared her down and imagined Dad behind the plate instead of Ben—because Ben would never play ball with a girl and we still weren’t speaking—and threw it.
Crack!
The ball soared over my head and into center field, where it dropped with a soft thud. “Nice!” I yelled.
Eliza rested the bat on her shoulder. “You throwing slow for me, Fulton?”
“No.”
Maybe.
Okay, just a little.
She arched an eyebrow and tugged her hat a little lower before tapping the bat on the plate. “Let’s see your slider.”
My slider?
You mean the slider that nearly took out your cousin in the season opener?
“Sure.” My voice cracked. I grabbed another ball near the mound and rolled it around in my hand till my pointer and middle finger touched. When my palm started sweating, I closed my eyes for a second and slowed my breathing.
Relax. You’ve thrown this pitch hundreds of times.
But in the last second, I rolled the ball into a changeup before releasing it. It slowed too quickly.
Crack!
Eliza hammered it into right field. It plopped into the tall grass, and I turned around to face a scowling batter behind the plate.
“What was that?” she asked.
“A pitch.” Just not the one you asked for.
She dropped the bat at the plate and closed the sixty-foot distance between us till her toes touched the edge of the mound. “Are you afraid of hitting me?”
“No.” Yes. Terrified, actually.
“Reed.” She took off her hat, and her hair spilled around her shoulders. “I wouldn’t have come out here if I was afraid you’d hit me with a pitch.”
“I know.” My throat squeezed.
She made a face. “Do you feel this much doubt every time you take the mound?”
“No. But this is different—”
“Because I’m a girl?” Her hands went to her hips.
“Hell no. Girls kick ass at baseball. It’s just…I don’t want to hurt you.” Ever. At all. And especially not with a pitch.
“I trust you.” She picked up a ball and pressed it firmly in my glove. “But you’re never going to be the pitcher you want to be unless you trust yourself. No one owns that mound but you.”
No one owns the mound but me. I needed to save that for my next game.
After she walked back to home, she threaded her hair through her hat and picked up the bat. “Bring the heat, Fulton.”
Lord, don’t let me regret this.
I moved my fingers around for my four-seamer again, but this time, I threw it twice as hard. She swung and missed but smiled. “Hell yeah. Do that again.”
And I did. I threw fastball after fastball. She didn’t miss all of them, but she didn’t hit them as well as the first two pitches of the day.
“Is that a four- or a two-seamer?” she asked after stepping outside the box for a break.
“Four. My two-seamer is a bit…rusty.” I didn’t elaborate. Fairfield was a small town. The odds of her already knowing what had happened last summer at UNC were good.
“Let’s see it.”
Shit. “Eliza…”
“You’re never going to throw it cleanly if you don’t practice with a batter at the plate.”
“But it’s really not ready—”
“Reed, we’re not going anywhere till you show me that two-seamer.”
Fine. I kicked the old pitching rubber. “You know, I never would’ve thought it possible that you could get more stubborn than you were as a kid.”
She stuck her tongue out at me and took some practice swings.
Dad’s voice and old reminders about the pitch played through my head. His tags on my chest felt heavy. “Help me out here, Dad,” I whispered to myself.
Eliza stepped into the box as I got into formation and threw up a prayer before the ball left my hand. The spin looked right, just enough off the center. It zipped across the plate and under her bat.
“That was awesome!” She beamed and threw the ball back to me. “Think you can do that again?”
Doubtful, but what the hell.
I rolled the seams around till my fingers aligned with them. This time, the ball didn’t go as off-center as I wanted, but it moved just as fast. Eliza fouled it off and cursed before asking for another.
After five more pitches, we both called it quits. I waved her out to the mound where I lay down and rested my head on the rubber with my feet pointing toward center field. She put her head next to mine but faced her body toward home plate.
She stretched her arms out. “This is…”
“Weird?” I gulped. None of the guys ever liked lying down on the mound. Said it was too scratchy.
“Actually, I was going to say pretty cool.” She sighed. “I’ve never looked at the ball field from this angle before. It’s so different.”
Finally, someone gets it.
I brought my hand to rest on my chest. “Dad and I used to lie down like this. We’d drive around and look for old ballparks, and when we found one, we always did this first to see if it felt like a good field.”
“How could you tell?”
“It’s kinda hard to explain. But he had me close my eyes and listen to the way the wind moved. I’d run my hands over the dirt too, just to get a feel for it. To understand how long it had been since someone had stood on it.”
“Mine drives me crazy, but I can’t imagine having him that far away.” She sighed. “I bet you miss him a lot.”
My chest tightened.
More than you know.
“When is he supposed to come back home?” she asked.
My fingers fumbled against the edges of the tags under my shirt. “I dunno. He’s on some kind of special ops and has been radio silent for a while. Mom’s really worried.” So am I.
She rested her hand on my shoulder. “He went to UNC, right? Is that where you want to go too?”
“Yeah, he went to UNC. But I dunno where I’ll go.” I found a small stone and chucked it. “Doubtful I’ll get any kind of a scholarship for baseball, anyway.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You didn’t hear about my showcase shitshow from last summer?”
“Oh, that.” She laughed nervously. “Yeah, I heard about it. But who cares? That was almost a year ago.”
“It set me back months of eligibility, of scouts coming to see me play my junior year.”
She turned her head toward me. “Do you want to play college baseball?”
“Yes.” More than anything.
“Then it’ll happen.”
It’ll happen.
She had a gleam in her blue eyes when she said it. The shadow of her hat couldn’t hide it or the trail of freckles across her nose. But it was the way her entire body seemed so relaxed about it all that got me. How easy it was to just believe in something I thought was unbelievable.
Eliza radiated a confidence I’d kill for.
Maybe, if I was lucky, being this close to her would help me get there.
I smiled, and the tightness in my chest vanished. “I’ve wanted it for such a long time. I love the way I feel on the mound. It’s like coming home. You know what I mean?”
“I do,” she said. “I feel that every time I turn on a light board and press the first cue for a show.”
“Terrifying and exciting all at the same time.”
“And in that moment, you know—”
“You’re right where you’re meant to be,” we said together.
I laid my hand on top of Eliza’s and squeezed it.
Right where I’m meant to be.