Epilogue
Lucas
Ishould have known that the minute Scottie’s family left, mine would descend.
It’s Spring Training, for Pete’s sake, and we’re a baseball family.
But today, we’re not gathered for Logan or me or even Coop.
We’re here for the ump.
“Go, Fischer!” Coop yells.
“He means ‘go home, Fischer!’” I amend, and everyone laughs from where we’re seated a few rows behind home plate, close enough to see Dad’s strike zone and every small head shake he gives a hitter who thinks he’s wrong.
Most importantly, we’re close enough to heckle him.
“You’re statistically the most accurate umpire in baseball!” Liesel shouts, her hands cupped around her mouth. “But that call sucked!”
We laugh again.
He ignores us. Bruce is too much of a pro to get flustered by his turd kids. And when the team challenges the call and the automated ball-strike system flashes on the Jumbotron, we all groan.
He was right.
“Terrible call, Robot Ump!” Liesel boos.
Scottie, Liesel, and Kayla—who’s close with both my sister and Scottie—are sitting in the row in front of us, laughing hysterically.
It’s early March, and the Mudflaps will report to Spring Training next week.
The Flaps staff is all starting to trickle in, but Kayla’s only here on vacation with her husband.
Scottie convinced her to trust her GM and the rest of the front office so she can spend the next few months traveling to Sean’s NHL games before their baby comes.
Kayla’s insistent that this baby isn’t coming until Sean’s team wins the Stanley Cup Finals.
And because she’s Kayla Carville-O’Shannan, something tells me she’ll will it so.
After a flawless inning, Dad pulls off his mask, grabs a water bottle from the umpire attendant, and chats with the catcher like they won’t be mortal enemies again the second the pitch clock starts ticking.
“Stop yapping and hydrate, old man!” Logan yells.
“And stretch your hamstrings, Bruce!” Coop adds. “You’re not twenty-five!”
Dad looks up into the stands, expression flat. Then he lifts the water bottle in our direction like he’s toasting a group of idiots.
Scottie doesn’t heckle, but the way she fits in warms me more than the Arizona sun.
When she peeks over her shoulder at me, smiling, the urge to kiss her fills me. I lean down and she leans up, but Liesel flops sideways against Scottie, laughing too hard at some dumb joke to realize she just body-blocked me.
Liesel and Scottie hit it off immediately, which will definitely change the family dynamic.
I was nervous because they can both be prickly, but they’re already bracing against each other and laughing like old friends.
These two different parts of my life are merging, but somehow everything feels bigger and better because of it.
Scottie leans her head against my knee, smiling.
I lean down to kiss her head, and then feel the bag of cotton candy in my hands dip—
“You took the whole blue chunk?” I say, watching her squeeze it down before she shoves a piece in her mouth. The sugar crystallizes around her lips, leaving sticky blue crumbs that I kiss off. “Mm. You taste good, though.”
“The blue’s the best flavor,” she says, squishing another fluff ball.
“No, pink is, then blue.”
“Agree to disagree, as long as you admit purple’s the worst.”
“Yuck. Purple’s trash,” I say, reaching my hand into the bag and grabbing a handful of yellow.
“Purple’s fine,” Logan says from my other side, grabbing the whole section.
“Ew,” Scottie says.
“Ew,” Liesel says.
“Ew,” Kayla says from Scottie’s other side, tucked under Sean’s arm.
Scottie makes a “pfft” sound. “Oh, stop. Like you’ve ever eaten cotton candy.”
“I have!” Kayla says, looking at Sean. He’s a huge dude—just under six-four and almost as ripped as our dad, which will never stop being gross to say. “Didn’t I try cotton candy?”
“You did,” he says, and she kisses his cheek just above his thick, dark beard. “And you hated it.”
“I did,” she says, lifting a sparkling water to her lips and taking a sip. “I hated it so much.”
Scottie and Liesel shake their heads at each other.
“On a scale of one to freaked out, how worried are you right now?” Logan mutters.
“That Liesel and Scottie are already becoming allies against us?”
Logan snorts, but his brow is heavy. “No, that you’ve found your person?”
I study his face, wishing I could see his eyes behind his reflective rainbow sport sunglasses.
Calling her “my person” isn’t quite right, because he’s always been that and always will be.
But he’s right that with Scottie, it’s different.
She’s not my other half—or my other third. She’s my whole heart.
“Not freaked out at all,” I say.
“Come on,” he prods, shaking his head. “You’re telling me that you went from being too scared to go all in ten days ago to acting like none of it scares you now?”
The sound of a ball popping in a catcher’s mitt draws my attention.
I turn back to the game. “I don’t know that I’ll ever stop being afraid of something happening to her,” I admit, emotion almost choking me.
We’re both watching our dad, thinking about how he found the love of his life and had triplet toddlers when he was our age.
That guy never imagined he’d lose her to a degenerative disease.
But …
“Look at Dad,” I say, emotion burning the back of my throat.
“And look at all us.” I gesture between us and Liesel, and then to Coop and Scottie.
“Yes, he lost mom. We all did. But loss makes it sound like a zero-sum game, when I don’t think it is.
Look how much he gained because he had her at all. ”
Logan shakes his head, dashing a hand across his cheek. He’s not as free with emotion as I am, but Dad taught us that there’s strength in feeling. And considering he could be John Cena’s body double, it’s hard not to take him seriously.
“Shoot,” he says, sniffing and wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “Why’d you have to get all wise on me?”
I laugh. “Sorry to freak you out, but I do know some things. Not book things, but I’m okay with that.”
“You know a lot more than I do about life. No question.”
Logan’s last few games have been tough ones. He’s gotten back in his head, and it shows.
“Nah.” I nudge him with my elbow. “I’m just not smart enough to know all the things that should worry me.”
“You’re a kind of smart I’ll never understand.” He frowns and watches the batter smack the ball into right field. “I know things shouldn’t worry me. I just can’t stop.”
He pauses, like he’s about to say something else, then shakes his head and looks back at the field.
My chest squeezes as I look at my brother. “I hate that, man. I wish you didn’t have to deal with this.”
“Me too,” he says.
We watch the next few plays in silence, and soon we’re all standing for the seventh-inning stretch. I hop down into the row in front of me, filled with a need to hold Scottie close.
I wrap my arms around her from behind so we’re both facing the field, my chest to her back, her hands settling over my forearms as we sing along to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” I kiss Scottie’s cheek when she throws her free arm out dramatically to count “one, two, three strikes you’re out” on the big finish.
When the song ends, Scottie turns in my arms, smiling up at me, and then her expression shifts.
“How’s Logan doing?” she asks softly.
I glance over her shoulder. He’s still on his feet with everyone else, but there’s something stiff in the way he’s standing. “He’s had better days,” I admit. “But he’ll be okay.”
Her eyes soften. “He will.”
“Yeah.”
Then she rises onto her toes and kisses me.
Not sneaky.
Not hidden.
Just a real kiss in the middle of the seventh-inning stretch while family and friends cheer around us.
A roar goes up from somewhere above us, and then my family is grabbing us, laughing. I pull back to see our faces on the Jumbotron.
Scottie bursts out laughing.
Liesel and Kayla are catcalling.
Coop is pounding my back.
Behind his mask, Bruce is shaking his head.
“We made the Jumbotron!” Scottie says, pressing her lips against mine, smiling so big, her cheeks are getting in the way.
I put my hands on her hips and kiss her until the smile falls, the camera leaves us, and my family tells me to sit down.
Scottie said she wanted a Jumbotron kind of love, but what we have is so much more.
It’s the kind that’s even better when no one’s watching.