Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Logan
Meant to Bean is still open when we pull up—it hasn’t even been an hour, but it feels like so much more. Georgie is conscious, but she’s sapped of strength, so I find her keys in her bag and gather her up again in my arms.
“A girl could get used to this,” she says into my neck below my ear, her breath barely stirring my shaggy hair.
“So could a guy,” I say.
Before we can reach the stairs, Alma’s marching out of the shop, speaking rapid Spanish and wielding a wooden spoon like it’s a sword. The new girl is behind her.
“What are you doing to her?” Alma demands, pointing the spoon at me.
“I’m fine,” Georgie says, lifting her head off my shoulder. “I didn’t eat today and—”
“You didn’t eat?” Alma waves the spoon over her head. “What are you thinking that you didn’t eat? I leave you food every day, no? You are supposed to take it with you!”
“I forgot,” she says. “I’m sorry, Alma. I’ve been tired—”
“She messed up. She gets it.” I look at Alma directly. “Don’t yell at her.”
Alma rears back. She looks at me for a long moment, the wooden spoon lowering an inch. Then she looks between us, says something short in Spanish to Olivia, and Olivia nods once and heads up the stairs ahead of us.
I guess this is Alma giving me her blessing?
I carry Georgie up the sharp metal stairs, embarrassed that I’m huffing. A professional athlete saving the girl of his dreams isn’t supposed to huff.
Olivia unlocks the door, pops into the apartment, and then calls out, “Watch your step.”
I cross the threshold and—wow. She’s not wrong. I have to navigate carefully—book towers that must have started as stacks, a reading chair buried in homemade afghans. Mugs like the ones down in Meant to Bean all over the place, as well as homemade artwork—half of which is unfinished.
I get Georgie to the small couch and set her down carefully.
I take an afghan from the pile on the reading chair and spread it over her, and then I sit on the edge of the coffee table and hold my finger next to her nose to make sure her breathing is steady.
Once I know she’s okay, I sit back and watch her.
A few minutes later there’s a knock and Olivia is at the door holding a bag and a drink carrier with a large hot chocolate and a large vanilla Whip Smart.
“Thank you,” I say. Olivia peers around the apartment before nodding, checking on Georgie like she’s already decided she’s in her corner. “I’ll take good care of her. And if I don’t, I fully expect Alma to make me pay for it.”
She nods, and some of the worry in her brow clears. “Alma and I are taking over the truck tomorrow. You make sure she rests.”
“That’s good to hear,” I tell her. “Thanks. I’m Logan, by the way.”
“Yeah, Alma told me. I’m Olivia.” She turns to leave then turns back. “You know, a lot of guys don’t do this—keep a girl safe when she falls apart. She’s lucky.”
As much as I want to get back to Georgie, I can’t look away from Olivia yet, not when she just said that. “Some guys do, but you’re right: Too many don’t. I’m sorry.”
She looks at me funny. “It’s clearly not your fault.”
“I’m half Canadian. Saying sorry is in my blood.”
She gives me an okay, weirdo look before leaving that I shrug off. When I say goodbye to Olivia, I look back to see Georgie fast asleep on the couch.
I shift some vases to the side of the coffee table and set our drinks and food down.
Between Alma and the restaurant, there’s enough food here for a couple of days, at least, which seems to be exactly what Georgie needs.
I take a long drink of my vanilla Whip and then move the afghans off the armchair and dig into one of the meals from the restaurant.
It’s probably good—I’m too busy watching the color slowly return to Georgie’s face to notice.
And something stirs in my memory.
Lucas taking care of Scottie months ago, when he wasn’t supposed to care yet.
I shoot him a text while I eat.
Logan
Remember when Scottie was sick earlier this year and you took care of her?
Lucas
Yeah. What about it?
Logan
How hard was that?
Lucas
You mean thinking about Dad taking care of Mom?
Logan
Obviously that, but I can’t do that right now. I’m not going for a full breakdown here.
I meant more like taking care of someone who wasn’t your girlfriend when you cared so much.
Lucas
Imma play this really cool right now, but we’re talking about the girl you met over Spring Training, right? Book Babe?
Logan
Georgie, yes.
Lucas
Dude. It’s not even Georgiana anymore, it’s Georgie. This is it. It’s finally happening.
Logan
I hate you.
Lucas
I know. But you’re half me, so you really hate half yourself.
Logan
That’s not how twins work.
Lucas
Of course it’s how twins work.
Logan
You’re useless.
Lucas
Easy, tiger.
Honestly, it was hard taking care of Scottie. I cared about her so much, I’d have given her a kidney even if she used it to wipe the floor.
Logan
That’s unsanitary.
Lucas
Yeah, well that’s love, bro.
Logan
I’m not in love. We’ve only been talking for a couple of weeks.
All day.
Every day.
Lucas
That’s my boy.
Logan
I really like her. The timing just sucks. Why did this have to happen when I’m finally getting called up?
Lucas
We’ve got about six weeks left in the season, including the World Series. Then you’ll have the entire offseason to go back to Mullet Ridge and figure out what you guys have. Dad and Mom made it work. They made the template for all of us.
Logan
You’re right. Thanks, bro. Say hey to Scottie for me.
Lucas
You can say hi to her on Thursday night when you get here.
The thought of Thursday should make me more excited than it does. Both times I was called up earlier in the season, I was certain it was temporary. This time, I’m almost certain it isn’t.
This is everything my mom wanted for me, for my family.
She loved baseball, and she especially loved watching us play.
Dad being an ump meant that Mom wasn’t only the one signing us up for tournament leagues and taking us to every game all over the state.
It also meant she was the one playing catch with us, running drills with us in the backyard, teaching us mechanics.
She played softball in high school and was a natural athlete, so she taught herself how to pitch in order to teach us.
And even after she was diagnosed, she found a way to be part of every part of the game she could.
She learned how to watch tape and study opponents, and she taught us from the couch, then from a wheelchair, and then from her bed.
Baseball isn’t just her legacy.
It’s her gift.
It’s given us something to follow, cheer for, talk about; something to connect over, no matter how angsty our teen years got or how much dad’s long absences sucked. And it’s kept us united and striving toward something ever since she passed.
She would be so happy for me.
But she’d be happy I’ve found Georgie, too. I’m not so focused on living out her dreams that I can’t understand how expansive that dream was. If she found out I wanted something more or something else entirely, she’d want that for me with as much passion as she ever wanted baseball.
I put my phone away and look around the apartment and then, because my eyes can’t find a place to land, I look out the window to where Georgie has a perfect view of the outdoor lending library she created.
It’s classic Georgie to create something designed solely to bring others happiness and community. Every smile she flashes scatters sunshine into the darkest corners. Does she know this about herself?
Yes, her apartment’s a mess, but it’s not the mess of someone living in squalor. I’m not sure it’s even the mess of someone living in memories.
After Mom passed, my natural tendency to hold on too tight ratcheted up to a scary level, and my dad intervened before it got ugly.
I was crying over a bag of her scarves that he was donating.
I was clutching them to my face, like they still retained her smell, which they certainly didn’t.
And she didn’t have a typical mom smell, anyway.
She’d been sick for so long and we’d had to keep her surroundings sterile, so the only smell in the room was the medicinal tang of the cleaner the home health aides used and the faint ozone from the air purifier that was constantly running in the corner.
“They’re not her, son,” he told me when I was crying over the scarves. “She didn’t even like most of these.”
I couldn’t let go of the bag.
“It feels like a boulder’s crushing my chest,” I told my dad. “I can’t go on like this.”
“Then don’t,” he said, his arm around me. “If this grief is a boulder, stand on it, instead. Let her memory lift you up, not press you down.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
Dad sat beside me, letting tears stream down his face to match mine. “Neither do I. But none of us will figure it out alone.”
We talked for hours that day, and when I was finally in a good enough place, we dropped the bags off at the donation center together.
And at least in Bruce Fischer’s mind, it was better to move forward with a living memory than to put it all in the back of a closet and call it love.
Looking around Georgie’s apartment, I know exactly what this is.
It’s the mess of someone holding on too tightly to things because someone she loved once held them, too.
She’s so desperate to stay connected to her mom, she can’t let go of anything for fear it will sever their connection.
I don’t know what any of us would have done without my dad. He’s physically the most imposing man I’ve ever known, which is saying a lot, considering I’ve been surrounded by athletes my whole life.
But emotionally? Mentally? He’s a freaking giant.
Where is Georgie’s dad in all this? Where was he to hold her up and carry her when she couldn’t continue?
Why is she the keeper of memories in the family instead of him?
Why is she getting crushed alone by her grief without anyone to share the burden or, better yet, help her move forward in spite of it?
If her dad won’t do this, maybe I can.
You? You’re still stuck at that same spot every week during your brainspotting, right at seven o’clock. You act like you’re all self-actualized when you’re holding on to Georgie right now. You’re making her the next thing you cling too hard to.
I thought I’d already worked through this particular anxiety, but here it is, rearing its ugly head again, because that’s what anxiety does.
Did Liesel cling to Coop or did she fall for him? Did Lucas hang on too tight to Scottie or simply prove that she could never lose him?
Where’s the line between holding someone and holding on?