Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Logan
My heart rate spikes just remembering how she felt in my arms, how badly I wanted to run my lips across her neck—
Man, this sensory deprivation stuff is doing nothing for me today.
I exit the tank early.
Maybe throwing will help.
As soon as I get to the facilities and start warming up, though, it’s clear nothing is going to help. My knuckleballs are too wild and my fastballs are too sloppy.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jake asks after I finish throwing practice. He finds me in the locker room and snaps a towel at my butt as he walks by me on the way back from the shower. “You were a mess out there.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll be sharp tomorrow. Don’t worry.”
“You’d better be. Coop and I are on a tear. Get your head in the game, Fischer.”
“Gee, what a great idea,” I say.
Normally a rookie without a permanent roster spot would never mouth off to one of baseball’s top hitters, but Jake almost ruined my brother’s career. He can suck eggs.
“Come on, Fischer,” Jake says, sounding almost sincere. “You all right?”
I’m hot and annoyed and really want Jake off my back. “I left a girl back in Mullet Ridge, okay?” I say, my eyes lost somewhere in my locker. “I don’t know how to balance baseball and a relationship at the same time.”
Jake doesn’t say anything at first, so I turn in time to see him throw his head back in laughter. “You’re kidding, right?”
“What is wrong with you, man?” I ask, wanting to punch him right in the mouth.
But Jake is still laughing, and now he’s looking around like he’s trying to find someone. “Is your girlfriend here right now?”
“No,” I say. “That’s the problem.”
Jake snorts and starts throwing on clothes from his locker. “No, that’s the solution.”
“Wow, that’s helpful.”
“I’m serious.” He throws on a shirt. “Think about it.”
It’s been ten days since I got back to Chicago—well, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and now back in Chicago. I’ve pitched twice, and I did well enough the first time and not so well the second. I gave up three runs with a two-run lead.
No doubt Jake’s still thinking about it. I know I am.
The Firebirds still made the playoffs, I tell myself. We’ve even had a few days to rest during the Wild Card series.
“Sure, Jake. Her not being here is the solution. I’ll think about that,” I tell him.
He’s already changed into his shorts and is grabbing his shoes now, and I’m still standing in front of my locker, my arm taped up, like I don’t know what the next step is in hitting the showers.
“You know, when I was coming up, rookies knew their place,” Jake says.
“Does that include you?” I ask.
He looks up from his laces and gives me a grin sharp enough to cut through any crap. “Other rookies.”
I snort and peel the KT tape off my arm. “You know, maybe it’s time we put the past behind us.”
“What past?” Jake asks, standing fully upright and folding his arms at me. He’s maybe an inch or two taller than I am and he can lift more than I can, but we’re close enough to the same build that I wouldn’t be intimidated by him if not for his “I will mess you up if you look at me wrong” energy.
“You know. You and Scottie and my brother …”
“So?”
I look around, making sure no one’s close enough to hear. “I know what was really going on there.”
Jake shrugs, his arms still folded. “Yeah, so?”
“So …” I stand back up. “You made my brother’s life kind of a living hell.”
“Bro, are you still holding on to something that got resolved last year?”
“It was six months ago.”
Jake blows his lips out. “Please. That’s a lifetime ago. I once got traded three times in six months. This is why you don’t understand that your girlfriend not being here is the solution. You gotta learn how to walk down the road you’re on, brother.”
And with that, Jake walks out of the locker room, leaving me to drop back down to the bench like a deflated balloon.
How in the world did Jake Rodgers get the better of me in a conversation?
All around me, guys are talking, joking around. A couple are getting chippy with each other.
Lucas and Coop come into the locker room from finishing their own training right as I’m heading for the showers. Lucas is laughing so hard, he’s hunched over and has to stop. Coop puts a hand on Lucas’s shoulder, finishing whatever story has my twin laugh-crying.
For a moment, I want to go over. Ask them what they’re laughing about. But I’m stuck in my own head, too busy wondering what I should be doing to do something, already.
“Logan,” Coop calls out when he spots me. “We’re all hanging out at my place tonight. Lee and I are cooking. Scottie’s doing a coffee bar. You and Lukie are on dessert duty.”
“Got it,” I say, as if being a fifth wheel is all I’ve ever wanted.
Once I’m in the shower, I close my eyes and let the hot water pelt me.
I can’t tell if I should be trying to get to know my other teammates or focusing on my own family.
I don’t know if I should be apologizing to Georgie for going out or staying in to talk to her.
I don’t understand how to be a brother and a friend and a boyfriend and a teammate and a pitcher, all at the same time.
Suddenly, I’m back in the booth with Georgie in Mullet Ridge, and we’re trying to figure out the meaning of “The Road Not Taken.”
I’ve never understood the narrator better.
How can I go down so many roads at the same time?
This question is the reason I hold on so hard to everything.
If I loosen my grip, I don’t think I’ll lose everyone else.
I think I’ll lose me.
***
I FaceTime Georgie while Lucas and I are making Oreo cake pops.
Okay, Lucas actually FaceTimes her while I stand just past the view of the screen.
Yes, we’re trying to see if she can tell us apart.
The phone is propped up against the backsplash and angled up at Lucas, who’s rolling the mixture of crushed Oreos and frosting into balls
I’m off camera, but I can see her beautiful dimpled smile appear the second she answers. She’s in her apartment with a beige cable-knit cardigan wrapped around her. When I checked the weather in Mullet Ridge this morning, it said it was a high of fifty-eight degrees. Peak sweater weather.
“Oh, hey!” she says, beaming.
“Hey!” Lucas says. “How are you?”
“Fine.” Georgie tilts her head. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Sorry, Lucas, I’m missing something. Did Logan ask you to call?”
“Dang it!” Lucas says, angling the phone toward me. I laugh and start rolling out balls of my own to put on the cookie sheet.
“Told you, bro,” I say.
“When did you know?” Lucas asks Georgie.
She shrugs. “Immediately. You don’t look that much alike.”
“Tell that to our teammates,” Lucas says. “Only Jake, Coop, and Rojas can tell us apart. Everyone else has to watch us pitch.”
“They’re crazy,” Georgie says. “No offense, Lucas!”
Lucas chuckles. “I’m not sure how I could take offense at that. Logan’s hideous.”
I knock Lucas’s hat off his head, and he grumbles as he scoops it off the floor.
“This is the family fun I can’t wait to show you in person,” I tell Georgie.
The look on her face tells a story I can’t quite read. I’ve learned that Georgie processes internally and slowly, and me asking what’s going on in front of my twin isn’t going to contribute to the processing. So I change topics.
“Did you have a chance to call Jane yet?” I ask.
“No,” she says, biting her lip. “But I will. I need to talk to Marlowe first.”
She’s been saying this for weeks. I met Marlowe in passing, but Georgie didn’t introduce us, something I tried not to let bother me and mostly succeeded.
I get the sense that she’s intimidated by her stepmother.
Certainly uncomfortable with her. They have a boss/employee dynamic, not a mother/daughter one.
Families are complicated, and I’ve seen some stepfamilies that feel more real than some biological ones, but that’s not what Georgie and Marlowe have.
I wonder if Marlowe knows how badly Georgie wants that. Or if she would even care.
For the record, I dislike Marlowe. If I pretend she’s only Georgie’s boss, I still dislike her. When I think about her being Georgie’s stepmom …
“You gotta talk to her,” I tell Georgie. “She has to want to expand.”
Georgie gives a weak laugh. “She definitely wants to expand.”
“And?”
She sighs. “It’s a long story, and you’re heading to Coop’s house. I’ll bore you with the details another time.”
I want to push, but she’s right. Now isn’t the time to get into a deep discussion, and that’s one more thing that will keep my mind pulled in different directions. “Okay. Maybe tonight?”
“Curfew,” Lucas says. I’m set to pitch tomorrow.
“Crap,” I say. “Tomorrow night?” I ask Georgie.
“I have curfew,” Lucas says after a moment. “But I’ll allow it.”
“Thanks, Lucas,” Georgie and I say in unison. I’m pretty sure she said it less sarcastically than I did, but we still smile at each other.
I roll the last of the mix into a ball and set it on the cookie sheet. Normally we’d put them in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before we dip them in melted chocolate, but we’re out of time for chilling. And Lucas came prepared.
Georgie must be doing the same math in her head. “If you’re making cake pops, how are they going to be cooled in time?”
Lucas cackles next to me, picking up a silver culinary cryo torch from the counter and holding it in front of the screen. It looks like a mix of a soda siphon and a caulking gun, with a trigger and brass nozzle.
“Liquid nitrogen, Georgie.”
The corners of Georgie’s mouth tick into a smile. “So you’re going to flash freeze the balls? But won’t the center still be too warm when you dip them in the melted chocolate?”
“We’ll put them in the fridge for ten minutes to let the chill sink in,” Lucas says.
“That’s really smart,” she says, and she gets that slightly unfocused look that tells me her mind is whirring. “I wonder if I could flash freeze whipped cream for hot chocolate.”
This is my favorite Georgie. Since my stint on the injured list, I’ve seen the dreamer in her more and more. I love watching these unique ideas come to her in real time. I love watching her grow into her own dreams.
Lucas is pulling the trigger on the cryo gun, and a thin jet of white mist hisses out, curling down over the tray of cake pops like it’s trying to escape the pan. The temperature in front of us takes a sharp drop as Logan sprays the balls all along the first row, one by one.
“Molecular gastronomy, Georgie. This is how the pros do it.”
“He’s not a pro. He watched a YouTube video and one-click bought that thing so fast—”
“I watched several videos,” Lucas corrects, bending down to meticulously spray ball after ball. “It’s my whole feed now.”
Georgie’s leaning toward the phone screen. “Um, Lucas, your eyebrows—”
“Do you see the fog, Georgie? That’s how you know it’s working,” he says, leaning over the last row.
“Lucas—”
“And …” He holds the gun and sprays, holding it like he’s posing for a camera. “Done.”
He stands up, and Georgie and I both snort.
Frost is covering both eyebrows thick enough that he looks like he walked outside in the middle of a snowstorm. He spots his reflection in the phone and then grabs it and brings it right up to his face.
He starts wiping at his eyebrows, and small flakes of ice fall off of his brows, while others cling.
Lucas is looking at the frozen flakes on the counter in horror.
“DID I FREEZE MY EYEbrOWS OFF?”
I clutch the counter, laughing, as Georgie laughs, but with real concern on her face. “You’re fine! It’s just the ice!”
I put my hand over his eyebrow and hold it there.
“Dang, that is cold,” I say, feeling the ice crystals melt against my skin. I take it off and then show him his image on the phone. “There, you big baby. You better?”
He holds a hand over his other eyebrow and then looks at himself on the phone again. “Whew,” he says, shaking his head and laughing. “That was awesome.”
I grab the torch from the counter before he can try it again.