Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
nate
My mother was dating coach. Fuck, Mom and Coach.
Me: Saw your text. It was late. Do you have time to talk?
Yeah. I sent that knowing she was at work for at least the next six hours, and that by the time she could call, I’d be warming up for tonight’s game.
I hated that she’d decided to tell me by text message, but Olivia had helped me to understand that controlling how people tell you their news isn’t important.
Austin had become more disengaged from all of us, which was great when I wanted to sneak a quickie with his sister, but he’d become a good friend before shit hit the fan with Ashley.
I would have liked to talk to him about this.
“Hey, Coop,” I said and flopped down on the couch next to him. He’d been enjoying his lazy Sunday morning, and I was trying to take advantage of a quiet morning before I headed to the stadium.
“Hey, wanna play?” He tossed me the second video game controller, and I grabbed it.
We played quietly for about half an hour before he spoke.
“Mom and Austin didn’t tell me what happened with Aunt Ashley—and I missed her, so I called her.”
Shit. “And?”
“She thought that I was Uncle Austin at first. But when she realized it was me, she told me to go ask Austin and not to call her again. She’s my aunt. Why is she telling me never to call her?”
“Has your mom talked to you about this?”
“Not really, just that Uncle Austin is going to live with us here for a little while. I thought they had a fight. But are they getting a divorce?”
“I can’t speak for Austin, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if that’s where this ends up.”
“But is she not my aunt anymore?”
I sighed, fuck, this wasn’t what I wanted to talk about with him. “If they get divorced, then no, she’s not your aunt.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that. I mean, I guess I’d always thought she was a bitch.”
Oh, kid, don’t make me laugh here. “There is a word to describe women; it’s worse than bitch—someday when you’re older, I’ll let you in on it.”
“It’s cunt. I know that word. My mom used it to describe Aunt Ashley before—only she uses it when she doesn’t know I’m listening.”
“Yeah, Coop. That’s the word. It fits her.”
“Do you have time to help me with something before you go to the stadium?” Cooper asked nervously.
“What’s up?”
“Well, I bobbled a ground ball the other day—and now I’m nervous that I’m gonna do it again.”
“You wanna go to the ball field, and I can hit some ground balls to you?”
Cooper’s face lit up. “You’d do that with me?”
“Yeah, come on. Go get ready.”
Me: Headed to the field with Coop.
Olivia: ???
Olivia: Did I mess up the schedule? Does he have practice?
Me: He asked to work on some things. Sounds like he needs to work on his confidence. How did the showing go?
Olivia: I’m putting together an offer right now.
Me: Congrats, baby!
As soon as I hit send, I wanted to pull back that single word.
Olivia: I prefer ’Sweet Tits.’
Me: Oh, they are. I’ve got a list of things I want to do with those sweet tits.
“Ready?” Coop stood by the door with his glove in his hand.
“Come on.”
We spent the next hour with me hitting balls and Cooper fielding almost everything I hit at him. His weakness was on his left side; he kept jamming up and tended to misjudge the ball’s spin. He practically tossed his glove on the last ball I hit to him.
“Hey, that’s not gonna help.”
“Yeah, yeah. I just gotta practice more.”
“Not necessarily. Not if, in practicing, you’re just cementing bad practice. You never want muscle memory to be associated with doing things the wrong way.”
He looked at me in confusion.
“Next time, instead of holding your glove upright, try turning it like this? It will help get your body out of the way and give you more reach. You’re fast and can cover ground with your speed, but if you try it this way, you can cover even more ground.”
I hit several more ground balls to him, and he made the adjustment quickly. Fuck, he was good at this.
When we stopped for the day, he wiped his brow and took a giant swig of water. “Thank you for helping me. Coach seems to think that because Austin’s my uncle, I don’t need help.”
“Well, your dad can help, too.”
He scoffed. “My dad can’t play baseball, even if he wanted to help.”
It took everything in me to restrain myself from giving him my honest opinion of his dad. “Well, I know that feeling. My father wouldn’t have been able to help either.”
“Are your parents together?”
“No. They tried to stay together, but it was almost worse than if they’d called it quits.” I had to remind myself to censor what I was saying. Cooper understood more than most kids his age, but he still didn’t need to hear the drama that my parents’ toxic relationship caused.
“I can’t even imagine my mom being with my dad. They fight all the time.”
It was unavoidable, really. My brain loved to torment me with images of things I couldn’t control. In that moment, I saw Olivia with another man, smiling at him, laughing at him, his hand wrapped around her waist, his hand resting possessively on her hip.
Over my dead body. When I thought about Olivia, I kept thinking: mine. And that word, that feeling, it extended to the boy in front of me. The fuck if I was going to let some shitty travel ball coach, or shitbag dad, make him think he wasn’t the best fucking kid on the entire planet.
“I can’t come to your next game—I’ll be on travel.”
He smiled and nodded. “I know. It’s okay. I know you’d be there if you could.”
What went unsaid was that his father could have been there but chose not to.
“Can I come to your game tonight?”
“If your mom says yes, sure.”
“She’ll say yes. I’ll just tell her Uncle Austin needs some fans.”
And while I knew Cooper thought he was some brilliant mastermind, if Olivia was in those stands, it would be for me.