Chapter 48
Chapter Forty-Eight
Brayden
I have a specific routine for coming back from road trips: laundry, run, shower, food, sleep.
We’re barely into our front hall when I pull Savannah into a long kiss in full view of the open door.
When I’d kissed her for the first time at our wedding, I wondered if I’d ever get to do it again.
I did, in that strange bridal dressing area at the country club, at various team functions, and the more I do it, the more I want to do it.
Asher’s watching us, and I can’t tell if he’s envious of Savannah or of me or simply feeling left out. I kick shut the front door, reach for Asher’s T-shirt, pull him to me, chest solid against mine. “I need to shower,” he mumbles against my mouth. “We all smell like plane.”
Routine is helpful, necessary. It makes me feel like I have everything together even when I don’t. I should be shoving my clothes into the washer, replacing uncertainty with the thump of my shoes against asphalt. What it takes some days to make me feel like I have any control over myself.
Now I leave our suitcases in the front hall and take Savannah’s hand. We pull Asher up the stairs, all of us laughing loud enough to fill the entire house with the sound.
Baby comes downstairs when we’re all on the living room couch.
Asher’s in a borrowed pair of my sweatpants that are an inch too short in the legs, Savannah in one of those thin tank tops guaranteed to make me lose my mind.
Baby approaches Savannah, sniffing her disdainfully for all of two seconds before relenting and letting Sav pull her into her lap.
Asher leans over to idly stroke Baby’s fur.
“Careful, she’s kind of a menace,” I warn.
He shifts to rubbing her on the head. “I don’t know, seems like she likes me just fine.”
Baby cranes her tiny fluffy neck up—of course she likes him, of course she automatically likes everyone other than me—then lifts one tiny, scraggly paw and swats him hard enough to raise a tiny pinprick of blood. Sav and I laugh.
After a second, Asher does too, then sucks his finger into his mouth. “So you do take after your mama after all.”
“Baby, don’t let these men talk to you that way.” Savannah scoops Baby up, cuddling her on her lap, kissing her between her tufty little ears. Baby hasn’t gotten any cuter, really, but she’s purring with her entire body, clearly happy at us—at least one of us—being home.
Home. It hits me all at once. I always thought of my parents’ house as just that: their house, a place I lived in and couldn’t wait to move out of.
In the minor leagues, I had apartments, some provided by the team, some I leased myself.
When I wanted to buy a house, the real estate agent showed me exactly one listing. This one.
Are you sure? she asked.
At the time, I was hungover, impatient with the entire process. Who cared what a house was like? It was just some place with a bed and a home gym and protein powder and whiskey. The stuff my life was composed of before. I think I snapped something like, When you know, you know as an answer.
Sitting next to Savannah and Asher something settles inside me that I didn’t even know was unsettled before.
Asher’s shoulder brushes mine on the couch.
Savannah is busy offering her fingertips for Baby to bat at.
Our laundry is commingled in the washer; our food delivery order charged to one account.
Could it be like this all the time? That feels dangerous to even think. And yet…all I want to do tomorrow is the same thing that we’ve been doing for the past day.
My phone buzzes. Barb telling me that now that we’re back from Chicago, Sav and I are expected at church this Sunday.
Sav gets the message too. “We can…”
I can’t imagine sitting there, listening to the criticisms Barb throws at Sav that I thought were normal, because I’d grown up hearing them too, all while the pastor on stage preaches that people like Asher are wrong.
That people like me are wrong. I feel around for some sense of revulsion or wrongness or shame at what we’re doing, the kind I’ve been trained to have my whole life.
None comes. I lean over and kiss both Sav and Asher in turn, then answer Barb.
Me: Sorry, can’t make it.
And I silence her incoming messages. I’m about to put away my phone but something occurs to me, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. I flip on my phone camera. “Hey, picture.”
Savannah’s forehead wrinkles. “I’m not even wearing a real shirt, Bray.”
“It’s just for us.” I study the blank walls around us. Asher had all sorts of art up in his apartment in Chicago. This place is just as empty as it was when we left, but something about that bothers me more now. “Maybe if there’s a good one, we can get it framed.”
I raise the phone, then stop when Asher leans away from the camera as if he’s being banished to the world just beyond its scope. I slide my arm around his shoulders and pull him back into frame. “You too.”
For a moment, he just stares at me, dark eyes curious. “You sure?”
But he leans toward me as I snap a few pictures, the three of us smiling.
Midway through, Baby gets in on the proceedings and climbs from Savannah’s lap to my shoulders, clawing her way up my arms. Tomorrow I’ll wake up with little pinprick reminders that I’ll take with me to the ballpark, that I’ll carry with me throughout the day, no matter what happens.
When you know you know. So I take a few more pictures.