Chapter 58
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Savannah
Midway through class, Dr. Ghorbani drops a note on my desk. “Ms. Burke, please see me after.”
My stomach drops. We just got our papers back, mine delivered with red ink covering it—and a grudging B+ at the top. “Forrest, we’re putting this on the fridge,” I joke. If I’m doing better, why does she need to see me?
I turn my attention to the lecture, a graph up on screen that we’re analyzing. I process it for a minute in pieces—axes, unit labels, data patterns—then turn to Katia and whisper, “She finally gave us an easy one.”
“Easy for you.” Even if Katia’s already jotting down notes.
I laugh and tap various components of the graph on the printouts that Dr. Ghorbani provided.
She’s a good teacher, I realize: the kind who doesn’t compromise her standards but pulls you up to them.
I’m writing differently. Thinking differently.
I could actually make it in this program.
For the first time since I got to Atlanta, I actually believe that.
It hits me all at once. I’m gonna miss this.
I’ll miss Forrest and Katia and Dr. Ghorbani and the feeling like I’m throwing myself against a wall—but somehow good.
I’ll miss having things expected of me: not just being someone’s daughter or someone’s wife.
Even if I take a year off—it takes six months to process a divorce in Georgia, apparently—and reapply for the program, by that time my friends will have moved on.
Something else I didn’t know I was losing.
Next to me, Katia is decorating her graph in neat annotations and little figures of fighter jets. On my other side, Forrest is blinking like he’s fighting off sleep. “Hey,” I whisper to him, “if she asks us to share, I got this one.”
And for the first time since I started this program, I actually mean it.
After class, I cautiously approach the lectern where Dr. Ghorbani is stacking various papers and shoving them into a beat-up leather briefcase. “Ms. Burke,” she says, “this conversation will be better in my office.”
We don’t talk as we walk together through a narrow, poorly lit hallway, up several winding flights of stairs. The building we’re in is painted white that’s gone slightly tan with age. A literal ivory tower. Her office is at the end of a long hallway. She unlocks the door.
Inside is her desk, which looks a lot like Forrest’s kitchen table: stacks of papers, an old laptop in a charging dock.
I’m expecting stiff upright chairs—instead everything is comfortable plaid and leather, a couch, an overstuffed ottoman facing her desk, a set of bookshelves that holds a myriad of textbooks and reference guides, along with a few slim volumes of poetry. Whitman. Sappho.
“Have a seat, please,” Dr. Ghorbani tells me.
I do, dropping my stuff next to me on the ottoman, waiting as she seats herself at her desk.
“Your office is really nice,” I say.
She arches an eyebrow. “Yes, if you’d come see me at office hours, you would know.”
Her message is clear: help was always available. I just had to know how to ask for it. “Point taken.” I look around again. “It might not matter. I’m not sure how I’m going to pay tuition next semester.”
“Ah.” She glances briefly at my neck as if noting the absence of my locket. “That’s unfortunate. I know you had your struggles initially, but I meant what I said. You have the potential to be a real asset to this program.”
For some reason, my chin starts to shake, tears coming up faster than I can blink them away. Professor Ghorbani merely nudges a box of tissues toward me as if she’s accustomed to having students cry in her office. I dab my eyes. “I shouldn’t be crying—Forrest makes it work.”
A tiny smile tugs at the edge of her lips like she can’t help it. “Forrest is extraordinary in so many ways.”
“So what did you want to talk with me about?” I ask when she doesn’t say anything else.
She opens her desk drawer and withdraws an envelope labeled overnight delivery. “This arrived in our department mail this morning.” She passes me the envelope. “Do you know anything about it?”
It takes me a second to realize it’s addressed to me, care of the Morningside bioinformatics program.
The return address is vaguely familiar, but nothing I can place without looking it up.
“Um, I’m not sure.” Slowly, I pull the cardboard tab to open the envelope.
Inside, there’s a single piece of paper.
I unfold it. It’s a printout of a Peaches ticket with a logo and barcode for a game that starts at 7:20 p.m.
I turn the paper over. On the back, there’s a note. See you tonight, princess. Signed A & B.
Professor Ghorbani is peering over her desk as if trying to read the note upside down. She leans back when I catch her.
“It’s a note from my soon-to-be ex-husband,” I say.
“Ah.”
“And, uh, my ex-boyfriend.”
Her eyebrows creep up. “Together?” Though she doesn’t sound particularly scandalized.
I summon my courage. “Our ex-boyfriend.”
She nods as if putting the pieces together. “I see. That would explain why you’ve been a bit distracted this semester, wouldn’t it?”
I examine the ticket again. It’s in row A, seat 1, right behind home plate. If I sit there, there’s no way I won’t be on TV cameras for almost every pitch of the game. A distraction. A scandal. A mess.
Or a possibility: that we’ll be together the way we promised each other we would. I’m not sure which outcome scares me more—but I know I need to find out.
I arrive at the stadium right before game time.
Usually, WAGs go through the family entrance.
Tonight, I file in with the main crowd. I’m not wearing any gear with Brayden’s number, just that generic pink T-shirt I bought way back that I paid to have cropped so the hem sits an inch or two above the waistband of my jeans.
More skin than Barb would probably think I should show, but enough that several heads turn as I walk past. I did my hair, fixed a chip on one of my nails. Applied my best smoky eye.
If they’re going to blast me on TV and social media, I’m gonna look damn good while they’re doing it.
At my section, the usher, an older gentleman in a faded Peaches hat, leads me to my seat. I wait as he wipes it down with a towel. “First Peaches game?” he asks.
I don’t want to lie, but I’m not sure I’m ready to tell the whole truth either. “It’s my first time sitting so close to the field.”
“I would have noticed a young lady like you in my section before.” He nods out to the field, then smiles. “I’m sure the players will too.”
That’s what I’m hoping for. So I thank him and station myself behind home plate, waiting for the game to begin.
“Get ready, because it’s time to play Atlanta Peaches baseball!” the PA booms as the stadium goes wild. Players run out to their respective positions as the announcer moves through a rollcall. “Now batting first for your Atlanta Peaches, Isaiah McDonald, your second baseman.”
Somewhere, Lexi must be watching, Izzy in her lap, her lipstick magnificently un-smudged.
I’d given most of the money she lent me to Forrest who said, “Wow, we won’t even have late fees on rent.
” Who knows what’ll happen next month? I can’t think about that now, not when the announcer calls the next Peaches player.
“Batting second and playing right field, Brayden…” There’s a pause as if the announcer forgot Brayden’s last name. As if anyone in this whole city could forget the Forsyth name. The PA squeaks back on. “Batting second and playing right field…Brayden…Forsyth.”
“Now batting third and playing centerfield…Asher…huh…” The microphone really does cut out then, as if the announcer is having a whispered conversation with someone else up in the booth. Then a crackle of static. “Now batting third and playing centerfield…Asher…Adler.”
Brayden and Asher take their respective positions on the field, hundreds of feet from where I’m sitting.
Their backs are to the crowd. For some reason, a murmur goes through the stands.
I pull up the play-by-play app on my phone.
Top Peaches news: Forsyth and Adler back in lineup after multiday absence with flu-like symptoms.
Of course that’s the story the team went with. The flu. As if our relationship was simply an unpleasant illness that passed with time.
Maybe the crowd is just reacting to them being back, even if their cheers have a tone of confusion. I contemplate that through the top of the first inning, the Atlanta pitcher lobbing beautiful curveballs that the opposing players swing over—one, two, three easy outs.
I’m preparing myself for the bottom of the first when a familiar voice chirps, “Hey, girl!” Lexi’s standing there, Izzy at her hip. “This seat taken?” She gives a little wave to the usher who smiles at her and then waves more intently to her son, who’s wearing a miniature McDonald jersey.
I move my purse out of the seat next to me and pat the foam seat cushion. “C’mon, I owe you my life.”
“Just buy me a drink and we’ll call it even.” Lexi sits next to me, bouncing Izzy on her knee. “Papa’s about to hit!”
Sure enough, Isaiah comes to the plate, maybe twenty feet in front of us, though our view of him is partially obscured by the umpire and the opposing team’s catcher. He spots our group, turns and waves.
“Let’s go, Papa,” Izzy chirps, hands clapping as his father readies the bat to hit. Two pitches later, he ropes a single into right field, then takes his base to the stadium’s applause.
Brayden’s been standing in the on-deck circle.
Nearby, the crowd does the same questioning murmur as it did with him in the outfield.
When he gets to the plate, I understand why.
His jersey is…different, the familiar letters of Forsyth replaced by ones in much smaller font that arches up around his number and descends on both sides.
Three names. Forsyth…Burke…Adler.