Chapter 34
Miller
I don’t go back to my place.
I go somewhere I haven’t been in months.
I’m about to give up knocking when the porch light flicks on and my aunt pulls the door open, all concern as she tugs her sweater tighter around her.
“Miller,” she breathes softly, and a mouth that looks like it’s about to smile until her eyes land on mine.
“Hey—uh, hi—” I say, voice cracking and choppy. “Sorry, it’s late—I don’t know—I didn’t mean to—”
I think my uncle might call from down the hall, but she doesn’t look away from me, and she flinches in pain with every single ragged breath I take. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
“Uh . . .” I laugh, but it sounds wet, and I tug on the ends of my hair. “No. I don’t think so. Can I come in?”
“This is your home. You don’t need my permission to come back,” she says gently, holding out a hand, and when I take it, stepping into the foyer of a place I haven’t been since Matty died, something constricts so tight in my chest again and then I feel it all crack—that nice bench in the spot Ren carved out for his memory, all the framing she put up and pictures she hung.
This might have been what Yas was talking about all those weeks ago when she said I couldn’t keep this up.
She tugs me gently down the hall towards the kitchen, pulling out one of the worn wooden chairs without a care for the legs dragging across the floor, and she holds my hand until I sit down, like she did when Matty and I were kids and one of us fell in the backyard and came in here screaming with scraped knees.
“Miller—did something happen?” She sits in the chair across from me, hand outstretched on the table, ready and waiting for mine in case I need her.
“Emilia, did—oh. Miller.” My uncle walks into the kitchen, and just like my aunt’s smile on the porch, his voice starts warm, until he notices the inward curve of my shoulders and the choking breaths.
But it’s not the sight of them both in person after months that finally makes me bow my head—it’s the old, frayed TMLB sweater he’s wearing. He had it custom-made so it’d have both my number and Matty’s on the sleeves.
I rip at my bow tie and the neck of my dress shirt, and I try to undo the buttons, but my fingers slip. “I can’t—I can’t fucking breathe.”
“Here. Miller.” My uncle takes a purposeful step forward. “Son, stop. I’ve got it.”
His finger don’t shake when he carefully undoes the bow tie and hands it to my aunt.
I think she folds it neatly on the table.
He moves to the button at my neck, and then he opens the top three, adjusting the collar so it hangs wide, and he tucks a wave of hair behind my ear before he pulls out the chair beside my aunt.
I let my head hang between my legs as I take heaving breaths, until I look up, all bleary-eyed. “I’m sorry you got stuck with me.”
“Stuck with you?” My aunt narrows her eyes, and repeats the words like they’ve personally offended her.
“If I was better, she would have stayed.” I inhale, rough and choppy and I think I’m back under the water somewhere.
I want the surface and the girl up there so badly but every gasp for oxygen cuts and hurts so, so fucking much.
“I would have found him in time. But I didn’t.
And you got stuck with me because my mom dropped me off and then Matt died—”
“You think we’re stuck with you? Because she left and it was his time to go?” Something cracks behind her eyes, too. “You are ours. Just like he was. She gave you to us and as much as I wish . . . I wish she could have been the mother you deserved, I hope I did an okay job as a replacement.”
“I asked for a trade. That’s the kind of shitty, replacement son you want?
One who fucking runs and leaves you behind when things are hard?
” I throw a hand in the air, but I choke on the next words.
“That’s why I—why I was avoiding you. It was so—it sucked so fucking much at the start of the season.
To be here without him . . . to have everyone reminding me constantly that he was gone forever, with all these people acting like somehow it was my fault, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
” Dragging a hand down my face, my eyes blur and I give a useless shrug.
“But now, they said they’d honour it, and I don’t want—I didn’t want to leave because of her but I don’t think she really . . . I don’t know what to do.”
My aunt flexes her fingers, still outstretched on the table, with a pointed look between my hand and hers until I reach out.
She interlaces our fingers and holds my hand with both of hers.
“You aren’t a replacement. You never were.
And it has never been, not for a single second, your fault.
” She presses her mouth to the back of my hand, right in the centre of the tattoo. “Do you still want to go?”
“I did—I thought I did. But now—”
“What changed your mind?” my uncle asks, lifting a hand off the table.
“Ren.” My mouth moves around her name like it’s the best sound in the world, but it shreds the back of my throat.
“After I . . . gave her my jersey . . . people started talking about her. Us. Instead of Matt. And Yas said it wouldn’t hurt my prospects if I didn’t look like such a pariah in the media so .
. . Ren and I—she—it doesn’t really matter, I guess.
I thought we wanted the same things. But, uh, I don’t think we did after all. ”
She didn’t want me, I think. Maybe I couldn’t make my mom stay and maybe I didn’t find Matty in time, and maybe neither of those things were really my fault after all, but I did find her and I don’t want either of us to ever leave.
The words hang heavy and unsaid in the air, and they stab at the back of my eyes.
“We want you. We always have, and we always will. And we want what you want, okay?” My aunt smiles through shining eyes, and she squeezes my hand. “Whatever’s best for you.”
“Just don’t go to New York,” my uncle says wryly.
“Fuck New York,” I tell him through a tired grin.
My aunt narrows her eyes. “Boston either.”
“Fuck them too.” My smile tips sideways.
She takes a deep inhale, dipping her chin, and she looks resolute when her eyes find mine again.
“I think . . . everything happens for a reason. And as much as I’ll never understand why Matthew had to leave so early, I’d like to think there has to be something good in what he left behind.
” A tear escapes down her cheek, but she keeps going, shaking my hand in hers when she does.
“And it’s very important to us that you try to find that, okay?
Whether it’s in Ren or in moving and starting over.
We’re going to love you whether you live here, or you live in California, or you decide to play the rest of your career in Japan.
Or quit—we don’t care. Just don’t stay away from home for so long, okay? ”
“Okay,” I say roughly, and here in this kitchen—in the place that really was the only childhood home worth remembering, with the people who really are my parents at the end of the day—even though it’s without Matty forever, it doesn’t feel like it’s the worst place in the world to be anymore.
“You play at home tomorrow, right?” My aunt places a kiss on the back of my hand one more time before letting it go.
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“Please stay,” she whispers, with big, hopeful eyes. “We were about to watch a movie. You can get changed. You’ve got clothes upstairs still . . . we’ll make you breakfast.”
“I’ll drive you to the stadium,” my uncle offers, like there’s nothing he’d rather do on a Sunday than drive me thirty minutes back downtown in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
But when I look at him and all that same hopefulness is written across his face, I think there might not actually be anything he’d like to do more.
“Oh! It’ll be just like Little League all over again.” My aunt claps.
I give her a look. “We didn’t play in Little League very long.”
“We know. Such prodigies, both of you.” She rolls her eyes fondly.
It hurts a lot less than I thought it would to sit here with them and start talking about Matty in any way at all, but especially this way—almost happy—and I think, even though my chest is all cracked open again, it’s all because Ren cleared away all this debris and baggage and guilt and she carefully crafted a safe space for him again.
Maybe she constructed it all with hands that hold really delicate things every day, and she shaped it like a baseball diamond so eventually, I’d remember there were a lot of things worth running home for.
“Yeah, okay. That sounds . . . good. Nice.” I nod. “But can you, uh, take me early? I want to talk to Olson.”