The National Tournament Round One
The National Tournament:
Round One
On the flight to Colorado, she noticed a man wearing her father’s jersey. The unmistakable twelve stitched in gold with four letters above—Cruz. Only it wasn’t just her father’s name or number but hers too.
Abby considered changing her name many times and taking her mother’s, Sorrentino, instead, but blamed superstition.
She’d played her first little league game with it, chosen the number with purpose in hopes she’d play like the hero who wore it—not the one who missed his court-approved visits, but the one she watched on TV.
Her mother never changed the channel either, as if refusing to take that version of him away from her.
Usually, Abby ignored Audie admirers or tributes, but that day it sank invisible claws into her back. Then the plane dipped as if the sky felt it too.
Kate’s hand fluttered onto hers from the middle seat, a rarity in the last few weeks. At least since Senior Day. Still, Abby squeezed it and didn’t refuse her gaze. “It’s okay,” she said.
Kate’s chin trembled and Abby knew she’d unintentionally addressed more than just the turbulence.
She’d spoken to the strain and avoidance.
They were still together but suddenly too busy.
Too busy for late nights or sleepovers or sex.
Busier than Kate had ever been despite classes ending and law school secured.
Even kisses landed quick and flat, like an obligation.
“Are you mad at me?” Kate asked.
Abby gulped and shook her head. The last rift happened as they’d left for nationals that morning.
Kate mentioned she’d found a possible place in Berkeley and that Abby should start looking too.
Berkeley wasn’t yet a done deal for her, but they’d offered a partial scholarship and grad school admission as long as she bumped up her GPA with summer classes.
“Or we could save money on rent and share a place,” Abby said with a slight smile, but Kate’s face fell. “I’m kidding. Kind of…”
“No, it’s just…” Kate trailed off and her eyes shifted away like they always seemed to lately. “It’s just living together before marriage.”
“But sex is allowed?”
Abby didn’t mean to push, wasn’t necessarily ready to move in together either, but she hated the way Kate iced her out. Hated that Berkeley loomed like a separate journey rather than something they’d planned to do together. Like Kate wasn’t the only reason Abby was going.
Kate cleared her throat. “I’m going to be elbows-deep in school and you’ll have softball and if my parents visit—”
“Right.” Abby clenched her teeth at the mention of them. “Harder to hide me.”
“I’m just not ready,” Kate said before slinging her bag over her shoulder and heading downstairs.
Ready for moving in together or living in truth, Abby didn’t know.
They’d hardly looked at each other on the bus or at the airport even though it hadn’t really been a fight.
Even though Abby wasn’t mad about not moving in together.
She was mad at how everything changed after Kate’s parents showed up.
That their presence haunted them, not much different than that jersey Abby spotted on the plane.
“I’m not mad,” she said.
“Good.” Kate laced their fingers together and rested her head on her shoulder. “I really want to win this one.”
Abby pressed her cheek to the top of Kate’s head. “Me too.”
“Let’s go Abby! Vamos!”
It’d been a decade since she’d heard his voice, but Abby recognized it in her soul, permanently imprinted by a childhood she rarely recalled. The jersey on the plane no longer seemed a coincidence but a warning she ignored.
The stands rumbled with it first. She swore she heard a whisper of his name but then decided it must just be her own.
Her mother named her that because they sounded alike after all—a knockoff brand of the male namesake he wanted.
But then his deep voice, with that lively accent, reached her ears while she dug in at third base.
“Let’s go Abby! Vamos!”
Abby whipped around. Her skin buzzed as if lightning brewed, and then when she found him, it struck. Audie along the left field fence, raven hair slicked, linen suit and leather loafers immaculate, gold rings sparkling on his fingers. Bystanders and fans swarmed him.
“Abby.” Kate brought her back.
She barely turned around in time for the pitch or to register that it hit Mick’s glove for the third out before she was jogging off the field, her stare locked on Audie as the inning ended. He waved, his thick mustache rising in a smile, before he signed an autograph.
“Are you okay?” Kate asked.
“He’s here,” Abby said, though she imagined Kate knew too. Everyone knew as the murmurs picked up in the dugout. The dreaded word, dad, circulated around her.
Kate rubbed her back. “Just focus. It’ll be okay.”
Abby nodded and grabbed her bat. The Eagles led but were still the undisputed underdogs against West Georgia State. Of the whole national tournament really. A single error, a shift in the momentum, might make the game’s gods turn on them. Though Abby was certain they’d already turned on her.
“Come on, Abby!” Audie shouted as she went up to bat. “Aye! Aplasta la pelota!”
She hated his power over her. Hated that he echoed with a frequency she never forgot.
She recalled his visits. Birthdays, a drunk Thanksgiving, a few Christmases standing on the porch while her parents argued and the neighbors threatened to call the cops.
It always ended in screaming and her mother clutching a liquor bottle.
“Vamos, Abby!”
She came to as she chopped under a rise ball and flew out to left field. “Fuck.”
Abby trudged through the remaining innings and outs, consumed by the very person who made the game part of her. The only one with the power to take it away.
When it ended and the victorious Eagles sent West Georgia State to the loser’s bracket, Abby hurried from the field. Kate didn’t say a word. She simply didn’t leave, trailing behind her toward the team bus.
“Abby! You’re really not going to talk to me?” Audie shouted, but Abby walked on. “I came here to see you. I deserve to talk to my daughter!”
She halted at the last words. My daughter.
Abby turned with her jaw locked into stone.
Her nose reacquainted itself with him first. Cigars and cologne masking the tang of liquor in his sweat.
Then she scanned the rest. A collage of her features.
Iridescent amber irises, a wide nose with a slight crook from multiple breaks sustained on the field and in bars, thick lips raised in a half smile.
Audie was nearing sixty, but for all his vice and hard living, it barely showed.
“It’s wonderful to see you, mija.” He opened his arms, but Abby stepped back.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Just like when you were a little girl.” Audie chuckled. “Our little storm.”
“I don’t want you to come to any more games,” Abby said. She miraculously stayed level enough to make the demand without shouting, mostly thanks to Kate hovering behind her.
“Why are you not playing shortstop?”
“We already have a shortstop. The team needs me at third.”
Abby pivoted for the bus, but Audie grabbed her shoulder. She jerked away as big, angry buttons sprang along her spine and bubbled beneath her skin, waiting to be pressed. It would just take one careless bump, and she’d lose it. And Audie was plenty careless.
“Why is the head of Team USA calling me? Skip says you’ve ignored multiple invitations to try out—”
“Why do you care? Why are you even here?”
Abby’s neck smoldered. More of her teammates took notice. Mick and Jill circled closer, lingering behind her and Kate like guard dogs.
Audie shook his head, switching to Spanish in his frustration. “I’ve seen you play. You’re wasting your potential. You should be preparing for gold. If you don’t want to play for Skip, you can play for Puerto Rico. You should be competing for a D1 championship instead of slumming it here!”
This hit the biggest button straight on. “Who are you to talk about my potential? About my team!” she roared back in English. “We haven’t talked for years, and you show up to lecture me about fucking softball? You decide to care now because I can hit a ball like you?”
“?Soy tu padre! Of course I care.” Audie snarled, threw his arms out at his sides. “You think I haven’t been around? Who do you think pays for you to come here?”
Abby scoffed at his blatant, desperate lie. “No, you don’t. It’s covered because Isla works for the university.”
“After what you did? No.” Audie tsked. “Whose idea do you think it was for you to transfer? Huh? Do you think any team wanted you?”
Abby’s knees wobbled, and she might’ve fallen if it wasn’t for Kate subtly bracing her back. She shook her head. “No. You didn’t. You never had any money.”
“There’s a trust, mija. I made your sister the executor. You’ll get it when you graduate.”
“Oh, you’re paying me off now?”
“It’s always been there!” Audie shouted. “Your mother wouldn’t let you have it! She kept it from you to punish me. She didn’t care if it punished you too.”
“You’re a liar!”
The fans, parents, and players around them lowered their conversations.
Kate’s mouth met her ear. “Let’s just walk away.”
Abby heaved for air. That dreaded squeal arrived, ringing like the phone when the police called that night with the news, the same warning squelch that her world was cracking, and she’d never be whole.
“It’s not true. And even if it is, even if you throw money at me, it doesn’t make you my father. You haven’t been a father for twenty years!”
“That’s just the story you tell yourself ! The story your mother brainwashed you with!”
The ring hit its crescendo. Burst in her. The calm sliver she clung to, more for Kate and her friends than for herself, snapped. The tendons in her neck corded and her lips stretched back from her teeth. “You don’t know! You never had to be there!”