The National Tournament Round One #2
“No, you don’t know!” Audie screamed through spittle. “I wanted to see you! But she kept me away. Poisoned you against me so that when you got older, you didn’t want me around even when I tried!”
“Because you made her fucking crazy!” Abby’s heart thundered. Her vision flashed red, then black, so that later she wouldn’t remember the rest. “Every time you showed up, she cried and drank for days until the next time! She’s fucking dead because of you!”
“Don’t say that! I loved her, but she was a sick woman!”
“Like you’re any better? I can smell it on you!”
Abby didn’t think. She just shoved him. And like any mirror would, Audie launched back, as if her explosion lit his nearby fuse. He reached, clutched her cheeks in a single hand, and squeezed.
“No!”
A blur of color and bodies and yelling. Kate ripped Audie’s arm away. Jill and Mick jumped in too, dragging them back as Abby tried to swipe at him. Bystanders swooped between the Cruzes, who shouted nonsense, lunged, and pointed at each other.
“Everyone on the bus! Now!” Coach Whitley herded them away.
Abby didn’t remember getting on the bus, or Kate’s murmurs and arms, or covering her ears and rocking in her seat. But she remembered the words that left her mouth as if echoing from a tunnel, ahead or behind her, she wasn’t sure.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered.
Kate squeezed her hand. “Can’t do what?”
“Any of it.” She rested her head against the cool window, farmland and fence posts rushing past. For once, she was grateful that Kate had nothing to say, as if admitting defeat. As if accepting that she couldn’t outrun the curse.
Crickets chirped and the hotel pool glowed fluorescent blue.
Abby lounged on the edge, a trail of smoke twisting up from her fingers.
Kate paused at the metal gate and sighed in relief.
She half expected her to disappear after Audie.
Perhaps because the last time Kate saw her so distraught and inaccessible, unharmed but not quite safe, was when she wandered away in Phoenix.
“I thought you kicked those for good.”
“Sorry.” Abby blew smoke over her shoulder.
“It’s okay.” Kate sat beside her. “I think today warrants a free pass.”
“Are you all right?”
“Me?” Kate tucked a piece of Abby’s hair, still damp from the shower, behind her ear.
Her throat bobbed as she tapped ash from her cigarette. “You pushed him away.”
“I’d never let anything happen to you.” Kate’s mouth turned up at the corners in a weak smile. She wasn’t one to fight, but had quickly discovered the exception, unsurprised that as usual, it was Abby. “Had he ever been physical like that before?”
“No. Never.” Abby’s eyes turned glassy while she stared into the pool. “My mom threw a plate at him once and he had to get stitches, but even then, he never laid a hand on her or me.”
Abby’s phone vibrated between them and flashed with Isla’s name. She didn’t move to answer it.
“Have you talked to her?” Kate asked.
“No. She should have told me about the money.”
“Isla loves you. I’m sure she had her reasons.”
Abby lay back on the concrete and sighed.
The pool filter whirred into the quiet. Kate grabbed her hand as if she might keep her from drifting away like they had been for weeks.
A drift she’d done nothing to help, that weighed on her with every excuse she made to passively pump the brakes while she figured out what she wanted.
A drift that would inevitably widen as she contemplated the news she’d delayed for several days and now ripped off like a Band-Aid.
“My parents will be at tomorrow’s game.”
She held her breath in the lull. Abby chuckled, more like a growl than a laugh. “Of course they will.”
“It doesn’t have to be a negative thing. I was thinking we could all get dinner together after the game,” Kate said, like she’d rehearsed in her head, but it landed shrill and desperate.
Abby raised a brow. “As the third baseman or your girlfriend?”
“I know it’s not ideal, but it’s a step in the right direction.” Kate frowned. “Maybe they can get to know you and you can know them. They’ll love you as much as I do.”
“I’m not going to be a lie, Kate.” Abby sat up, an edge working up her shoulders. “And I definitely won’t stand by while you make yourself smaller for them.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“They tossed you aside when they couldn’t control you. How can you not see that?”
“You don’t think I’ve thought about it? It tears me up.” Kate gulped, wounded, but also relieved to finally have an honest conversation. “I can’t just turn my back on them. I don’t care if it makes me na?ve or weak-willed. I want them in my life.”
“Even if it means sacrificing who you are?”
“You know it’s hard for me. The way I was raised and what I was taught to believe.” She stopped, barely able to say the rest. “A love like ours is sinful.”
Abby’s gaze narrowed. “Don’t tell me you really believe that.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know what I believe.” Kate’s stomach churned the same way it did every churchless Sunday and prayerless night. “I’ve lost my faith, and that terrifies me.”
Abby’s face crumpled. “I can’t compete with God, Kate.”
“You’re not supposed to.” She sank at knowing the people she loved most couldn’t coexist. That they’d never understand each other, leaving her stranded in the middle, alone, permanently unsatisfied as she gave up one to have the other.
“Part of me hopes, believes that maybe they’ll change.
Maybe there’s a reality where they can accept me for who I am. That God can too.”
Abby scrubbed a hand down her face, but she didn’t seem angry anymore.
“I know what it’s like, waiting for someone to change.
Wanting them to but not being able to cut them off when they don’t.
” She lowered to a whisper. “But that’s the thing, Kate.
They don’t change. They show you exactly who they are. ”
Kate rested her hand on Abby’s arm to soothe what bubbled beneath. The years, the crash, the phone call, her mother and father, so clearly haunting her even when she pretended they didn’t. “Abby, I—”
She cleared her throat in dismissal. As if to say they’d had enough for today. Abby’s gaze returned to that unrecognizable landscape Kate thought she’d long ago figured out, etched with the missing pieces she’d never understand, no matter how well she knew her heart.
“We should get some rest.” Abby caressed Kate’s chin. “Big game tomorrow.”
It was kind, but distant. Something felt wrong. Cold between them. She shuddered on a breath as Abby helped her to stand. Kate’s place in the middle expanded, leaving her emptier, lonelier, further from everyone she loved and felt destined to lose.