The Alumni Game #2
She gulped, heart back to racing. The reunion, the confession, and this smiling, teasing, gorgeous Kate overwhelmed her.
Because she really wanted this one. There was nothing holding them back now.
Kate was out, Abby was clean. But as the field came into view, their old teammates warming up, friends and family trickling into the stands, she felt the chance slipping away.
“Kate, I—”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
Abby nodded, not sure what she’d say, but ready. “Me too.”
“We can switch off at shortstop.”
“Oh.”
Kate tilted her head. “What were you going to say?”
Abby stretched a stiff smile. “That I should play there because of your shoulder.”
“Actually, that’s a nonissue. Surgery last spring,” Kate said with a grin. “In fact, maybe I should play there the entire game, just for a proper test run.”
“No way,” Abby said. “Switch at second every inning?”
“How else are we supposed to turn two?”
Kate winked, and when her eyes met Abby’s, with the field behind her, a new message came off the wind through the canyon. They’d finally come home to win.
For all the talk of the afterlife instilled in her as a child, the heaven she may not reach, and the home she no longer had, Kate stepped onto the softball field as though passing through the Pearly Gates.
She’d changed more than she ever thought possible since she last played on it.
But so much in her and on the diamond was the same.
The same dirt. The same steps between the bases, colors, and smell.
Home. Homesickness. She found both in one breath.
Not just home, but family. Two dozen former Eagles, who came before and after her, answered the game’s call.
The underclassmen, though they were hardly that anymore with spouses and children, flocked to her.
Palamino, Quong, Brookheimer, and Crosby nodded and beamed like the C stitched on her jersey still meant something.
As usual, she congregated with the fivesome.
T.K. with her hair bleached platinum blond and a twenty-year-old boyfriend who helped her stretch.
Jill, with her redheaded brood in tow. Mick, always the catcher and coach, tweaking lineups and talking shit.
And Abby, playing with Juniper, who wore one of Jill’s old uniforms like a dress.
Kate did her best not to stare as she warmed up with Jill, entranced by Abby’s gentleness, the way she kneeled to help Juniper and praised her for every catch.
“Hutch, did you hear me?” Jill asked.
“What?” Kate snapped her head back and threw the ball to Jill.
“How was last night?”
“It was fine.”
“But like, Mick and Haley’s place is small, isn’t it?” Jill asked.
Mick glanced up from her clipboard and glared. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That there’s only one extra bed,” Jill said with a mischievous glint. “And two out-of-town guests…”
Kate shook her head. “Abby stayed at a hotel.”
“Damn it.”
T.K. popped up from the grass, where her boyfriend stretched her groin in a way that offered far too much insight into their relationship. “After all that planning? Mick, how’d you fuck it up?”
“I didn’t fuck it up!” Mick shouted.
“Clearly you did!” Jill huffed. “It works in the books.”
“You guys need a new hobby,” Abby said as she joined them with Juniper slung over her shoulder. She eased next to Kate and lowered to a whisper. “Or maybe we just need new friends.”
Kate grinned. “I don’t know. They’re pretty hard to shake.”
She nearly drifted into the same daze from their walk. A place where only they existed. Only Abby existed, because only Abby looked at her with such reverence. While the long winter away had cooled her in some ways and took a minute for Kate to get used to, that had never changed.
“Welcome to the third annual alumni game!” Mick shouted from the pitching circle.
Kate and Abby and the others gathered around.
“A few ground rules for all you washed-up jocks. No pulled hamstrings or torn ACLs. If you’re questioning whether you’re fast enough, trust me, you’re not.
” The assembly of aging softball players chuckled.
“Don’t try to be a hero out there. Losers are on permanent gear duty and picking up the winners’ tab at Sunny’s.
Okay, those are the only rules. Let’s play ball! ”
While her last game was nearly a decade behind her, Kate took the field like she never missed a day. She felt the freedom of not yet having everything she wanted, but carrying nothing she didn’t. And as she looked at Abby, she wondered if this was what she always knew, even back then.
“What?” Abby asked in the dugout as she put on her batting gloves.
Kate shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Good. Don’t fuck up out there.” Abby winked.
“Me? The pressure’s on you, Hanmāgaru.”
Abby hitched her jaw. “Don’t call me that.”
But it was too late, as the rest of the dugout broke into chants of Abby’s nickname from Japan, imitating her commercial, pulling it up on their phones. She chuckled as Abby rolled her eyes and blushed.
Kate hit in the leadoff spot, just like always.
She faked a bunt, then popped a flawless, out-of-reach blooper over Madison Quong’s head.
And as always, after Kate got on base, Abby knocked her in.
She couldn’t quite pull it over the fence anymore, but connected on a perfect line, the ball springing from the barrel to the outfield, still one of the most beautiful swings Kate had ever seen.
Kate scored, but Abby got held up on her way to second base as Jenna Crosby and Izzy Palamino tackled her to the dirt.
The game devolved almost entirely into shenanigans, jokes, cheating, cheap tricks, howling laughter when Mick tripped rounding the bases and when T.K.
swung so hard she fell over. That’s what happened when at least a third of them had pins in their knees, others with kids at home, some not picking up a bat since graduation.
In the field, Kate and Abby took turns playing second and shortstop. Abby coasted, barely seemed to try. Kate couldn’t decide if she looked younger now or back then. In two years, she’d become healthier, brighter, the shadows no longer rooting beneath her eyes.
“So, I have a question,” Abby said to her.
It was the bottom of the final inning. Abby stood at shortstop, hat on backward, the sleeves of another baggy T-shirt rolled up to reveal the biceps she kept no less toned than she had as a professional player.
Kate dug in at second base, just like old times, though without the expectations of an actual game, she let herself chat through the last outs.
“What?”
“The dating thing,” Abby said. “What’s that about?”
“What do you mean?”
Abby kicked the dirt. “Well, I mean, is it serious? Are you seeing anyone now?”
Kate cleared her throat, heat climbing from her chest to her neck.
Dating had been an interesting experience at best, but uneventful.
Charlotte Pruitt ran with a group of powerful women, many of whom were queer, who she gladly introduced Kate to, but she’d yet to find a connection despite a few promising dates.
Marcus Watterson tried a completely opposite approach, thrusting her into gay bars and dating apps, but they had never worked before and didn’t now.
Kate, frankly, wasn’t that invested, especially over the last few months, knowing that Abby might be at the alumni game.
“We should probably finish the game,” she said.
“I think we got some time.” Abby shrugged as Courtney Seaborn swung and missed. “So, you going to answer my question? Do you have a girlfriend? Boyfriend?”
Kate sighed and rolled her eyes, but the blush didn’t leave her cheeks. “No one serious.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I’m a bit of a workaholic. What about you?”
“Alcoholic, remember?” Abby drifted over to Kate with a grin. “Recovering, of course. All things are possible through our lord and savior.”
Kate couldn’t help but chuckle and shoved her. “Go back to shortstop.”
“Same old Cruz!” Courtney yelled from home plate. “Still flirting with Hutch!”
“Same old Seaborn! Still not funny!” Abby shouted back.
“Shut up and go back so I can hit!”
“This is more important than the fly ball you’re going to hit to left center!”
“You don’t know!”
Abby turned and gestured to left field. “Brookheimer, take two steps to your left! And one in! Perfect!” Abby pivoted back to Courtney and gave her a thumbs-up. “Okay, we’re all set. Go ahead, Court!”
“Screw you!”
Both teams, including Kate, doubled over in laughter.
“So, what was I saying?” Abby asked, completely unfazed by her audience. “Oh yeah, so it sounds like you’re single and I’m single.”
Kate smirked, her stomach flipping in a way she’d long forgotten. A way that no one had inspired before her and no one since. “And what are you going to do about it?”
Courtney smacked the ball. It flew high to left field. Brookheimer didn’t have to move, simply put her glove up. Abby never turned to see it, not even as the Eagles cawed in hysterics and Courtney flipped her off. Instead, she closed in on Kate again.
“You know, San Diego is less than a two-hour flight away,” Abby said.
“Oh, really? I would like to see Isla again. Those nephews of yours are pretty cute too.”
“Well, you know where they get it…”
Kate scoffed. “Yeah. Your sister.”
“What’s going on? Do you two need us to stop the game?” Mick asked.
“No!”
“Okay, then maybe pick it up after this, Cruz,” Mick said before addressing the field. “One out! Runner on one, infield turn two, outfield cut three!”
Abby grumbled and jogged back to shortstop. She worked the leather of her glove, spit, flexed her knees, and Kate swore they’d gone back in time. Her heart could hardly take it.
“You know, flights to San Francisco are pretty cheap too,” Kate said, as Madison Quong went up to hit.
Abby grinned. “I heard they even have a baseball team.”
“Yeah, me too. A little one, I think. Field by the water. Won some sort of trophy.”
“That’s the one,” Abby said as the pitcher started her windup. “Maybe there’s someone worth scouting up there.”
Madison drilled a ball to shortstop. Abby glanced from Kate not a second too soon, jolted a step to her right to snag the ball on a skip with her backhand.
Kate didn’t doubt that she’d get it, never slowed on her route to second, the ball always stopping in Abby’s wake.
She squared to Kate, took a step, and flipped the ball from her glove.
Kate caught it, tapped second base before T.K.
reached it, and fired a bullet to first for the double play.
Turning two—the only time they got it right.
Both teams cheered. Kate shivered as she approached Abby for a high five, but she never received it. Abby hugged her, lifted her off the ground, and Kate held tight.
“Hey,” Abby whispered when she released her.
The teams cleared the field, shaking hands and exchanging high fives.
“Hey,” Kate said back.
They stared at each other, in the careful distance. Abby’s breath shook on the way out, and Kate tilted her head.
“You okay?” she asked.
Abby nodded, her brow quirking, so that Kate didn’t know if she might laugh or cry. “I think I’m just overwhelmed by you.”
Kate’s throat tightened at the admission, at how far they’d come, and the unknown ahead.
She longed for the right words to take what she wanted, but faltered at the ghost of their failures and the reality of their separate worlds.
After tonight, another end loomed until the next alumni game called them back.
For all her progress, she was still in the middle, unsure of how to have both the life she’d worked so hard to craft for herself and the part of her heart she’d never learned to live without.
“I’m uh, going to get my stuff.” Kate cleared her throat.
The two of them slipped into the throngs of their teammates, losing each other in the catching up and goodbyes, the shuffle in and out of dugouts.
Kate joined Mick, Jill, and T.K. in the parking lot as the rest of their teammates tore off ahead for Sunny’s.
Another breath of old times. The four of them long ago had come together as scared freshmen and hadn’t broken apart since.
“Shall we?” Mick asked.
Kate furrowed her brow and glanced around. “Where’s Abby?”
“What do you mean? She’s not coming,” Jill said.
“Why?” Kate whipped around to find her, sinking under invisible weight when she didn’t appear.
“She’s headed to Venezuela or the Dominican Republic or somewhere to scout some kid.” T.K. sighed. “Can we go? I’m starving.”
“What? No. I didn’t get to say goodbye.” Her heartbeat filled her ears at Abby slipping away, just like after the national championship. “She can’t just leave like that without saying anything—”
Jill patted her shoulder, assuring her with a nod toward the field. “She’s still here.”
“Oh.”
Her breath returned when she spotted Abby at home plate, peering up at the mountain. And in that brief flash of fear, she ceased to be in the middle. Kate knew exactly what she needed to do. The others seemed to as well, stretching wide grins.
Mick tossed her the keys. “Turn the lights off and lock up when you’re done?”
“Yeah. I’ll catch up with you guys later.”
A gentle wind streamed through her hair, cooled the sweat from the game, left her shivering on the first steps back to Abby.
Toward exactly what she wanted. She paused at the fence behind her, living in that moment before you knew if it was an out or leaving the park.
Before Abby turned with the same gleam in her gaze that had greeted her eight years ago. A reminder to breathe and let go.
“It’s never going to work, you know,” Kate said.
Abby didn’t turn right away, but Kate didn’t mind the wait. She knew this was it, the same way she knew the sound of a ball meeting the bat before a double play. She wasn’t playing the game scared or halfway. They were right where they were supposed to be.