Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
COOPER
“ Y ou said I had a walk, hit a single, and …”
“Hit a sac fly,” Liesel says. “It was incredible.”
I nod. “Do you remember how I got walked? It was my very first at bat.”
She shakes her head.
“I was hit. Chris Kirby drilled me. I’d never faced a pitch that fast and hard, and I barely turned enough to take it in the shoulder.”
“Oof. Do you think it was intentional?”
“I know it was. He smiled at me as I ran to first. But that’s not all.”
“What else was there?”
“Do you remember what my team did?”
“I don’t remember anything .”
“Exactly. They saw an opposing pitcher target a rookie at his first appearance in the Majors, and they did nothing. No one stormed the mound for me. No one got outraged. My coach yelled something at the ump, but that’s it. I was 20. I’m not saying I was a little kid, but I was the youngest person on the field by, what, four or five years? You called me a classless punk, but I wasn’t mouthy in the minors. I wasn’t some hotshot jerk looking for attention. I was hustling day in and day out to get to the Show, and the second I arrived, I was punished for being too good.”
Her mouth twists to the side. “I didn’t realize that.”
“It’s not like I could talk about it. I wasn’t going to sit in interviews and complain about how everyone was out to get me. But I couldn’t just act like Colt Spencer, either. I’m not him. I don’t have that ability to be diplomatic or … manipulative when I’m upset. And above anything, I couldn’t let my mom find out that what they did to hurt me.”
Liesel cocks her head to the side. “Your mom?”
“Yeah, my mom. She follows my career like a hawk, and she’s a little overprotective of me.”
“What did she say after the game?”
“I had six furious voicemails?—”
“Voicemails?”
I swallow a pain almost as old as I am. “She didn’t come to the game.” I inhale, pausing just a second before admitting, “She’s never been to a game.”
Shock hits Liesel like a fastball to the helmet. “What?”
“I don’t mean just MLB; I mean ever .”
Tears spring to her eyes, and they’re shedding before I can stop her. Before I can stop my own eyes from following her lead. My lips pull into a frown that I can’t wipe away. “Her social anxiety became full blown agoraphobia when I was a kid. It’s been bad my whole life. So much worse than bad.” The wind howls outside of the car, an echo of the howling pain I’ve suppressed for so many years. “When I was little, she was always late getting me, and I found out later that she’d sit in the car for minutes that eventually became hours trying to psych herself up to leave our apartment complex or the parking lot. One day, she couldn’t pick me up at all, and my dad—who used to be a long haul trucker—was miraculously home at the right time to get me before the school called the police.”
“Coop.” The word escapes her mouth like a sob.
“I didn’t know what was going on. I was just a kid,” I say, brushing tears from my face. “I thought there was something wrong with me, some flaw in my personality that made her not care. My dad put me in therapy for a few years after that happened, and I learned how to accept that her problem wasn’t a reflection of me. But understanding that intellectually and feeling it emotionally aren’t the same thing.”
“Of course not,” she says. She grabs my hand and holds it. Her hand is cold, so I cover it with mine. We’ve rolled the windows up and the heat is on, but Liesel still shivers. “Did your mom ever get help?”
“She did Telehealth for a while, but she wasn’t at a place to be able to accept it. I don’t think she ever has been. Every few years, she’ll say she’s going back to therapy, but it’s never stuck. She’d be able to make a little progress—like walking up and down the stairwell, making it to the car or mailbox. But every time she made progress, something happened. Dad got into a fender bender. I got a black eye playing basketball with friends. A strange dog would run up to her. And she would spiral.” The lump in my throat has dropped to my chest, a weight that keeps me more rooted to the seat than any blizzard could necessitate.
“The last time she seriously tried therapy was when I was drafted,” I say. Liesel strokes my hand with her index finger. “She’d sworn up and down my whole life that nothing would keep her from getting to my first game in the Majors. I wanted so badly to believe her. I worked extra hard, thinking it would be enough incentive for her to finally get over the hump. She and my dad planned the drive from New Mexico to Phoenix. I was starting to hope for the first time in a long time. But she had a panic attack fifty miles outside of Las Cruces, and he had to turn around.”
Liesel wipes her thumb across my cheek and peers into my eyes. “She’s missed out on so much. So have you.”
“Yes and no. I feel like a loser complaining about this when you’d do anything to have your mom here.”
“Don’t do that,” she says firmly. “Don’t dismiss your feelings. My pain has nothing to do with yours. You can’t stop yourself from hurting because you think someone else is hurting worse. What you’re describing sounds really hard.”
“It is.” Guilt hits me for saying that. “But it isn’t, too. My mom is amazing . She celebrated every win, every hit, every play with me the second I got home. She asked me to recount every second of every game, and she would laugh, boo, and cheer like it was happening for the first time. Everyday life was a reason to celebrate for her. She bent over backwards to make sure I felt like the most special kid in the world. I can’t blame her for being sick. I’m in awe of her for making the best of it.”
“But it still hurts.”
“Yeah, but her intentions matter. No one could have tried harder than my parents to give me a happy life. I refuse to fault her for trying her best.”
“Your friend said he saw her in the grocery store. Could she?—”
“No.” I shake my head hard. “No way. I can’t believe it, and I can’t go back to hoping and being disappointed all the time. I love my mom and I accept her for who she is. I won’t let unfair expectations hurt me or my relationship with her.”
Our hands are clasped over the center console. Her hands are both warm now, and that warmth spreads up my arms and into my chest. I’ve only ever planned to talk about this to one woman.
I’m glad it’s Liesel.
That tells me everything I need to know about her.
“Well, crap,” she says.
“What?” I ask.
“My crush is officially back.”
My lips stretch extra wide, and my chest swells. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It is a bad thing! You’re a tough guy to resist, Cooper Kellogg. All that emotional depth and maturity, and a perfectly good reason for that cocky persona? Ugh. How could I not feel something?”
“You forgot the jaw. I have a great jaw.”
“I take back the cocky part. It’s not a persona.”
“Fair.” I chuckle. “I am cocky.”
“But you’re not the jerk I made you out to be. You had a choice between being emotionally vulnerable on camera?—”
“You mean whiny.”
“Whiny on camera,” she corrects with a glint in her eye, “and being devil-may-care, and you chose the one that would make your mom happiest. So I repeat: crap.”
I squeeze her hands. “Because liking me is so horrible.”
“Kind of. Now we have to figure out what to do about Doug and my family.” She leans forward, and a lock of her hair loosens from her clip and spills down her neck. I sweep it aside, my finger skimming her neck and cheek as I tuck it behind her ear.
“We? You’re so sure there’s a we , huh?”
Her eyes widen and she yanks her hands from mine to cover her face. “Oh my gosh, do you not like me? Did I misread this whole thing?”
“No! I like you!” I tug her hands back to mine, threading my fingers through her delicate ones. “I very much like you. You didn’t misread anything.”
Then she grins knowingly. “Sucker.”
I chuckle. “That was a meaningless crime if I’ve ever seen one.”
“Not for me, it wasn’t. What if you hadn’t protested strongly enough?”
“What, you would have kicked me to the curb to face the storm alone.”
“Alone? Pfft. You’re a famous athlete. Someone would have let you in their car.”
I grit my teeth playfully. “You are something, Liesel Fischer.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
“So, now that we’ve established that we both like each other, is that kiss back on the table?”
“No. My nausea hasn’t subsided that much.”
“Ouch.”
She laughs. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Liesel leans forward and bumps her head against mine. She reaches her hand up to fiddle with her earring, but then she drops it. “My earrings!”
“They were in the pocket of your jeans,” I say. “Remember?”
She checks her pockets, and then her eyes go wider in panic. “They’re not here! Where could they be?” She pulls her bag from the backseat, careful not to disturb the Christmas cookies she was supposed to transport to her family’s Christmas Adam party. She rummages quickly, throwing her volunteer shirt out and inspecting everything inside. But there’s nothing. I find myself holding my breath that they’re there and not sitting in a bag on the bathroom floor of Feeding Futures, where an unobservant custodian could throw them out.
And then it hits me. “You climbed over the seat! In the car, when we switched spots!”
We both spin in our seats and look around the gear selector and cup holders. Our hands dart down to that dead zone between the seat and center console. Liesel flips in her chair and feels something, and she gasps. Then her hand snakes deeper under her seat and comes out triumphantly. “Got it!”
She pulls the small baggie out and fumbles as she tries to open it. I put a hand on her elbow. “Can I help?”
“Please.”
Her voice is so small. I take extra care opening the bag, and I give her one earring at a time. When she slides the last one into her ear, she exhales loudly.
“I can’t believe I almost lost them.”
“You didn’t, though. You misplaced them for a minute, but they were always there.”
She climbs back into the passenger seat, dropping like the weight of her fear has exhausted her.
“The earrings were a ‘push present’ from my dad to my mom when my brothers and I were five.”
“A push present? Isn’t that for when women give birth?”
“Yes, it is.” She sniffs. “They used to joke about that a lot. But he said that, in his uninformed opinion, raising triplets was way harder than giving birth to them, and it was the least he could do.”
“The very least,” I say with a snort.
“That’s what she always said.” Liesel’s smile is wistful. “She wore them everyday. When she couldn’t put them in by herself anymore, the home health nurse or I did it.”
“They look as good on you as they did on her.”
“Thanks.”
I reach an arm around her shoulders, and she leans into me over the center console. “Tell me about her. What are your favorite memories with her?”
She twists her earring and tells me story after story. Bumps and bruises her mom took care of, bedtime stories, watching baseball together as a family. So many Christmas traditions. The longer Liesel talks, the more I fall in love with her mom.
And the more I listen, the more I fall for Liesel, too.