Thirty-Four
BY THE TIME I’ve broken away from the other guys on the team and made my way down to where Abby is still standing, the punks are nowhere to be seen.
I ask Abby if they had been bothering her.
“If I’d really been bothered, I would have walked away,” she says. “But I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.”
“You know who they are, right?”
“Hard not to know after what you told me about what happened at the high school,” she says.
“Did they say anything about that?”
“The one with the black eyes told me to tell the Big Nothing he’d be in touch,” she says. She shivers. “Man, Silas, don’t you kind of wonder who gives those boys the creeps?”
Most of our team is headed over to Rowdy’s then, the same way we’d go to Scobee’s after a big win in high school, in any sport. Abby says she’ll meet us there. Taylor had come over to congratulate me and said she was working late at Scobee’s tonight, but to enjoy my date with Abby.
“Not a date,” I say.
“Whatever you say,” she says, and makes me think there’s all sorts of ways to end up back in high school.
When we’re all at the bar, Vince says that since I’m now a full-fledged member of the team, our next game is next Monday at Corley, not that I asked.
“Nope,” I say. “I’m already back into retirement.”
“You’re telling me a swing like that isn’t going to bring you back?”
I take a sip of my beer. “Still not enough action for me in baseball,” I say. “Look at tonight. Great example. Everybody had to wait all night for something interesting to happen.”
I stay for only one beer, but make sure to tell Earl behind the bar that I’m picking up the tab for everybody tonight.
Abby walks out to the parking lot with me. The truck is pretty much in the same spot it had been when it had been shot at. Her car is next to it.
“Like old times,” she says.
“Don’t know what got into me with that swing.”
“I do,” she says, and then her hands are around my neck and she’s pulling my face down and giving me a high school kiss that is very much like old times.
When we finally pull out of it, I instinctively look around the lot to see if anybody is watching us.
Small town thing. But there’s nobody else around.
“Got my own apartment now,” she says. “Over at the Vue. Just like a big girl.”
I lean down and kiss her on the cheek and say, “Not tonight, dear.”
She manages to laugh. “Got a headache?”
“Might be the only part of me that doesn’t ache right now,” I say.
“I might be able to help out with that,” she says, her voice suddenly husky.
I give her another chaste kiss on the cheek. “Somehow, Abby Wells, I doubt that very much.”
She reaches up and puts a hand to my cheek. “You’re still as good a kisser as you ever were.”
“Gotta be good at something more than hitting a softball.”
“Call me,” she says.
“I will.”
“Liar,” she says.
I wait until she’s pulled out of the lot and her taillights have disappeared before I get into the truck.
Nobody shoots at me tonight.
It’s because they’re waiting for me back at the farm.