Chapter Forty-Eight
Todd
I’m lowering myself into an ice bath when my phone rings.
“Hey,” I say.
“I watched the stream of your Summer League game,” Taylor says from her apartment in Arlington. “Tough loss.”
“The speed’s hitting me like a truck.” I lean back, relaxing as best I can in the frigid temperature. “I could use one of our practice sessions.”
“You still put up some respectable numbers.”
“Thanks.” I exhale heavily. “How are you settling in?”
“The training facility is incredible! They’ve got this biomechanics lab where we can analyze every batter’s motion down to the millimeter.”
“Sounds fancy.” I close my eyes and pretend she’s in the room with me. “They’re treating you okay?”
“Yeah, for the most part. Except the first base coach who keeps calling me the girl coach like it’s my actual title.”
I laugh. “Tell him the College World Series MVP deserves a little more respect.”
There’s a pause, and I can almost picture her shrugging. “Oh, you’ll never guess who was at the city league practice!”
My stomach drops. “Who?”
“Justin!”
My jaw clenches so hard I worry she can hear it through the phone. “Chase’s roommate? The law student from New Orleans?”
“Yeah, turns out his family’s from Arlington. He’s home for the summer.”
“That’s . . . convenient.” I try to sound neutral but land somewhere closer to passive aggressive.
If she notices, she doesn’t let on. “Yeah, he showed me this great taco place near my apartment—anyway, how’s condo hunting going?”
“I looked through some listings over lunch, but they all kinda blend together—gleaming countertops, floor-to-ceiling windows, just empty spaces waiting to be filled.”
“I’m sure you’ll find something that speaks to you soon—oh, Emma just got back from her birthing class, so we’re gonna go out for wings.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Same time next week?”
“Yeah . . . talk to you then.”
The line goes dead before I’m ready to hang up and I resist the urge to throw my phone into the water with me.
Instead I get out of the tub, get dressed, and head to the hotel’s gym despite my body’s cries for rest.
In comparison to the nights, the days aren’t hard—they’re a familiar rhythm: practices, games, meetings, and interviews. It’s when the lights are off and the hotel is quiet that I scroll through social media, then hate myself for it.
But I can’t help myself. In addition to our weekly calls, seeing her posts—a sunset over Arlington, her new office at the Rangers’ facility, a selfie with Emma, whose belly is fully visible—helps me feel closer to her.
After likely earning myself another ice bath, I check Taylor’s social media and see she’s posted again—a picture of her and Emma at the wing place. She’s smiling, hair tied back, looking more relaxed than I’ve seen her in years. I zoom in like a creep, checking for signs of Justin.
I don’t see any until the following week when she posts a picture with him at a Rangers game. They’re smiling, and his arm is casually draped over the seat behind her, but she doesn’t mention it when she calls.
“Your coach still riding you about those defensive rotations?” she asks instead, sticking to our comfort zone of sports—the language we’ve shared since we were kids.
“Not as much,” I reply. “So there may be hope for me yet.”
She laughs and my chest feels lighter than it has in months.
“I finally found a place too—move in at the end of the month,” I say.
“You need to buy some plants,” she says decisively. “Something alive.”
I almost say, “I need you,” but swallow it back. “How’s Emma?”
“She’s okay, her cravings are out of control, but she’s been talking to Jacob regularly. I actually think they’re going to make good parents.”
“They’ve certainly come a long way.”
“Yeah . . .” Her voice trails off, and I can tell she’s holding something back. It’s this new hesitancy between us—pauses where there used to be none, topics we carefully avoid.
We hang up shortly after that, and I go through another week of living in the gym, watching film until my eyes blur, and learning the tendencies of teammates I barely know.
My parents help me move as Summer League comes to an end. My mom filling up the fridge with food I won’t cook, my dad arranging the furniture then rearranging it again.
“This is really something, son,” my dad says, standing at the window overlooking downtown Minneapolis. “You’ve made it.”
“Yep, it’s everything I’ve ever wanted.”
Well, almost . . .
August brings a different rhythm. The practices are still brutal, but there’s a structure that wasn’t there in the chaos of July.
I learn which coaches expect questions and which prefer silence.
I figure out which teammates want to grab dinner after practice and which disappear into their own lives.
I establish routines—morning stretches, protein shakes, ice baths, evening film sessions—that give my days a sense of order I’ve been craving.
My weekly calls with Taylor stay consistent if uneventful until the middle of the month.
She doesn’t call at seven—our agreed-upon time.
I try not to stare at my phone, but by 7:30 I’m pacing, checking to make sure the ringer’s on, wondering if I should text her. Then at 8:15, the phone finally buzzes.
“Sorry,” she says, sounding exhausted. “Chase and my dad decided to surprise visit, and it’s been a whole thing.”
“Everything okay?”
“Mostly. Dad offered to move to Cleveland with Emma to give her and Jacob a better chance to co-parent.” She sighs heavily. “Oh, and Justin and I broke up.”
My heart lurches, but she says it so casually, like she’s mentioning a change in the weather, that I’m caught off guard. “You what? When?”
“A couple days ago. It’s not a big deal.” There’s a shuffling sound, like she’s shifting positions. “We were better as friends anyway.”
I’m gripping the phone so hard my knuckles are white. “I thought you guys were good together.”
“He was nice,” she says simply. “But it wasn’t going anywhere. Anyway, Emma’s got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and Chase is insisting on coming, which is sweet but also driving me crazy because he keeps rearranging my kitchen cabinets like there’s a correct way to organize coffee mugs.”
And just like that, we’re back to family drama, the breakup dismissed as irrelevant compared to the ongoing Coleman saga. I listen as she vents about her dad suddenly wanting a relationship with her, and about Chase hovering over Emma like she’s made of glass.
“Sorry for dumping all this on you.” She yawns. “Tell me something good. How’s Minnesota?”
I tell her about my teammates, about the plays we’re running, about the coffee shop I found that reminds me of the one near campus.
I don’t tell her that I think about her every time I pass a baseball diamond or that I’ve watched the College World Series highlight reel seventeen times, pausing at the moment she rounds the bases after her game-winning home run.
After we hang up, I sit in the quiet of my apartment, replaying her casual Justin and I broke up over and over. Did it really mean so little to her? Or is she just that good at hiding her feelings? Taylor’s always been a master of the emotional poker face, never letting on when she’s hurting.
Unlike me, sitting here obsessing over every word, every inflection, like I’m back in high school, trying to decode what it means when a girl bumped my shoulder during study hall.
What am I so afraid of? Rejection? It’s possible after she finds out I called Chase. Or is it the distance? Two hours by plane isn’t nothing, but it’s not insurmountable either.
Or maybe what I’m really afraid of is that she’ll say yes, and then what? My life is here, hers is there, and if I didn’t want her to give up her career for Emma, I definitely don’t want her to give it up for me.
But then I think about the weight of regret, and all the things I should have said that night after the draft . . .
Before I can talk myself out of it, I open the airline app on my phone. There’s a 10:40 p.m. flight to DFW—I could be there just after midnight. I book it, my heart pounding so loud I swear my neighbors can hear it.