Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Lucas
Batting practice is the closest thing to a real game that isn’t one, and I treat it like one.
The batter digs in. I take my sign from the catcher, set, and fire—a four-seam that catches the top of the zone and pops the mitt so hard the catcher shakes his hand out. It wasn’t full gas, but it was close enough.
“There it is,” someone says behind me.
I don’t look. I just reset.
The next batter is left-handed, which means I’m working the back foot, trying to make him uncomfortable in the box. I throw a slider that starts at his hip and breaks back over the corner. He takes it for strike three, jaw tight, not wanting to give me anything.
I take the ball back from the catcher and roll it in my fingers.
I know Doug’s here somewhere. I know Scottie is too—I spotted her when I came out of the dugout, her clipboard in hand, not looking at me, which I’ve learned is its own kind of look.
I don’t glance over.
I just pitch.
Four batters. Twelve pitches. I don’t give up a hit.
When Mel waves me off the mound, I pull my hat down and walk toward the dugout, and I let myself do the thing I’ve been holding off all week.
I look.
She’s already moving toward the tunnel, head down, pen moving across her clipboard, and she doesn’t look back.
Of course she doesn’t.
***
When midafternoon rolls around, I’m in the weight room running through a lower-body circuit designed to keep my legs under me in August—trap-bar deadlifts, single-leg Romanian deadlifts, resisted lateral band walks.
Doug showed up a few minutes ago and has been moving between racks and talking low with the strength coach, hands in his pockets, taking it all in.
As much as I’ve been showing off today, showing off in the weight room is something only idiots do, so I focus on clean reps and not getting injured.
Then I hear a sharp whistle.
“Fischer.”
Logan and I are working out next to each other, and our heads both whip over to Doug. He looks between us.
“Lucas Fischer,” he says, doing a “come here” gesture that makes my earlier confidence tremble. Once I reach him, Doug leads me out of the weight room and down the tunnel, away from earshot.
“What a morning,” he says.
“Trying to make an impression.”
“You’re halfway there.” He walks another few steps before he continues, like he’s deciding how much to give me. “I watched the Triple-A championship tape.”
My jaw clenches. It was the best game of my life, but I don’t always like thinking about it.
“You were throwing a perfect game through nine, and Fletch pulled you at a hundred pitches.” He stops. “You didn’t fight him. You just walked off that mound like you were going for a summer stroll.”
I stand straighter. “It was the right call. Fletch said you wanted me on a pitch count in case you needed me in October. Besides, Logan closes. That’s his role.”
“Maybe.” He folds his arms. “Or maybe you’ve gotten so comfortable being the guy who sets things up that you don’t know how to be the guy who finishes.”
I pause, trying to hide my annoyance with the man who controls my fate. “You’re calling me up to be the setup man.”
“You’re right,” he says. I nod, but he’s not done. “I’m calling up a reliever with starter stuff.”
Starter stuff. I’m pretty unflappable on the mound, but a Major League GM called my pitching “starter stuff.”
I’m flapping. Hard.
Doug’s eyes don’t leave mine. “Fischer, the guys who get the call aren’t just the most talented. They’re the ones who decide they’re not handing the ball back.” He looks at me steadily. “Are you one of those guys?”
“I can be.” Can’t I?
“Then stop treating your floor like it’s your ceiling.”
“Sir?”
“Stop throwing ninety-eight.”
He lets that land.
But underneath it, quieter and colder, lands the thing I never say to Logan, the thing we’re both dancing around every day.
Stop throwing ninety-eight doesn’t just mean pitch better.
It means stop waiting. Even if that means leaving Logan behind.
Doug turns and starts walking us back in the direction we came.
“Scottie speaks highly of your makeup. Says you’re consistent, handle people well, show up the same way every single day.” The corner of his mouth moves. “But she agrees that you’re holding back.”
I have to force myself to keep walking.
“I like people who handle people well,” he continues, like he didn’t just detonate something in my chest. “I’ve had enough of liabilities and headlines.”
He gives me a gentle push into the weight room and keeps walking down the hall while I turn in.
Stop throwing ninety-eight. I’m calling up a reliever with starter stuff.
I’m still mulling that over when the other thing lands.
She agrees that you’re holding back.
Doug thinks I have starter potential. Scottie’s been talking me up to him.
And apparently talking me down at the same time.
The noise of the weight room hits me in pieces—the clank of plates, the hiss of breath, the low thud of someone’s playlist through a speaker. Logan’s at the bench press across the room. Joe Scarpetta’s at the cooler with one of his coaches.
And Scottie’s by the medicine ball rack with her iPad clutched to her chest, talking to Diego.
She hasn’t seen me yet.
I look at her for a moment—the professional set of her shoulders, the slight furrow between her brows at whatever they’re saying, the way she clicks her nails on the back of the iPad case.
She told Doug I was holding back. She’s been watching me closely enough to say that to my GM and saw something I thought I was doing a better job of hiding.
Maybe they both did.
I don’t know if it’s all that or if it’s just seeing her after having my heart exposed, but something shifts in my chest, and my feet are moving before my brain can catch up.
Scottie looks up when she hears me coming, and her expression cycles through surprise, caution, and something warm that she barely manages to put away in time.
I take her by the waist and spin her once.
She gasps, her free hand flying to my shoulder, her iPad nearly going airborne.
Her body stiffens at the exact moment that I register the room.
Logan, mid-rep on the bench, staring.
Scarpetta, cup halfway to his mouth, watching.
I set her down.
“Scottie Quinn!” I say, trying to cover for my idiotic, unforgivable lapse in judgment.
She’s looking at me with wide eyes and slightly parted lips—too shocked to be angry—and before she can say anything, before anyone can say anything, I’ve already turned toward the nearest person.
Coop.
He’s racking a barbell at the squat station, eyebrows raised to his hairline.
I grab him by the shoulders and spin him too.
“What the—”
“It’s a great day, Coop!” I say, clapping him hard on the back and forcing a big fake grin. “A great day.”
He looks at me like I have a head injury. “You okay?”
“Fantastic,” I say and walk back to my station.
I look at Scottie in the reflection, see her watching me.
“That was sweaty and disgusting,” she says.
The smile on my face makes me feel nauseous. Nauseated. “That one was free,” I say, grabbing the lightest set of dumbbells on the rack. “The next one’ll cost you.”
“It’ll cost you a lot more when I slap you with a restraining order,” she grumbles. A couple of the guys laugh. And just like that, I’m back to doing my reps, keeping a smile on my face that’s even dumber than my normal one.
My form is clean. My breathing is controlled. Every outward signal says nothing happened.
But I can still feel the exact place on her waist where my hands were.
And I can feel Logan watching.
And I know—with the certainty of someone who just jumped out of an airplane without a parachute—that I didn’t spin her because I forgot where I was.
I spun her because she told Doug I was holding back, and standing there looking at her, I couldn’t figure out if she was talking about baseball.
Or us.
Or about the guy on the bench press who just watched me do something breathtakingly stupid.
Stop throwing ninety-eight.
But Doug said something else, too, something I keep circling back to:
I’ve had enough of liabilities and headlines.
How do I tell Doug he can’t have it both ways?
***
The field smells different when it’s not game time: less grass and dirt, more sunscreen and sweat.
The staff has set up folding tables down the first-base line, navy tablecloths stamped with the Firebirds logo, and the sponsor’s bright red lettering. A vinyl branded backdrop flaps at the edge of the concourse, anchored by sandbags.
Parents hover behind their kids with phones already recording. Somewhere near the dugout, a local radio station is doing a live broadcast—music pumping through a speaker so loud, we may as well be in a nightclub.
The sun is high, but with the breeze, it’s a perfect day for baseball.
I grab a Sharpie from the equipment guy and step behind my assigned table. Logan drops into the seat next to me and nudges my knee.
“Check it,” he says, nodding toward a group of kids in their jerseys.
“What am I looking for?” I ask.
Among the sea of navy, red, orange, and white, I spot three kids wearing powder-blue-and-rust-red uniforms.
“They’re wearing our jerseys?”
Logan snorts. “Look closer. They’re all wearing yours, Setup Man.”
“Yeah, but they’ll be wearing yours by the end of the season,” I say.
The kids descend on us before Logan can respond.
A girl in braids pushes a Firebirds hat toward me, and I sign it carefully, making my F too big for the rest of the letters, but it’s what the fans like. She beams when she takes it from me.
“Thank you!” she gushes. “I love your videos!”
“I’m glad. But make sure your parents know what you’re watching, right?”
She rolls her eyes. “Old people are so boring,” she mutters to her friend, and Logan and I both give identical snorts.
More and more kids come, and when it gets to the kids in the Flaps jerseys, they ask to take pictures with us, and we gladly oblige.
I love it.