Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Scottie
The gym floors are unnaturally shiny, and the chemical tang of floor cleaner is even stronger than the scent of the hand sanitizer the assistant principal made every kid use on the way in.
The students are already seated on the bleachers, knees bouncing, faces flushed with excitement.
The players are all mic’d up already, and Cooper is drawing enormous attention, as he should be.
He’s the top player in baseball and, in his words, he’s making baseball fun again.
He plays the game. He doesn’t suffer it.
He’s rubbed off on Lucas and Logan, who come from a family of baseball purists and used to think bat flips should come with written apologies. Next to Coop, Lucas is the most famous person in the room, thanks to social media and his rapidly rising star.
The kids lose it when he steps into the spotlight.
He kneels so he’s eye level with them, encourages a young boy before gently adjusting his grip. He tells a girl her fastball is “scary in the best way” and laughs when he trips over his own shoelaces.
He’s like sunlight—intense, warm, patient, and so bright, it burns to look at him, but I would rather go blind than look away.
This is why I needed him here.
And this is why what we have right now isn’t enough.
After drills, the kids get the chance to have a Q&A. I stand near the edge of the stage, tapping my fingernails against the back of my iPad.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Lucas turns his head toward me, watching my fingers on the back of the iPad. I stop the tapping.
He blinks, holds my eye, and then flicks his eyes back to the crowd.
Logan is mid-answer to a question about what to do when you mess up in a big game.
“You mess up again tomorrow,” Logan’s saying, but it feels like he’s trying to convince himself as much as he is the kid.
“If your teacher doesn’t win teacher of the year every year, does that mean they failed?
” He shakes his head. “Of course not. It’s easy to try to reduce sports to win or lose, but there’s so much more to it than that.
Every time you get back up, you win. Every time you try when you want to quit, you win. It’s only messing up if you give up.”
The students all applaud, but another kid calls out a question before the teacher can give the mic to someone else. “But what if something bad happens and you can’t stand playing anymore?”
Logan’s head snaps back, and Lucas is right there, before anyone can see how hard Logan took that.
“If you don’t love it, that’s one thing. But if you do, well …” Lucas inhales slowly. “Our mom got sick when we were around a lot of your ages. She loved baseball even more than we did. When she was sick, there were days I didn’t want to get out of bed, let alone play sports.”
The back of my nose stings listening to him.
“Our dad would let us stay home with her if we wanted to,” he continues, “and one day when she was feeling really bad, Dad was out of town, and I asked her if I could stay home from a tournament. I thought for sure she’d say yes.”
Logan looks at Lucas like he doesn’t want to remember this story.
“But she said no. She said she loved watching me play too much to let me stay home. I told her that didn’t make sense, because she wouldn’t be watching me play.
I told her I wanted to be with her.” He sniffs and rubs his nose, and for a minute, he’s too overcome with emotion to get the words out.
“But she wasn’t hearing that,” he says, half laughing in a way that makes me think she gave him a talking to.
“She said she’d always be there when I was playing. No matter what.”
He dashes a tear from his cheek and clears his throat. He can’t go on.
Seeing him struggle with emotion, I want to rush across the stage and throw my arms around him.
But Logan’s recovered, and he steps in. “What Lucas isn’t telling you is that our dad had hidden an entire package of Oreos under Mom’s bed, and Lucas was waiting for her to fall asleep so he could eat them.”
The crowd roars with laughter.
Lucas coughs a laugh. “You promised you’d never mention that!”
“You promised to split the Oreos with me.”
More laughter.
They’re so good together, it hurts to think that Lucas is having to keep such a big secret from him.
“Okay, there may or may not have been Oreos,” Lucas says. “But there was also a mom who wouldn’t let us quit. And I’m grateful for it. It was a reminder that there’s more to life than sports, but there’s more to life than grief, too. You can have fun and mourn at the same time.”
Logan nods. “You can work and play.”
The two end the question with so much grace and humor, I doubt anyone even remembers Cooper Kellogg is in the room with them. But soon the next question comes, followed by another and another until we’re at time.
After the session, the guys take pictures and sign autographs. The whole time I’m walking between the tables, I notice a middle schooler hanging back, arms crossed tight like he’s holding himself together. It’s the kid who asked the question about how to keep playing when something bad happens.
I finally walk over to him. “Would you like a picture? An autograph?”
He shakes his head, his eyes fixed on Lucas and Logan.
“What’s your name?”
“Matt.”
“Why don’t you hang back with me for a bit. Does that sound okay?”
He nods, and together, we wait for every kid to get their time with the Fischer brothers. As soon as the last one has gone through, I take Matt over to them.
“Lucas, Logan, this is my friend Matt.”
The brothers pause, recognizing him immediately. When he doesn’t say anything, they give each other a look that tells me they know a lot more about what’s going on with Matt than I do.
“Do you play sports, Matt?” Logan asks.
“Soccer.”
“Ooh, that’s a good one,” Lucas says. “We played all through middle school. Loved it. Sucked at it, but loved it.”
Matt gives him a half smile.
“Do you play competitively or on a rec league?”
“Uh, competitively. At least I used to. I was on a travel team.”
“Wow,” Logan says, his eyebrows raising. “You must be good. Travel teams are tough to get on.”
Matt nods, but he’s still standing with his arms crossed tightly around himself. He looks like he wants to say more but can’t. Logan and Lucas wait, though. The other guys are all getting up from their tables, but not the Fischer brothers.
“My mom died last month,” the boy says, voice barely above a whisper. “She used to take me to every practice.”
Both Fischers nod.
“I hate playing now. She’d be so mad at me if she knew, but I hate it. It reminds me of her.”
“Did she like watching you play?” Lucas asks.
A sob escapes Matt’s throat, and he nods fast. “Yeah, she loved it. She always said she was my number one fan.”
“Was she more of a foam-finger fan or a face paint fan?”
“Both. And she was so loud, I could hear her anywhere.” He looks like he wants to laugh, but he’s too busy trying not to cry. “I used to be so embarrassed about the way she’d cheer.”
A sob rushes out of him, but he sucks in his breath, like he’s trying to pull it back in.
Logan blows air out of his mouth in a fast swoosh that makes me glance at him.
But Lucas just nods. “I bet she loved embarrassing you.”
Matt fully laughs. “I think she did. She said she wasn’t like other soccer moms—she was a lame soccer mom.”
Lucas and Logan laugh. But they’re crying, too. There are too many emotions to hold back.
“She’d hate if you quit forever, Matt,” Lucas says.
The boy blinks hard.
“Yup,” Logan agrees, his voice shaking. “It’s even more reason to play now that she’s gone, because you’re playing for her.”
“But it hurts,” Matt cries, his shoulders shaking.
“Then let it hurt,” Lucas says, getting up and walking around the table. Logan is a half step behind him. They lean down. “Because if it hurts, then it matters.”
I stand a few feet away and blink through tears I refuse to let anyone see. And when Gabriela tries to get me to move them along, I cut her off.
“They need a minute,” I say.
She looks past me and then nods. “Okay. But the principal’s trying to get everything back in order. The kids all have to get to lunch.”
“I’ll make sure he gets there soon.”
Gabriela walks over to the assistant principal and mutters something, and I glance over my shoulder to see the brothers hugging Matt. One of the gym teachers is sniffing from nearby.
My heart feels bruised when I finally look away, but I can’t keep my eyes on them for a minute longer.
I wonder, not for the first time, what it would feel like to let someone see me cry.
Not today. But I wonder.
Then Lucas laughs at something Matt says, and the sound of it reaches me across the gym. If seeing Lucas with kids weeks ago was enough to make me swoon, seeing him with Matt has made me fall completely.
Right over the line.
***
When the gym finally empties, we all help one of the PE teachers put the equipment away, not because it’s our job, but because I don’t think any of us wants to leave yet.
“Where can I put the balls?” I ask the man.
“The closet along the far side of the wall,” he says, pointing. “Let me help.”
“I got it,” Lucas says, coming behind me and grabbing the extra buckets.
We walk over to the supply closet in silence. Fluorescent lights buzz louder than a beehive. The door is propped open, but the squeak of the man’s sneakers on the floor fade away in the small closet.
Lucas puts his buckets on the shelf labeled “baseballs.” The closet is too small for us to both be useful at the same time.
“You were incredible with those kids,” I say, my voice steadier than I feel. “With Matt.”
“Thanks. It ripped my heart out,” he says. “But it was good, too.”
I lift my bucket of balls in my arms and tap the fingernails of both my hands on it, the quick clicking sounding as satisfying as it feels.
Lucas watches my fingers like he’s somewhere else entirely. When I stop, he seems to come back to himself and grabs the bucket from me.
“I love the way you do that.”
“Do what? Tap my fingernails?”
He nods. Takes a slow step toward the door. “My mom was a sports reporter. Did you know that? She reported on local high school sports for one of the big outlets in Chicago.” We get to the door and he lets me out first, and then we walk slowly through the gym.
“One of my favorite things to do was to lie on the floor in her office while she was typing. I would lay all my baseball cards out in front of me and would sort them while her fingers just clicked and clacked on the keyboard. It’s my favorite sound in the world.”
I’m strangely honored that my habit is so comforting to him. “That’s really sweet.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “My mom would have liked you a lot.”
He says this so freely, like this isn’t the kind of conversation to save for when we can finally date openly.
We’re halfway to the rest of our group, so I have to control my emotions, even though I’m sick to death of having to watch myself around him. We’re allowed to talk! Expected to. It shouldn’t matter if Logan’s in the room or not.
“You really think she would have liked me?” I ask, glad the guys are talking with the gym coach.
“You’re so much like her,” he says. “You wear yourself out helping others.”
Something in me wants to push that away before it can settle—to dismiss it as something nice, not something true. But I let it sit for a moment instead. Think about what he’s really saying—both the compliment and the … not.
“I’m not sure that’s always a good thing,” I say.
“Not always,” he says. “But it’s not a bad thing, either. It’s a boundary thing.”
“A boundary, huh? Like, say, knowing where the line is?”
He smiles at me. His brother is in the room—probably staring right at us—and he smiles. “Or moving it back,” he says.
My heart skips.
He’s smiling, but I know without a doubt he’s not joking. Only, he’s been clear: I’m in charge of moving the line.
He made the mistake of crossing it yesterday at the worst possible time and place.
He won’t do that again.
“What’s moving back?” Logan says when we get to him.
“Your hairline,” Lucas says.
Logan slaps his shoulder with the back of his hand. “Mirror image twins, bro. What you see is what you get.”
Lucas grins but slaps Logan’s gut.
And for a minute, I think they’re about to start a slap fight, but I put a hand on both of their arms and look at them.
“You guys—what you did for Matt—” I swallow.
“That was special,” I say. I’m not sure what comes over me, but the next thing I know, I’m pulling them both into a one-armed hug. “You guys are so special.”
“Uh, this is a little much,” Logan says, patting me awkwardly.
“Shut up,” Lucas says. “It’s nice.”
I let go of both of them, smiling. “You guys did good today.”
“Good enough to cancel Mel’s bullpen circuit this afternoon?” Lucas says hopefully.
I pat their cheeks. “No one’s that good. Buckle up, bros.”