Reaching down into the bucket, my hand curled around that smooth surface, fingers running the line of the seams in a grip that felt so easy, so second nature.
It was also something I hadn’t done in a long time.
Baseball was my passion.
I had scholarships. I had colleges lining up desperate to have me. Not only did I have the grades they wanted, but I was the best pitcher in the high school baseball league for the state of Louisiana. There was a chance I could have gone to the major leagues. It was my dream anyway, and my parents were behind me one hundred fucking percent. They put up with the constant practices and my need for perfection.
There were no parties, no drinking, no girls. None of that interested me. I was focused, and I was driven. So much so I decided to stay late after practice and work on my batting. I was good, but I wasn’t great, and to get to where I wanted to be, I needed to be a better all-rounder. Pitching got me the attention, but if I could bring up my batting, that was what would hold it.
I should have been home already, but I had amazing parents who were determined to support me, help me follow my dreams, and get to where I wanted to be. They would pick up, take me home, and then it would start over again the next day.
But that night, they never made it.
They never should have been on the road in the first place.
We should have all been home, but I was fucking greedy. I wanted the extra time on the field, the extra practice so I could be better and putting in the extra effort toward my future.
It was all about me.
It was all my fault.
The ball fell from my hand.
Stepping away, I glared at it as if it were diseased, a dirty piece of my past that I’d rather forget.
Six years, that’s how long it had been since I picked up a baseball.
Why now?
Because it seemed like I was about to face the bullshit of my past whether I liked it or not. So I was choosing to do it on my fucking terms.
I’d lecture Meyah about not living her life with regrets, encouraging her to talk to her mom and sort things out, yet I wasn’t speaking from experience. There were two things that haunted me every single day, and since I’d decided to talk a big game, it was time I faced up to them and tried to change them, so I didn’t spend the rest of my days letting them weigh me down.
One was not fighting hard enough for Romeo and Phee—a work already in progress.
The second was giving up the one thing that I fucking loved. The one thing I knew for a fact made my parents proud, and that they would have wanted me to fight for.
I was naive back then, but now I was old enough to know they would have never wanted me to throw in everything I’d worked so hard for. And in hindsight, maybe if I’d continued to battle through, maybe if I’d shown the courts how much determination and drive I had to succeed, they would have allowed Romeo and Phee to stay with me.
Hindsight was indeed a great thing.
It certainly rubbed those epic mistakes into your wounds.
I growled deep in my throat, angry with myself at how pathetic I was. It was just a fucking ball, so why in the hell was it so hard for me to just hold it? It should be easy especially given it was the only connection to a past where things were good—where my family was happy, and the people I loved and cared about were there with me.
Unfortunately, it was also part of the reason that I felt I destroyed my family.
It was hard when the one thing that never failed to make you feel better about life and more empowered and ready to face the world was the reason you needed to feel that way in the first place.
Rolling my shoulders, I plucked the stray ball up off the ground, breathing in deeply through my nose, trying to calm my muscles. If I threw this and fucked it up, I could have serious repercussions. I’d seen pitchers break their arms on a bad throw and do all kinds of damage to their ligaments and muscles.
Wouldn’t that be fucking karma?
I scuffed my feet against the ground and rolled the ball in my hand.
It felt natural for it to be there. I thought it would feel strange or awkward—I even wondered if it would feel painful.
It didn’t.