not sure at all why I’m telling him this story. It’s a story I don’t think about anymore, one that I no longer turn around in my memories the way I used to. “We’d gone to see a Cougars game, just me and my brothers. The park was pretty empty, and we wound up in seats right above the opposing team’s dugout. We cheered for the Cougars and ate hot dogs and popcorn and so much soda that several times it wasn’t clear I’d make it to the bathroom in time. And at a certain moment in the eighth inning, I realized that the other team’s pitcher was throwing a perfect game.”
I laugh at the memory, my eight-year-old naïveté in believing that I was the sole person in the ballpark who realized it.
“I told my brothers and they got all excited, which I now realize was probably just an act. And then, I walked over to the dugout and leaned down. One of the guys turned to me, thinking I probably wanted an autographed ball or something. Do you know your pitcher is throwing a perfect game? I asked, and then walked back up to my brothers as they howled. Because sure enough, the next guy up to bat homered and ruined the perfect game.”
Zeke roars with laughter. “You actually deliberately ruined the guy’s perfect game by saying it out loud? You guys are hard-core.”
I think about that memory again, the way Si and Jed were so proud that I’d done it, the T-shirt and pennant they bought me after the game. The pennant still hangs over my bed at home, signed by all the players on the Cougars. Si and Jed told each and every guy the story as they signed the pennant.
I wish those two stories together were enough. I wish I could go back to being that person, the person who loved the game, who didn’t see so much of my family disappear into it. I wish I could go back to seeing baseball as the fun game played out on a field with the smell of popcorn and hot dogs all around me. I can see why Zeke would love it.
I wish that . . .
Je souhaite que . . .
And because it’s Zeke, and because we’ve spent so much of every day of the last seven weeks together, he reads all of this all over my face. I watch as his smile fades, as his lips press together, as his head shakes.
His hand comes to rest on mine, and I stare at it. I wonder what it looks like holding a baseball, whether he shifts it around in his palm, trying to find just the right grip. I wonder if he’s the type of guy, like Si and Jed, who always carries one in his bag, always there to flip in the air and catch again, the routine soothing.
This hand is also the one that held my hand, fingers curled around mine, that drifted down my arm, resting on my camisole on Sunday morning.
Instead, I stare at the holes in my Chucks. A worn spot below the white rubber. Six punched holes on either side for the laces. The laces that are fraying. I probably should get new ones, but where does one even buy new laces? A shoe store?
“Abby?”
Twelve holes. Douze trous. Two shoes. Deux chaussures. Twenty-four holes. Vingt-quatre trous.
So many holes.
How can I make this better?
He stands up, and my heart sinks. “The truth is,” I start, the words covered in cobwebs and thorns and sadness. “The truth is, I can deal with the baseball. I mean, it’s not the worst thing in the world that you play baseball, right? That you’re good at it. People have done worse things, right?” I try to chuckle but really there’s no chance that anyone else would recognize the sound I make for laughter.
“And I can kind of understand why you didn’t tell me. It doesn’t make me feel less stupid about the whole thing. And it still makes me angry that all that time, you were keeping this huge thing from me. You were disappearing into Boston and into phone calls and for all I knew, you could have been a drug dealer.”
He raises his eyebrows, just a touch, and then they drop down.
“I may have an overactive imagination,” I admit. “But I’m sad that you didn’t trust me. I get why at the beginning, but I’m sad that after . . .”
After we kissed.