The Problem with Sports - M.E. Clayton Page 0,14

now?” I asked, trying my damnedest not to laugh.

Nathan narrowed his eyes at me again-something I was noticing he did often-and asked, “Because those aren’t important concerns?”

Good Lord, Nathan Hayes really was crazy.

Chapter 8

Nathan~

This crap did not make any sense.

Like, none, at all.

Even though I knew nothing about chILD, I understood why Grant might not be able to play sports. Medical reasons. Totally legit. But to never have taken him to a game? That was just plain fucking crazy.

“You know,” she drawled out slowly as if she were addressing a crazy person, “there are children, all over the world, who claim you as their favorite Condor player, and claim the Condors as their favorite team, right? It’s okay if Grant doesn’t think-”

“What’s your name?” I asked, cutting off whatever crap she was about to spew, justifying Grant’s wrong ways.

“Andrea Miller,” she replied. “But most people call me Andie.”

“Does Grant share your same last name?” I was being super nosey and overstepping, but I needed to know if assault and kidnapping were really on the menu.

She cocked a brow. “You do realize you’re being extremely intrusive, right?”

I waved away her very valid point because I needed to know what I was up against. “Look, Andrea, Grant and I are going to become the best of friends, so I suggest you make this relationship as painless as possible.”

“What relationship?” she asked cautiously.

“Ours.” Has the woman not been paying attention?

“Uhm, excuse me?”

I let out a deep breath, and quite frankly, the woman was frustrating. Hot as molten lava, but still frustrating.

“Did you, or did you not, state earlier that you would never let your son go to a game with a stranger?” She just blinked at me, so I took that as my cue to continue. “So, the obvious solution to that is for us to become friends, right?”

She curled her lips in between her teeth, then gnawed on them a bit. After a few seconds, she asked, “So, you want to be friends with me, so that you can take Grant to a game? Is that it?”

Beautiful, but a bit slow on the uptake. “How else am I going to be able to take him?”

She shook her pretty little head before finally answering, “Grant’s last name is Hansen.”

“So, you’re divorced?” And, of course, I was asking strictly for Grant’s sake. The fact that she was beautiful with a smokin’ body had nothing to do with it.

“Two years,” she replied. “But…I’m only telling you this, so that you understand that Grant has a father. And Steven feels very strongly about Grant going to ballgames.”

Steven sounded like an asshole.

But I wasn’t going to tell her that.

Instead, I asked, “Why?”

She let out a tired sigh, and her hands started tearing at the label on her water. “Grant will never be a professional baseball star, Nathan,” she said. “He’ll never play soccer, or football, or hockey, or anything. It…it seems cruel to take him around something he loves so much, knowing he’ll never get to experience any of it.”

I thought about that.

After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, I asked, “What do you think is worse, taking a boy to a ballgame, even though he knows he can’t play, or putting a kid into sports all his life, even knowing that he’ll probably never play professionally?”

“What?”

I wasn’t taking her concerns lightly. Even with all the new gender-neutral expectations these days, there were still a lot of people who expected girls to play with dolls and boys to play sports. But no matter your views, a child not being able to play sports, or games, or even just exercise for health reasons was sad. So, I understood not wanting to put alcohol in front of a recovering alcoholic, but then why let him watch sports? Why let him become obsessed them at all? Or, maybe, that was their way of giving him a safe taste of sports. I wasn’t sure, but in my opinion, letting a kid go to a game, even though he’ll never play it, was less cruel than making a kid play sports, and trying to force the talent, only to come up empty in the end. It took more than talent to hit the pros.

“Grant already knows he can’t play sports, so he’s untainted by the lights and glamour. He enjoys sports for what they are, not for the celebrity they’ve become. He’s a true sports fan, unlike a lot of kids who are forced into sports by their parents, fame and money