professionally.
Once, back in high school, I’d asked him if he was coming to the championship game, and he’d told me that watching me play gave me the wrong idea. DD said that it filled my head with false hope and gave me the impression that he supported nonsense, which he considered baseball to be. I thought he believed that if he never showed up, I’d stop wishing he was there. Or maybe he thought I’d stop wanting to play altogether without his support. Neither had proven to be true.
A loud whistle blew, scaring the shit out of me. I jumped and looked out the passenger window to see an airport cop waving us along. We’d been sitting at the curb for too long.
Thank God.
“I gotta go,” I said before getting out of my car and heading toward the trunk, where my bags were waiting.
It would be so much easier to have my car with me in California. I really hated asking people for rides. It was embarrassing. And now, I had to ask someone new to tote my non-driving ass around since Chance was gone.
The least he could have done was leave me his car, I thought for a moment before remembering that he had given me the master suite in the baseball house, so I couldn’t really be too pissed.
The most coveted room in the house was about to be mine. Although I would have preferred getting drafted instead and not needing the room at all.
I walked toward the double glass doors when the sound of DD’s voice stopped me. “Focus on your future, Mackenzie. It’s time to start letting this pipe dream go. We made a deal,” he reminded me before rolling up the window and driving off.
I stood there, bags in hand, heart on the fucking floor.
The deal.
My dad had forced me to agree that if I didn’t get drafted, I’d come work for his tax prep company after I graduated. He even made me sign a contract. At eighteen years old, I wrote my name on the dotted line, too naive to know better. He’d used Fullton State as his bargaining chip. It was the only way he’d allow me to move to California and pay for what the scholarship didn’t cover, which was some hefty out-of-state tuition costs. I’d like to think I’d have rebelled and gone to school there anyway without his help, but I wasn’t sure that I would have. More than likely, I’d have opted to stay in Arizona and played baseball at some second-rate college instead. And I would have felt like I was drowning in all that hot air.
It burned like hell, knowing that my dad, of all people, didn’t believe in me or my ability. Every time he told me to give up on baseball, it felt like a fucking knife to the chest. I’d barely been able to breathe the first time I heard him say it. He knew how much I loved the sport. He saw how hard I worked, how much I planned for a future in it, and how dedicated I was to the game. But none of it mattered. He never believed in me, and that was the kind of shit that left you with scars you couldn’t see.
Punching in the numbers at the kiosk, I waited for it to print my baggage claim stickers and wrapped them around the handles of my duffel bags before heading toward the counter to drop them off. The ticket lady was sort of hot, but even flirting with her didn’t make me feel better, and I walked in the direction of the security line, my head all sorts of fucked up.
Boys are So Frustrating
Sunny
I
was simultaneously looking forward and dreading heading back for my senior year at Fullton State. Danika, my best friend and ex-roommate, was in Florida with her boyfriend, Chance Carter, the baseball superstar, and I was all alone.
I hated being alone.
Anytime Danika had left to go visit her dad back home in New York when we lived together, I’d drive the whopping forty-five minutes away from campus and go home too. That was how much I hated being in our apartment by myself. Most people reveled in their solitary, but I just wasn’t one of them. To put it bluntly, I was scared and uncomfortable. It wasn’t like I had some giant guard dog to keep me safe from intruders or anything.
But over the summer, I’d decided that it was time to face my fears.