What I never thought would get easier somehow did. Christmas came, and Bruce and the boys came back to Bakersfield in time for the baseball season. For the last two months, Wes and I have talked by video about three times a week. He’s been continuing his therapy and studying with his mom, almost like being homeschooled, but away from home.

I’ve taken less shifts at the Jungle Gym, instead spending most of my extra hours working with my dad and Rebecca on the field.

The Girl Strong magazine story came out two weeks ago, and the attention from it has been a little overwhelming. I don’t have the news trucks Wes had when he came home after going missing, but I’ve had a lot of phone calls from sports journalists wanting to tell my story their way. I’ve shared with a few, because…ESPN, and I’m not stupid. I’ve gotten a lot of calls from colleges, too. It was hard for me to hear, but my dad was right when he said a lot of them were just interested in me as human-interest piece.

I’m not a sideshow.

I’m more than that.

Chico thinks I’m more than that.

The most recent call, however, came from Stanford, which of course made me think of Wes and his ability to see the future.

Fuck ‘em, and go play for Stanford.

I don’t talk to him about his special skills. I’ve asked Levi and TK, though, and they both say that those parts of Wes seem to have disappeared with his memory. As special as they were, they weren’t what made him special.

I’ve started to have dinner with the Stokes once a week. Sometimes my dad comes, and sometimes we even bring Grace. She’s stayed, and I don’t really see her going back to Tucson anytime soon, if ever. She’s found a place I think—maybe she longed for with my mom, only with me—and I crave a mother like her. She’s talked about finding a place nearby, maybe a condo, but my dad doesn’t rush her. She’s moved into the living room permanently, insisting he take his room when he was recovering. The sofa has been exchanged for a pull-out, and she seems fine with it.

I’m fine with it. If I get a legit offer from a college to play ball, I’ll suggest she takes my room when I’m gone. I’m keeping this plan to myself for now, but I think everyone will like it.

The men who held us hostage were just one link in a long chain of people who passed money down the coast and across the border in exchange for drugs. When the man my dad trusted broke that link, getting lost in Mexico with what ended up being nearly a million from various drug runners, the really bad guys started to notice. My family’s trauma is now documented in several pages of a DEA file that spans nearly a decade, and while we’ve been told that a trial will come and we will need to cooperate, I have this feeling that in the drug world, the bad guys vastly outnumber the good ones. The only silver lining is our debt is now considered extortion, like the drug lords committed fraud by not counting the money my father had paid. The only amount we can prove is what Grace lent us, because of the bank records.

Shawn called me the day after New Year’s. For the first time since I’ve known him, there was nothing cryptic in his words. He was, instead, rather direct. He told me never to tell Wes about him. To never remind him, and if he started to feel like there was something there, a memory that was foggy about a man in a wheelchair, an uncle—a father, Shawn wanted us all never to nurture it along. He said the same words to Bruce, to Maggie, and to TK and Levi.

I was angry at first, and I never promised. He didn’t ask for one though. He knew I’d follow his wishes. He knew he was going to die. And on a Tuesday in the middle of January, in a small apartment just on the border of Texas and Oklahoma, he did just that. The notice in the paper was small, almost invisible. Bruce assumed a neighbor must have submitted the obituary because he never did. He got the call that his brother had passed from a sudden cardiac arrest. It was deemed natural even though we all know there was nothing natural about Shawn at all. He left his brother everything left to his name—a red cape once worn by Christopher Reeve, and a 1991 Chevy van. Bruce sold both for four hundred and twenty dollars combined. TK and Levi spent it on catcher’s gear and a new bat.

I’m three months away from graduating. I’m going to graduate, and that alone, as Taryn keeps reminding me, is a miracle. My GPA is pitiful, but so far this spring, I’m hitting the ball hard. It isn’t fair, but I’m getting noticed more than those kids buried in books every morning at the library.

It’s my first weekend completely off from everything. My dad’s too. Finally back to work fulltime, he decided to spend his day napping, and I’m beginning to think he’s onto something as I unlace my running shoe from my good leg. I get the knot halfway untied when I hear a gentle knock at the screen door. I glance out my window and recognize TK’s shoulder, so I start to put my shoe back on as Grace answers the door.

“There’s someone here for you,” she says, meeting me in the hallway on my way out.

“I saw. They probably want to watch movies here or something,” I say, moving past her. Her hand grasps my shoulder, and she turns me just enough that I stop. My eyes meet hers, and all she does is shake her head and smile.

It had gotten easier, because it was distant. He was in Texas. I was in California. It was like nightly interviews that sometimes turned into me telling him about my day, him telling me about his. I labeled it long-distance friends finally, but now someone is here to see me.

My hands instinctively move to my hair, sweeping it up into a knot. I cut it recently, wanting to keep it out of my eyes when I ran. I hadn’t cut it in years, and the ends were starting to look shaggy. Wes won’t remember anyhow, but for some reason I wish my blonde waves fell further than my shoulders.

He’s standing behind his brothers as I approach the open door, maybe nervous too. I push open the screen and invite them inside.

“We were actually thinking maybe you could come hit some balls with us,” Levi says.

My gaze shifts from him to his brother behind him, and I wait for his blue eyes to flit up under the shadow of his hat. His mouth is flat, his hands in the pockets of a pair of black shorts that fall just above his knees. His body is so mature, and as grown up as I thought he was before he left for Texas, there are phases I’ve clearly missed. He’s an inch taller.

“Let me get my stuff,” I say, closing the door behind me and rushing out to the garage.

Grace opens the door just as I push the garage button, and her eyes glance out to the driveway, seeing the legs of the Stokes boys standing out front waiting for me.

“Tell Dad where I went, if he wakes up while I’m gone,” I say.

“I will,” she says, her eyes soft on mine. She doesn’t want me to get hurt. I feel her message in my heart.

“Give ’em, hell,” she winks as I back out under the door as it’s closing.

The truck running by the curb, Levi jumps in the driver’s side and TK hops in the back.

“You should sit up front, Joss,” he says, making obvious eye contact with me that makes me blush.

I hand him my gear and slide in to the middle of the seat as Wes climbs in on the other side. When he shuts the door, his knee brushes against mine. I stare at the place we touch until we reach the end of the block, but Wes doesn’t look at it once. I dare myself not to look at our knees again—sitting so closely—for the remainder of the trip.

“When did you get in? Or…are you and your mom just visiting?” I stare straight ahead as I wait for his response.

“It’s been a couple days. And yeah, we’re back for good. I’m starting on Monday,” he says.

Monday. So soon.

“Funny thing, Joss,” Levi cuts in, smirking as he looks sideways to me. “Seems the one thing that Wes can remember about you is the fact that you hit his slider out of the park when we first met.”

“Change-up,” I deadpan, glancing to the side at Levi, catching the way his lip raises a little higher. “And I didn’t hit it out of the park, just hard and down the line.”

“Now see, Wes here thinks it was a slider,” he says, his voice clearly taunting his brother.

“It doesn’t matter what he thinks it was, Levi,” I say, biting the tip of my tongue and turning to my right to look at Wes’s profile. His lips are forming a tight line, holding back a smile, and his eyes refuse to look at me. “And it doesn’t matter what he pitches to me. I’ll hit it. Because he still hasn’t learned how to hide his pitch.”

I cock my head a hint and pucker my lips, which finally gets Wes to look sideways with his eyes.

“Or did I?” he says, slowly.

There’s a familiar fire in my belly, and I’m careful not to make more of it than it is, but it feels good. It’s that competitive edge I love, but it’s also that small piece of us—perhaps my favorite piece.

Levi drives us right up to the fence for the field, and we slip through the space where the gate is locked poorly, the gap wide. We spend a few minutes throwing balls around, warming up our arms, and I continue to remind myself that this is just one more day, in a series of days, where my friends and I are doing something we love.

But then Wes makes his way to the mound and turns his hat, lowering it just a little on the right, the shadow drawing a dark line across his cheeks and nose. I get lost in his routine while I unpack my bat and slip on my hitting gloves. He digs the metal of his cleats into the dirt, kicking out the edge of the rubber, where my father told him to. He swings his glove loose on his wrist, adjusting the tightness, then feels the ball in his mitt, compressing it with his hand, forming his fingers to the threads and finding the right touch.

It’s all familiar, but it’s also what every pitcher does. I write it off as coincidence and nothing more. And then he bends down, and with his thumb, he wipes away the dirt from the tops of his shoes, until the white curves at the front of his feet are no longer covered in dust.

“You’re home,” I hum to myself.

I’m breaking Grace’s rule. This may hurt. I won’t care.

Levi pounds his glove, urging Wes to throw, and I study him carefully, watching as he works the ball and presents it before delivering snap after snap to his brother’s mitt. He throws seven or eight fastballs, and I count at least two curves. But there are no sliders, and he hasn’t shown me his change-up.

“Batter up!” TK shouts from the other dugout.

I push my helmet tighter and step up to the plate, tapping my bat on the end of Levi’s glove.

“No catcher interference now, you hear?” I say.

“No ma’am,” he responds.

I find my footing, feeling the weight even out on my blade and my front foot, my bat ready to strike just off my shoulder. Wes pulls his hat lower and brings the ball to his glove in front of his face. He thinks he’s hiding it, but I can see everything in the way his arm flexes. His forearm is turned in slightly, which means he’s feeling for laces, so it’s a fast ball. It takes him almost a full rotation, so my guess is four-seam instead of two. I adjust my weight, so my attack will be fast but level, and I see things in slow motion as his leg lifts, his elbow flexes and his wrist flicks, sending the ball soaring seam over seam toward me. I’m a little early, so this line drive shoots right over the third base line and into the weeds.

“You sure you still don’t want to marry me?” Levi says, chuckling and tapping his glove into my leg.

“Better luck next time, Wes!” he shouts to his brother.

Wes shakes his head, but as he turns, I catch the smirk on his lips as the sun unmasks him from the shadow of his hat. TK tosses him another ball from the dugout, and he starts his routine again. So do I.

I watch his hands work, his arm turn, the inside of his arm showing me more. His grip comes fast, but he continues to pretend. My father taught him this, but he still needs work. I see it coming, and he’s going to say it’s a slider, but it’s not.

It’s not, because it’s about eleven miles per hour slower, and that time feels like forever as I wait. I keep my bat back, letting the ball travel right to the sweet spot, releasing my arms and casting them through my zone knowing that sweet feeling of perfect contact is coming.

Until it doesn’t.

The ball drops fast, Levi blocking it at the edge of the plate, his laughter breaking through in an instant. I swung and I missed because that shit was a slider. My chest beats fast with my pulse, my arms tighten with the rush from the adrenaline I get when I’m mad. I am mad. I pound my bat on the plate then point it at Wes, holding it out like the end of a rifle. His smirk grows bigger, spreading from cheek to cheek, and lighting up his eyes.

“Slider,” he says, winking.

My expression softens fast.

He remembers. If he can remember something like this…maybe he can remember more someday. Maybe…I can make him.

Afraid of making a slip, of saying the wrong thing, of doing something that will chase this away, I keep up my act and I drum up my emotions to make myself feel the fire of competition again. It comes naturally, but this time it battles with something else. I want this to be real; I want him to remember this. If he remembers this…

Wes pitches to me for nearly an hour, taking time between each one, and fooling me about half of the time. He’s gotten stronger, and his speed is up. I can keep up with it, but it’s not as easy as it was. I’m almost proud, but I also take it as a sign that I need to work harder.

As the afternoon sun starts to bake us from the west, we slow down, and soon we’ve piled back in the truck, in the same spots we came in. The drive back to my house feels fast, and I waste that time not speaking to Wes. My mind pretends we’re having conversations—meaningful ones—but it’s all pretend in my head. Whatever this was, this last hour, I’m not going to make it more than it was. I’m also not going to make it less.

“Tell your dad Wes is coming out to our practice this week, if he wants to stop by and watch after yours,” TK says, handing me my things as he climbs from the back of the truck and slides into the cab.

“I will,” I say back, my eyes catching Wes’s for just a moment.

I wait until they drive away, then I open the garage and drop my gear by the door, glad to see my dad’s car inside. The house smells like Italian food when I enter, and my dad already has a bowl of something in his hands as he passes by.

“Grace said Wes came by,” he says, and I can tell he’s practiced this move, trying to act natural while mentioning something to me that he knows takes up a serious amount of real estate in my head. I play along, too.

“He did, with his brothers. We hit some balls. He got me with his slider,” I say.

My dad pauses in eating and looks at me with a flash of a grimace, his mouth stuffed with pasta that’s hanging out, draping over his fork.

“That’s something we’ll only let happen once,” he says, continuing to shovel.

I laugh and grab a bowl of my own.

“He’s starting school on Monday,” I say.

Neither Grace or my dad reacts. They know the words I’m not saying.

“He’s going to start playing with the team, too,” I add.

“Good, they need help. When you graduate, I’m taking that job back. Those fools don’t know what they’re doing. They may as well be playing coach-pitch.”

My dad plays his personality up, partly to distract from the important piece in everything we’ve both just said—Wes is here. He’s back, yet he isn’t.

We don’t dwell on it. There aren’t any parent-daughter talks about not getting my hopes up or about not losing myself to a boy. We’re past that. I’m not. I’m going to play Division One ball, as an amputee. What Wes does or does not remember won’t change any of that. It never would have.

But my right now is still hopeful that he will remember us. That he and I will have to talk about things like long-distance relationships, visiting girl-only dorm rooms, gas money to see each other, and how jealous he’s going to be when I’m far away and I have to beat the guys—from whatever college’s baseball team—off me with a stick. I amuse myself at that last thought.

My dinner done, I escape to my room, pulling out my government book to study. For most of my peers, this last semester is meaningless, but for me, a few more decent grades in my average might be the difference between a partial athletic scholarship and a full one. We just got out of debt, and I’m not so anxious to dig new holes.

My eyes glaze over the text, and I shake my head to focus several times, finally giving in after an hour of trying to memorize the passage of various bills and amendments, matching them to their years and their sponsors. I close my book and let my cheek rest on my pillow, aware of everything on the other side of my eyelids for about a dozen seconds before it all fades into background noise and I fall to sleep.

When I wake up, my room is bright from my lamp, but I know it’s late. I rub my eyes and glance to my clock to check the time, struggling to focus to read it at first, and finally seeing it’s a little after two. A knock comes at my window, and I roll my head to the other side, looking at the perfectly sealed space I made my dad cover in shutters.

I click my lamp off and wait a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, my phone buzzing while I wait.

It’s me. I know it’s late.

Seeing Wes’s name has me standing quickly, and I circle my room as I type.

I’ll be right out.

I search for something nice, finally giving up and walking outside in the same smelly shirt and joggers I played in this afternoon. He’s standing at the end of my driveway wearing the same thing he wore, too, and it makes me laugh to myself.

“Hey,” I say, closing the door behind me quietly.

Wes’s hands are in his pockets, and his eyes are down, glancing up to me briefly as I approach.

“Hey, sorry,” he says, his voice low, almost a whisper. “I know it’s late. And this is probably…I don’t know, maybe not a good idea or whatever.”

His eyes scrunch and he brings his hands from his pockets pressing his palms on either side of his head as he paces a few steps to either side.

“It’s okay, really,” I reassure him. He stops where he’s at, his arms relaxing, and his hands falling to his sides as he studies me, his body turned to the side.

He shakes his head slowly, his hat backward and the ends of his hair curling at the base of his neck. His mouth has the tiniest curve, and I start to focus on it more than I should as he takes a deep breath through his nose. My mouth parts, but I’m not sure what to say, so bite my bottom lip and wait. His eyes notice, and I feel it in my chest when he blinks slowly.

“I found this…ticket,” he says, pulling his right hand from his pocket again, holding it out for me to take. I look at it and smile faintly.

“That’s yours. You should keep it,” I say, my heart caught in the present and the past, with a little boy wanting to be accepted and have a friend, and a younger me wanting to be nicer than she ever really was.

He holds it out for a few more seconds, his hand finally dropping and holding it at his waist, where he stares at it a little longer.

“I know something about this ticket, but it’s like it’s caught in a fog,” he swallows.

“Yeah,” I say, my fingers tingling anxiously, my mind screaming at me to finish the puzzle for him. I know I can’t.

“I found it as soon as we got home from practicing. It was in with a bunch of my things, in this box with my socks,” he glances up and his eyes meet mine. “I knew it had something to do with you.”

I nod slowly.

“It does,” I say. My heart booms loudly, and I start to sway on my legs, needing to ground myself.

“Before I came here, I just drove,” he says, pushing the ticket back in his front pocket, leaving his hands there when he’s done. “TK called me, freaked out. I guess driving around a place I only slightly remember at midnight worries the fam.”

He laughs on one side of his mouth and I smile.

“I can see that,” I say.

His chin lifts and his eyes meet mine again, and our eyes lock for longer this time. My legs steady, and I remain perfectly still.

“I didn’t know where I was going, but I just drove. I took turns because they felt right, I stopped when something told me to. I went to this place.”

His brow draws in and he takes a deep breath, his lips relaxed, but pulling at the corners, trying to decide whether to frown or speak. Eventually, he moves toward his truck, and I follow for a few steps before giving him space. He reaches inside and pulls out a messy cluster of flowers, some of them still showing their roots from where he pulled them from the ground. He takes deliberate steps toward me, lifting my hand in his and wrapping my fingers around the bunch of peonies, my eyes focused on the perfect one in the very center.

“These are your favorites,” he says, and I look up into his eyes over the tuft of pink we both grasp between us. “I don’t know how I knew that, but I knew these were your favorites. They’re important.”

My lips part and I gasp a quiet breath before nodding slowly. I feel his other hand cover mine, closing over my knuckles, squeezing my grip tighter on the flowers. His feet take tiny steps forward, inches closer to me, as he holds my gaze hostage.

“You’re important,” he says.

My eyes break rank first, the cool tear finally giving way to gravity and sliding down my cheek before stopping and waiting for more.

“You’re important,” I say back to him.

The words barely leave my mouth before his right hand is cupping my face, his thumb drawing a gentle line under my eyes, sweeping the tear to the side but not extinguishing the proof that it existed.

We existed.

We exist.

“I can’t fly,” he says, his forehead falling against mine slowly. We both laugh silently through breaths as I let the flowers fall to the ground and I bring my hands to his shirt, grabbing it in bunches.

“It’s overrated,” I say, tilting my head enough that his lips graze mine, the feel of them like breathing fire into an icy, dead soul.

“I loved you,” he says.

“You did,” I nod, my head rolling against his with the tiny movement.

He pulls back enough to look at me, my face cupped in his hands, my tears filling my eyes, and my favorite flowers at my feet. Wes begins to nod, and I stare into the blue illuminated by the moon, and I see the shift the moment it happens.

“I love you still,” he says.

It doesn’t come all at once, but like glitter blown in the wind, the boy I knew begins to come back to me a piece at a time.

Until I have him all.