07
STEFAN
I stare at the mug on the table. It was steaming when I first sat down with it. Now it’s cold.
“Got any plans today?”
The question comes from my mom, who’s totally out of sight curled up on the couch in the living room with her nose buried in a laptop. She’s probably spreeing on Amazon, if I had to guess.
I clear my throat. “Was thinking I might take up a job with Parker. You remember him from way back in the day. He’s in the middle of renovating a master bath for his wife. Big tiled shower, new sink, walk-in closet … the works.”
“Oh, that sweet boy from the football team. He’s married?”
After our time in Little League, Parker didn’t impress the high school baseball coach, but somehow made the cut for the football team. We stayed friends. “Yeah, Mom. You knew about that.”
“Such a sweet boy.”
The soft, nearly nonexistent sigh that comes from the family desktop computer behind me is my only reminder that my dad is here. Also, it’s his subtle way of expressing his disappointment in me. I might literally have forgotten he was even there if it wasn’t for the tiny sigh.
Which, by the way, I ignore. “So I’ll probably head off in a few, see if he needs a hand. You need anything from the store while I’m out? You or Rudy?”
“Oh, I think we’re just fine, sweetie, thank you. Ed?” she calls out. “Are you good on your beer? Do we need anything?”
I barely shift my head, inclining an ear in the general vicinity of my father, whose only response is a short grunt.
“You sure?” prompts my mom, who was always able to speak my dad’s grunts fluently. “How about toilet paper? Oh, you could pick up some bandages, Stefan. Rudy had a hard hit last week and used them all up, remember?”
“Sure thing.”
“Maybe pick some up for … yourself, too,” she adds delicately.
I bring a hand up to my forehead instinctively, my fingers grazing the now-scabbed-over mystery wound I earned last night. Other than a bruise on my cheek, all of my wounds are hidden under my clothes, so I was able to downgrade last night’s violent “incident” as more of a bar scuffle than a fight.
But as I keep drumming my fingers along the side of my mug, I realize that the truth is my mind is still a bit lost in nostalgia land after my visit with Ryan. So many old feelings have been dug up that I’m finding harder and harder to bury. I can’t seem to take a single damned sip from my mug because I keep thinking about the coffee Ryan served me at his house.
And the way his eyes kept drifting down to my chest.
Yeah, that wasn’t lost on me. Why else did I go and taunt him like I did, peeling away my towel and making him lose his shit?
I chuckle just thinking about it, my eyes glued to the mug in front of me while my fingers continue to drum away.
“Something funny?”
The chuckle dies a quick, merciful death in my throat. The question, cold and detached, came from my father.
I let go of my mug and fold my arms on the table. “Not really. Not in particular, at least.”
“Not … in particular.” He grunts. He loves—loves—repeating something I just said, then grunting. It’s his favorite fucking thing to do. He takes a page from the book of passive aggression where he earned a Degree in General Dickery.
My dad used to be my number one fan.
Don’t judge him too harshly for the prickish way he’s about to treat me. Really, he’s a compassionate man deep down.
Way deep down.
I sigh and turn my head, but still not quite facing him. “There something you want to say, Dad?”
Only the soft clicking and tapping of computer keys meets my ears.
“No, really,” I encourage him, speaking evenly. “You got the floor to yourself. But get it out fast because I’ve got a bud’s master bathroom to save.”
He grunts—which my mother does not kindly translate for me this time—and then I hear him shift in the office chair, which squeaks in protest under his weight. “Saving bathrooms? Is that your new … destiny? Is that your stellar backup plan?”
“Backup plan to what?” I counter. “To not quite making it to the major leagues? To my injury? To the end of my running legs?”
“Bullshit,” mutters my father, too unemotional in his anger to even raise his voice when he curses. “Your legs were fine. They healed just fine. You can run from here to Canada if you wanted. You chose not to.”
I’m out of my chair and facing him as fast as a blink. “The hell are you implying?”
“Wasn’t an implication. Was a direct statement.” His deadpan eyes, set over two bags and a mile of wrinkles, don’t even lift from his computer screen when his thin lips part to form his next words: “You gave up.”
He said those words the first night I got home after quitting the team. He said those words then and earned himself a front row seat to my ugly side.
And now he’s said them again. “Gave up …?” I snort and shake my head. “We’re really gonna go through this again?”
“You got two legs, two fine legs, and you gave up.”
What makes arguing with my father all the more infuriating is how his voice never raises. He never yells. He lets everyone else lose their minds arguing with him, then sits back and enjoys his sweet, deadpan victory while continuing to drone on and on in his tireless, effortless monotone.
“You think that’s how this works?” I ask him, throwing my hands up. “Really? Coach just … keeps me on the team, sees me running at 60%, and smiles and lets me slide? I never make it to the majors, but no big deal, I can keep going, being subpar, and everyone’s blissful? Does that sound like the real world to you?”
My father grunts.
“Yeah?” I keep going, my anger mounting. “Think he’s just going to watch my stats plummet, watch me get tagged out on half my runs around the bases … and just turn a cheek? Keep me on the team out of pity? That’s not how it works, Dad.”
“Your legs can do more than 60%,” he returns, as infuriatingly calm as ever. “With enough therapy, enough training, you’d be back to 100% or more. You gave up.”
“If you say I gave up one more time …”
“Sweetie, sweetheart …” comes my mom’s gentle voice.
I’m clenching my teeth and doing everything in my power not to knock that indifferent look off of my father’s face after saying a thing like that. I feel my muscles shaking.
Then a cramp racks my side and I grip the back of the chair I was sitting in to save myself from doubling over.
Fuck.
The more my muscles clench in anger, apparently the more I realize how badly I really was beaten last night. I feel it all over my body, random aches and tinges of pain.
And then I’m thinking of Ryan all over again, how he took me in and cared for me without question.
Caulfield. That fucking Caulfield.
“Of course,” murmurs my father placidly. “Giving up looks a lot like you. Back home. Fixing other men’s bathrooms. Going out drinking every weekend.”
“Ed …” cuts in my mom, trying to stop him.
“Is that your new path?” he asks. “Bar fighter? Bar boxer? Are broken noses and black eyes all we have to look forward to now?”
“My nose isn’t broken, and my eyes aren’t blackened,” I state through my teeth, knowing full well that that wasn’t his point.
My mom’s hand touches mine. When I look up, I gaze past her and spot Rudy standing at the foot of the stairs, half-slouched, with a basketball between his hands. He stares at us with a glassy sort of expression that I won’t call afraid. He’s not afraid of me. He just hates it when we argue.
And maybe he thinks, after enough arguments like this, I’ll finally call it quits again and move out.
I don’t think I have a choice.
Rudy’s enjoyed my being home again. So has my mom.
“Backup plan,” I mutter, then give a nod to my kid brother. “There’s your backup plan, Dad. Rudy. He’s going to be the next big thing in baseball. Already made the high school team.”
Rudy’s eyes flicker, like my words just shot a baseball his way and he was too slow to swing his bat or raise his mitt.
“Sweetie …” My mom squeezes my arm. “Please don’t.”
I think I’m already past the point of no return, but there’s no sense in stating that here and now. It would just be more fuel for my father’s bitter flames.
So instead of a hundred other things I could say right now, I only half-turn my head toward my father and state, jaw tightened, “You can think whatever you want, but I did not give up.”
Then I abandon my mug, my mom, and my dad, heading for the stairs. When I brush past Rudy, I give his shoulder a short and encouraging squeeze.
My bedroom door shuts softly behind me.
And then I get to packing my shit.
An hour later, Rudy’s out front with me helping load up the back of my pickup one box or trash bag at a time. He hasn’t said a word to me in the past hour, and then the first thing he says is, “You’re a totally cocky prick sometimes, you know that?”
I throw a grin over my shoulder. “That’s what the ladies want. Haven’t you learned anything, bro? Hey, bring me that box.”
Rudy rolls his eyes as he grudgingly heads back to the pile of crap I have on the driveway. Being half my size and a touch more than half my age—fourteen, to be exact—no one ever thinks we’re siblings. Just a couple weekends ago, we had an especially flirty waitress at a restaurant downtown think he was my son.
She left her number on the receipt. No, I didn’t call it.
My brother returns with a big box, grunting as he struggles to carry it. I take it off his hands with ease and slide it onto the bed of my pickup. “Work out more,” I tease him.
“Fuck you! I got this.”
I lift an eyebrow at him. “Jeez, Rudy. Who the hell’s teaching you all this foul-ass fuckin’ language? You’re way too young to be talking like that.”
“I’m in high school. I’m not young anymore.”
“Right. You’re all growed up now.” I go for the next box.
He follows. “I’ll be in college before you know it. Then I’ll get drafted after my junior year, just like you. I’ll break your records.”
He’s probably the only person in the world who can taunt me about my life’s greatest letdown. Who knew that one fateful dive into home base would rip up my leg—and the future in sports I thought I would have—and send my life on a completely different course? I know there’s some ironic or symbolic statement I can make about “sliding home” being the end of my career, but I don’t have it in me to be clever right now.
Not while I’ve still got my old man’s words on my shoulders. “The field’s all yours, little bro,” I reply, then lift the next box.
Rudy keeps up, bringing another lighter one. “You’re really not gonna play at all anymore? Just like that, you’re done?”
“It’s the nature of the beast.” The less time I spend rehashing the subject of my royal failure, the better. “Just don’t make the mistake I did in college of going off and joining a frat. Even if it’s a frat for guys like us—athletes. That shit’s gonna haunt me for life.”
At that, Rudy rolls his eyes. “Whatever. As if I’d join some frat full of fags.”
The word is like an icicle to my intestines. The shit he’s picking up from his schoolyard buddies … I drop my box onto the bed of the truck and face my little brother importantly. “Rudy. You know what I said about that word.”
His eyes flash with indignance. “So?”
“So don’t use it. It isn’t right.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it. Everyone uses it.”
“Everyone isn’t you. If all your buddies broke two of their ribs so they could bend over and lick their own ballsacks, would you? Didn’t think so.” I slap shut the tailgate, then pull the box right out of Rudy’s hands. “Rub that word right out of your vocab as quickly as you rub one out every damned night.”
His face goes red right away. “What’re you talking about?”
“You’re loud is what I’m talking about. I can hear you through the walls. At least bite down on a sock or something, shit.” I slide the box into the backseat and shut the door, then wipe my hands down my thighs. “Looks like I’m all set to go.”
He still looks conflicted, but I can’t tell if it’s about the three-letter F word or his forced induction into the society of out-and-proud masturbators. “You gonna say bye to mom and pops?”
I smirk. “Of … Of course I am.” I study the look on his face a bit longer. Maybe he’s conflicted about neither of those things at all. “What? You already miss me? I haven’t even left yet.”
“Nah. Just stuff on my mind.” He shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets.
He won’t say it, but I can see it on his downcast face. “You’ve got my number. Any of those little pricks on your team give you a hard time, you tell them your big brother is Stefan Baker, and he’s going to come kick their asses.”
Rudy smirks. “Really? You’re seriously going to come to my high school and beat up a bunch of teens?”
I reconsider. “Well, I’ll scare the shit out of them at the very least.” I grab his shoulder and pull him into a half hug, which he reluctantly accepts before I let go and head back toward the house to say my goodbyes.
Mom gives me a long, tight hug where I have to mask a wince of pain since her knuckles dig unknowingly into a sore spot at my right shoulder. Dad just stares stonily at the monitor of his giant desktop computer when I say goodbye, offering me no additional words other than the ones he’s already generously given.
Apparently I’m not even deserving of one of his signature, unintelligible grunts. I wasn’t expecting much more than that, to be honest. He is at times, even admittedly, a total prick.
Maybe that’s where I get it from.
Rudy’s in the driveway dribbling his basketball when I pop on my white cap, flip it backwards, then kick my pickup into gear and drive off. He watches me as I go, and I watch him in the rearview until he’s just an ant at my back.
The afternoon sun rides the back of my neck as I head down the highway, windows down, radio off, and wind slapping past my face and my arm hanging out of the window. I have no destination in mind. All I know is that I can’t live another second in that house with that man.
I pull into the parking lot of a big-ass hotel and kill the engine, then stare at the tall building and consider what the hell I’m going to do now.
Room service sounds nice.
A few drinks at the bar downstairs does, too.
After making sure the cap is secured on the bed of my truck, I grab my small bag of clothes off the passenger seat and head for the lobby. The receptionist is sweet as caramel candy to me, and when I get the key to my room, she thanks me and tells me to have a blessed evening. I grunt at her, snatch a mint from a little golden saucer on the counter, then make for my room on the eighth floor.
A floor for every year I let go by without that fucker Ryan in my life.
One floor. Two floors. Three floors. I watch the number grow bigger on the elevator, counting the numbers with the uncaring coldness of time itself.
And my father.
The room is fantastic, clean, and has an enormous bowl of a bathtub I might take advantage of later. None of that means shit to me at the present time, since all I need to do is wipe my brain of all the fuzz and the echoes of my dad’s voice, and the best way to do that is make friends with a few glasses at the bar downstairs. I toss my little bag on the bed, christen my new temporary home by taking an hour-long piss in the bathroom, then heading down.
I sit at the bar all by myself with the exception of a woman at the other end who looks like she’s at the end of her own rope, but is too exhausted to even make proper facial expressions; she just stares at her drink like she’s watching a movie of her life.
Sounds about right.
The bartender, a young blond dude in a vest with a tattoo of Florida on his forearm for some reason, comes by and takes my order. I stare at the big flat screen nearby. A baseball game is on, which just seems to solidify my general feeling of shittiness. I watch better men swing their bats, crack some balls, and tear up the bases with their powerful and perfectly-trained legs. Each of them probably have this nightmare in their minds—the nightmare that it could all end in an instant.
The fact that I’ve now lived that nightmare gives me a strange power. I know something they don’t. I lived it. I am the nightmare.
And I’m still here.
When my drink comes, I hold it, stare at it, and don’t take the first sip.
Not yet.
I was never a drinker. Not before college and all its parties. Not before that joke of a frat full of popped collars and parents’ credit cards. Not before hitting the minor leagues and meeting some great guys and some not so great ones—like the green-eyed, redheaded Adam, who I’m sure is happy as fuck now that I’m out of the picture and he can take the lead.
The fucker made it into the major leagues, by the way. He got seen by the scouts that would have seen me, took my spotlight, and seized the opportunity I had been working toward my whole damned life.
Fucking redheaded half-Irish Adam with the cocky smirk.
He was exactly like the teenaged me who didn’t have a trace of humility in him yet. It was like my cocky childhood self had become an adult—an adult with red hair, a dumb face, and greedy eyes that prayed for my failure.
Well, you got it, punk.
I don’t even know how long it’s been before the bartender eyes me and asks, “Something wrong with your drink, sir?”
“No.”
“You alright?” He leans against the counter.
“Clearly.”
He gives me a short nod. “Let me know if you need anything else, sir. I’m here for you. Even if you need an ear.” Then he slings a towel over his shoulder and moves to clean some glasses.
I press my hands to my face and sigh into them. Somewhere between the noise of a stadium roaring on the TV and the cheesy lobby music that’s playing at my back, I get a flash of last night—a game on the TV at BeeBee’s, a giant man near me who kept talking too loud and boasting about something, and me turning back into my old cocky self who couldn’t hold his tongue. Suddenly, I recall the first swing. It was mine, and it was as effective as fighting a cement wall with a balloon animal.
When I pull my hands away, I stare at my warped reflection in the side of my glass of … whatever I ordered.
Then I ditch the untouched glass, leave a twenty, and go.
When I get back to my room, I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling with the TV softly playing some cartoon or whatever was left on from the previous sad soul who stayed in this room before me. I don’t need a drink to console me. I need something that will actually give a shit about me.
Someone.
Suddenly, I’m thumbing through the contacts on my phone. The screen shines down at my eyes as all of the names flutter past me, names and names and names, until I stop abruptly at his, still in there from however long ago. If it’s even the same number.
I look like I’m ready for the last resort. I am still wearing the red polo he lent me. I guess that’s a decent excuse to call him. Other than my clearly needing him to come to the rescue for me.
Yet again. Fuck.