Hardball by CD Reiss (29)

forty-eight

Vivian

My phone lit up. He was calling. The thing to do was to answer it. Talk to him. Tell him I loved him and accept his love even if he felt half-heartedly trapped into expressing it.

Or not.

Who was I to doubt him?

I was the sensible one, that’s who. I started saying things to myself as the phone vibrated in my hand. Bad things.

I was an object.

When he got to know me, he’d dump me.

He couldn’t hear me crying, and I didn’t want him to. I rejected the call.

He didn’t answer for a long time. And why should he? He was the one who had put his heart on the line, and I was the one who was protected and fortified. Not only had I rejected his proposal, I’d rejected his call.

You don’t have to

The next text came right after.

Your tickets are at the will call if you still want to come to the game. Otherwise, I’ll see you another time

Another time.

Simple and polite. Nonspecific. Not demanding. Move along. Nothing to see here. Nothing but nothing. I couldn’t call him and reassure him. I’d already said I couldn’t talk.

I hit Send and started on the next text before the first even went through.

Both messages were delivered. The screen said so, but nothing came back. I had no way of knowing if he even saw them.

I tried to sleep and failed. My brain was too busy winding guilt around justification, knotting me into a braid of righteous self-reproach.

I should have just said yes.

But I couldn’t have.

I fell asleep, sure I’d lost him, and woke up an hour later when the birds started whistling. Dash was the first thought on my mind. I didn’t look at my phone. I was afraid of what I’d see.

I was tired. Tired of all the limits I’d put on myself. Tired of the box I’d built around my heart. I wanted to change but didn’t know how.

Padding into the kitchen, gunk in my eyes and sleep in my veins, I found Dad already up. I loved him. I loved him more than my heart could even fit. The way he bent in front of the fridge so slowly, careful not to twist his joints, made me doubt what I’d decided during the walk across the house.

“Dad,” I said.

“Good morning.”

“Would you be mad if I moved out?”

He stood cautiously, closed the refrigerator, and leaned on it. “Mad?”

“Disappointed. Or whatever. Maybe the question is, ‘How would you feel if I moved out?’ But not far. As close as I could afford.”

He laughed quietly. “I’ve been meaning to ask you the same thing.”

I hadn’t even considered the idea. This was Mom and Dad’s house. This was my home base. My life was in this single-story O-shaped modernist masterpiece, and even if I was gone, it had to be here.

“You can’t—” I stopped myself at the apostrophe. “Where will you go?”

“Somewhere smaller. I’m feeling all right with the new pills, but the steps aren’t good in the long run. And this is really your house.”

“What? No! It’s yours.”

He waved me off, which he’d done a million times before without annoying me. That morning, however, I was in no mood.

“You made sure Mom got this house, and when she was gone, you’re the one who paid the mortgage and made it a home,” I said.

“I only stayed so you had some consistency when your mother died. And now it’s just a habit. Honestly, I don’t even like it.”

I had to swallow that hard. It was a complete turnaround. I had to sit down. “You don’t like it?”

“I like the older style. And the neighborhood? Too many nosy old ladies. And I can’t walk to the grocery store. I’m not going to be able to drive much longer, peanut.”

I hadn’t even wondered if I liked the house. It was the house I had grown up in, and when I left to live with Carl, the fact that it was there, and Dad was in it, was a comfort I took for granted.

“You should go if you’re not happy here.” I said it as if I was talking to myself, and in a way, I was.

Dad put his hand on my shoulder. “I am happy here. I kvell thinking of you doing your homework in the courtyard. Reading on that couch. I watched you for hours. You were the reason I was here, and lately I’ve been thinking I made you my reason too long.”

“I thought you stayed because of Mom.”

“For a few years, sure. I was a lonely grouch when I met your mother. After you came, I was a man with a family. My empty heart was full. You gave me everything. I stayed in this house to thank you.”

I gulped back denials because I was the one who should have been thanking him. He’d built his life around me because it was what I needed. He’d taught me the purest form of love, but had I learned it? I choked back a sob.

“Believe me,” I said, looking up at him, “I’m trying not to say I owe you the thanks. But being your daughter was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

He patted my shoulder again then squeezed it. I put my arms around him and laid my cheek against his chest.

Dash hadn’t answered the text, and I was glad. He needed to rest. He’d been tired and upset about his performance over spring training. One great game wasn’t going to change that. He needed constant injections of confidence.

I was his serum.

I sat on the edge of the bed. My room looked over the vegetable garden that volunteered to grow on its own every year. I’d crawled out of that window every night when I was fourteen until Dad put a bell on the outside and I was busted. The walls had been painted twice. Dark blue over pink when I went to high school, and two coats of primer and white over that when I started college. I’d studied here, eaten here, fucked here.

I could move from this house to Dash’s place in the hills. I could demand he and I get a new place. I could stay in this house. I could get an apartment. I could stand on my head and spit nickels. It didn’t matter.

What mattered?

Someone needed me. A human being I cared about. The way Dad needed Mom and he needed me. The house didn’t matter. The ring didn’t matter. What mattered was the evolution of a relationship.

My bio dad hadn’t evolved. He’d needed my mother at a certain stage in his life, and when that changed, he didn’t go with it, because in the end, he didn’t know how to love her.

If Dash needed me to give him confidence now, that didn’t mean he’d need the same thing next year or in ten years or after his retirement. I needed to be willing to give him what he needed and evolve later.

I feared he wouldn’t be able to evolve, but wasn’t that always the fear? No matter who I was with, we’d need to evolve. Wouldn’t children, middle age, old age change us and change our needs?

I was going to be a zombie today, but a zombie with a completely changed attitude. No dream had come to change my outlook. No little spirit whispered in my ear.

No. Just a little rest for the brain.

Dash Wallace was the only man in the world I wanted.

I was going to be there for him one hundred percent. I was going to let him know that every day, every minute, until he put his heart back into us. If he needed me to walk the bases around every major league field in the United States, I’d do it. He’d own my summer and a chunk of my autumn. His rushed proposal wasn’t going to stop me from loving him with everything I had. I could refuse it and still love him. I could put a ring around my heart.

I took a deep breath and committed myself to him.

Long haul. He was my responsibility.