AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Monty orders enough Chinese takeout to cover his dining room table. The three of us spend the night hanging out, eating dinner, and watching today’s game highlights from around the league. We don’t talk about the possibility of me leaving. We don’t talk about Kennedy, but for the first time ever, I also don’t pretend I’m okay.
I spend the entire evening without a smile on my face, and it’s nice in a way, to not be okay. Freeing, even.
But regardless of the distraction, there’s only one question repeating in my mind and that’s me wondering what the hell I’m going to do if Kennedy doesn’t want me to go with her.
There’s no rain tonight.
Just the rumblings of thunder and the flashes of accompanying lightning.
It’s a dry thunderstorm and if it didn’t freak me the fuck out, I might be able to find the beauty in it. Purple streaks paint the sky. Bright light beams behind the iconic buildings of the Chicago skyline.
But it doesn’t lessen the anxiety. Like some kind of switch, it revs me up, forcing my heart rate to jump, encouraging my nerves to fire.
As much as I love this place, maybe leaving the Midwest wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I wonder if Northern California deals with random summer storms like these.
It’s part of the reason I didn’t go to family dinner tonight. I knew the storm was rolling through, but even more so, I knew her absence would’ve been impossible for me to ignore. It’s hard enough going to sleep each night, knowing she’s not in my bed, let alone sitting around a dinner that finally felt complete because she was there.
It’s been two nights since I’ve seen her. Been two nights since I’ve even heard from her.
We had the entire day off from the field yesterday, so I didn’t get the chance to run into her in the training room. Today though, today she called in sick to Sunday morning batting practice.
She’s never, not once, called in sick to work.
And that scares the hell out of me because I know she’s not.
She’s in that apartment, packing her bags, and I’m just sitting around waiting to find out if I’m going too.
I know I told her to take the weekend, but there’s a huge part of me that didn’t believe I wouldn’t hear from her for two full days. And the more time apart, the more I fear that the decision she’s coming to is the one that doesn’t include me.
I felt sick to my stomach getting those divorce papers drafted, but that will be nothing in comparison to how I’ll feel if she actually signs them.
Yes, I want her to have a choice, but that doesn’t mean I’m not entirely desperate for her to choose me.
Another boom of thunder rattles my windows, and it takes everything in me not to reach for my phone to call her. To call Kai. To call each and every one of my friends.
But I told my brother not to check in on me tonight. I need to challenge myself and I’m not going to get any better if I continue to allow either of us to enable my anxious thoughts.
But fuck, if it’s not difficult sitting back and simply hoping that Kennedy isn’t out driving tonight.
I grab my phone, but not to call anyone. I scroll through my pictures instead, hoping for the distraction. There are some of Max, some of the stupid shit my teammates have done around the clubhouse, and an unhealthy amount of her.
She likes to call me a stalker and fuck, I think I am.
The first is recent, her laying on my chest in bed, smiling up at the camera as I snapped our photo. Another of her eating a bowl of pasta I made her, a single spaghetti noodle hanging down from her lips to the bowl. One of my favorites is of her and Miller with their arms around each other, crouching with Max between them, all three of them with beaming grins. And lastly, there’s another of her trying to use a folded-up newspaper, her crossword no doubt, to cover her face and hide from me, but when I play the live version, you can hear her laughter clear as day.
When I keep scrolling, I come across older ones. Photos from last season. She’s in the background of some that were taken around the field.
I have a photo of Cody flipping me off while taking an ice bath. She’s off to the side, wearing her team polo shirt and a frown.
There’s one of Max sitting on the dugout bench, grinning up at me. She’s in the background, sad eyes blankly staring at the field.
Another of her and Miller from last year when they first met. Kennedy’s arms are crossed over her chest, her entire body stiff as she bends in an attempt to get her head close enough to Miller’s and in the frame. But her body language is so uncomfortable and the desperate look on her face screams that she wishes she wouldn’t be.
So much has changed these last couple months, and if nothing else, I can bask in the knowledge that through our time together, she learned how to be comfortable in her skin. She learned that there are people out there who love her. And she learned that I’m one of them.
I get back to the more recent photos and the screenshot I took of the cover of the Chicago Tribune’s sports section.
It’s the morning we got married, neither of us having any fucking clue what we were in for. Her in her white dress and denim jacket and me holding her heels above my head.
