Page 163 of The Fall Classic

I stop, and a short, humorless laugh escapes me. “You sound like Jake. He asked me if I was planning to worry Coop back to health. Said I don’t borrow trouble. I hunt for it like it’s treasure.”

Dr. Chang’s mouth twitches. “Jake Rodgers said that?”

“Word for word, more or less.”

“He’s not wrong.”

“So I’m supposed to not carry the stuff that isn’t in front of me right now? Be here, then be there, instead of everywhere at once?”

He raises his shoulders. “Why not?”

“Yeah, right,” I say. “Like it’s that easy.”

“Oh, heavens no. It takes a lot of practice.” He sits back. “Good thing you’ve been practicing for months, though, isn’t it? The breathing. The tank. The brainspotting. The vergence. You’ve been building the muscle for this exact moment without knowing that’s what you were doing.”

I think about how the moment before I saw Georgie in the stands, how I was doing that exact vergence technique. This whole time, I’ve worried that maybe it was her, that I was turning her into a totem or an answer, holding on too tight because I was making her the key to my success. But that’s stupid.

I’m holding on because I love her.

And maybe I’m holding too tightly because I’m afraid of losing her, too.

I probably won’t always know the difference, but what matters is what I do with it.

Loving Georgie won’t solve all of my problems. I’ve still managed to find plenty to worry about since we’ve been together. She’s the love of my life, but she isn’t the answer to my problems. To my anxiety.

There is no answer, not really. The key is work. Practice. An exhausting, absurd amount of practice that’s every bit as hard as any physical conditioning I’ve ever done.

And worse still, Jake was exactly right about my trouble-hunting and worrying myself out of a freaking job.

“Well, crap,” I say, rubbing my jaw with one hand. I chuckle, frustrated and annoyed and … freer. Because if I really can’t do anything about all of my fears at once, the least I can do is stop stressing about all the other roads and walk down the one I’m on.

“There it is,” Chang says, giving me a smile that makes his eyes wrinkle. “How are you feeling?”

“Thankful.”

“For?”

“The collective bargaining agreement,” I say. “Whoever fought for ‘confidential sports psychology access in a private space’ is a national hero.”

He gives me a flat look that tells me he’s heard better jokes.

“And you,” I add. “And Georgie. And good team doctors who’ll take care of Coop. And Coop himself. And Lucas and Liesel and my dad and my mom, and heck, even Jake, not that I’ll ever tell him that.”

“You could tell him that.”

“Hard pass, doc.”

That earns a chuckle. “What’s next?” he asks.

“I guess I’m going to wait out a rain delay and then go pitch in the playoffs.”

“No pressure,” he says.

“Tons of pressure,” I say. “But the only thing I can do is throw the ball. And make sure to release on time.”

“That feels like enough to worry about when you’re on the mound, doesn’t it?”

And I finally get what Jake was saying: “‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’”