Page 99 of Running Home to You
The bottle remained a dependable ally in the foreign landscape. That year, Kate graduated from law school, and while Abby resisted reaching out or asking their friends about her, she broke her rule and looked her up. She beamed at the accomplishments listed during commencement: top of her class,California Law Review,a clerkship with the Supreme Court of California.
Abby lost herself for days after, drinking with teammates, andwhen they tired, anyone who might partake or invite her to join theirnomikai.She developed a taste for sake, never declined a second party or third, stumbling through karaoke andizakayas,falling asleep on the sidewalk alongside the businessmen snoring in their neckties.
In that same depressed, hungover stupor, she agreed to what launched one of the strangest chapters of her career. A battle of the sexes–themed game show enlisted her and a few of her teammates to participate in an episode, pitting them against men from Japan’s professional baseball league. Abby barely understood the rules when a producer explained them backstage.
They played on a regulation-sized field inside a large studio. Multicolor lights bore down on the artificial diamond. High-pitched video game music never ceased. The host screamed the premise in Japanese to a roaring crowd. Abby, who chugged several drinks backstage, likened it to an acid trip. In fact, she seriously contemplated whether someone slipped her something during a party the night before.
Despite the strangeness of the softball nightmare, she did the one thing she knew how. She plucked up a bat and stared down the pitcher as the announcer echoed from the speakers:
“San, ni, ichi, starto!”
The baseball flew in, smaller and zippier than the yellow softball she typically played with, but she picked up its trajectory, took advantage of its speed and size, and cracked a home run. She did it six more times while the cameras rolled, stunning the male pitcher, sending the audience and host into a frenzy. Horns rang, confetti rained, and strobe lights pulsed. The audience screamed and jumped. The announcers deemed her “Hanmagaru!”
No longer frightened, Abby raised her bat to the crowd, and they chanted it at her: “Hanmagaru!”
When the home run derby ended, she asked the host, “Did I win?” and she swore all of Tokyo laughed along with her.
Sponsorships followed. She starred in a commercial for Shiso-Plum potato chips. It took her two dozen takes to say the slogan correctlyin Japanese and another dozen to not gag when she took a bite. Mick, Jill, and T.K. replayed the commercial during their phone calls, stitched in hysterics. Mick somehow bought half of the marketing materials with Abby’s smile plastered across them and Abby sent them all the Shiso-Plum potato chips they could want. More endorsements and advertisements poured in. She made a return appearance on the game show and her bobblehead sold out at the stadium shop.
More people recognized her. She already stuck out with her height and tan skin, but now they knew her from television and billboards. Kids asked for autographs and photos and wore her jersey. In the streets, people pointed and yelled, “Hanmagaru!” as she ducked into bars.
Whatever version of glory this was, Abby hated it. She was at the top of the league, playing for a living, but miserable. She was surrounded, in one of the most bustling cities in the world, but lonely. She’d successfully chased the game without a care for the consequences. But all she wanted, after all this time, was the same. She wondered, in between drinking and batting practice, if it was too late. If she might turn back the clock and choose Kate.
That’s what flashed through her mind in the middle of her last game, dehydrated from the night before, despising the chants of her name and her stupid face on posters. She couldn’t hear the ball. She couldn’t feel it anymore. As she rounded the bases after crushing a triple, her ACL snapped. The game didn’t whisper it, but shouted it while she lay in the dirt, the stands spinning above—her time was up. When Mick rang with news of her engagement twenty-four hours later, she knew she couldn’t outrun it much longer.
Las Vegas
A drink on the plane failed to subdue her nerves, perhaps because even the turbulence reminded Kate of Abby. She’d spent weeks bracing herself to see her, had nearly backed out of the bachelorette and told Mick she was sick more than once. Of course, sickness didn’t seem that far-fetched when she arrived at the Bellagio, trembling and queasy in anticipation of their reunion.
But Abby wasn’t there.
Their large group, which included Mick’s cousins, sister, high school and work friends, and their senior softball class, gathered in conjoining rooms, a mess of hair straighteners, curling irons, makeup, and bottles of booze as they prepared for a night out.
“This is the first time in four years that I have no baby and no husband. I need clubs, I need shirtless men, I need to have a wardrobe malfunction, and I need to drink my weight in liquor,” Jill said as they poured shots in the bathroom. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
“Yeah, because that’s an average Wednesday night for most of us.” T.K. curled her long, amber hair, diamonds adorning her wrists, neck, and most fingers. She’d gone into Los Angeles real estate after college and, when she wasn’t selling houses, traveled with her Hollywood agent boyfriend.
“Speak for yourself.” Kate eyed the door, waiting for it to open.
“I’m just saying I’m never getting off birth control. No offense, Shupe,” T.K. said.
“But I love Junie.” Jill frowned from her seat on the edge of the bathtub. “I miss her. I think I should call.”
T.K. rolled her eyes as Jill slinked to the bedroom. The tight quarters, the gossip, the shrieking girls, were reminiscent of their college road trips. Kate could at least revel in being dumb kids for another weekend.
“So, are you excited to see Cruz?” T.K. asked.
Kate tightened her face against a reaction while she assessed herself in the mirror. “I wish everyone would stop saying that.”
“I think she’s excited to see you.” T.K. wiggled her eyebrows. “Nervous probably.”
Kate cleared her throat. “I assumed she ditched.”
“Oh, she’s coming. Trust me.”
Kate smoothed out her dress, a too short, too tight, too revealing loan from an insistent T.K.
“You two hang out a lot?” she asked.
