Page 115 of Running Home to You
She flopped onto a bench outside, hand wavering as she lit a cigarette. It took her a dozen tries with the lighter. Another dozen to get the cap off her flask. She wasn’t about to go back into the reception with another fuckup under her belt. Instead, she listened to the band’s muffled drums and saxophone from outside, eyes cast on the empty vineyard long enough for the sky to turn from orange to dark purple.
“Hey.”
Abby swiveled her head to Ryan. He stalked toward her, shoes crunching the gravel above the chirping crickets.
“Can I help you?” she asked as she stretched onto unsteady legs.
“Stay away from her,” he said. It was firm and simple. He loomed in his tux, veins in his neck straining. She longed to lure him into taking a swing. She wasn’t sure what it would solve, but knew choosing her own hurt would temporarily make her feel better.
“I’m out here, aren’t I?”
Before either of them could say more, the door squealed open andKate peeled out, just as dashing as before, like their fight hardly touched her. When she reached Ryan, he put a protective arm around her, and Abby miraculously resisted snarling.
“We’re going to head out,” Kate said. Her gaze fell into Abby’s, but not too deeply, as if restrained by that arm around her. As if it made her someone else entirely. “Take care of yourself.”
Abby nodded, her throat bobbing because she wouldn’t see her again. Her bones ached with it, her heart squeezed, and her ears rang, everything in her urging her to double down, but she was too tired to fight. She’d already lost.
“You too,” she whispered.
She popped another half pill, stalked back into the reception, and didn’t look back. She posted up at the bar and drank until she slurred. T.K. and Jill tried to console her, but Abby shirked them and blacked out before the bartender cut her off. In the muddled, painful recap, she apparently knocked over a waiter, resulting in a shattered stack of plates. She advised the startled guests to fucking relax, among other pearls of wisdom, until Mick finally stopped her. Dylan and Mick’s brother dragged her out of the reception with T.K. and Mick following behind.
“I’m never going to get her back,” Abby said as they shoved her in a car.
“Got to let her go, Cruz.” Mick squeezed her shoulder, bow tie drooping like a mirror to her frown. “And you’ve got to take care of yourself. Okay?”
Abby nodded, threw her head back on the seat, spinning and sick, alone on the road of her own inevitable crash.
Rock Bottom
A week after the wedding, after Dani broke up with her, after she apologized to Mick and paid the catering company for the damages, Abby decided she was going to win a gold medal. She was twenty-seven, still in her prime, minus the injury and the addiction she was in denial of. But she needed the game. She needed it in a new, bigger way, and the Olympics promised just that.
She had two years to get herself right, to rehab her knee, to make the team as starting shortstop. She wouldn’t play for Puerto Rico. While she adored the team and island, they weren’t as competitive, might not even make the cut for Stockholm, so she set her sights on Team USA.
As if in answer to her ambitions, a new league started in America. Six teams on the West Coast. Abby conveniently landed in Los Angeles, but inconveniently, with the league in its infancy, teams relied on local college fields and facilities. It brought her back to UCLA. The same school that kicked her out for partying months after her mother’s death.
She swore she heard her whispers in the stands, swore she saw her in the corner of her vision at practice. Of course, that might’ve been the pills. In between physical therapy, strength training, and traveling for games, Abby subsisted on vice, barely ate, only slept if induced by drugs and booze.
Every week she told herself she’d stop, but then the pain came. The pain with every twist of her knee in the batter’s box. The pain in her chest too, since losing Kate. It didn’t help her game. She was slower to the ball, got caught on her heels, couldn’t keep up with the younger players. She started striking out. The worst batting average of her career, when she needed it most. She couldn’t remember the last time she knocked one out of the park. She slowly plummeted in the lineup, from fourth to sixth to ninth. Every time the umpire called strike three, she gritted her teeth, smacked her bat in the dirt, chucked her helmet into the wall. In the field, she tripped, strained her knee further, reacted instead of surrendering.
When Mick called a few months later, she considered letting it go to voicemail, but after the wedding, she owed her.
“Hey,” she answered from her couch, a bag of ice on her knee, sweat rolling down her temple. She’d gone almost an entire day without a pain pill, but her skin crawled. “Is it the catering company? I’ve paid them twice now. I think they’re scamming me.”
“She’s getting married,” Mick said.
Abby sat up as her heart launched into her throat. “Who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m telling you so you can do something.”
“Do something?” She thought her chest might explode. Thought her head might explode too. Her ears whooshed with that awful ring. The ring of losing. The ring of everything falling apart. “She clearly made her choice.”
“You know it’s bullshit!”
“Of course it is!” Abby shouted. “But who are you to tell me what to do about it?”
