Page 142 of Running Home to You
“You don’t know!”
Abby turned and gestured to left field. “Brookheimer, take two steps to your left! And one in! Perfect!” Abby pivoted back to Courtney and gave her a thumbs-up. “Okay, we’re all set. Go ahead, Court!”
“Screw you!”
Both teams, including Kate, doubled over in laughter.
“So, what was I saying?” Abby asked, completely unfazed by her audience. “Oh yeah, so it sounds like you’re single and I’m single.”
Kate smirked, her stomach flipping in a way she’d long forgotten. A way that no one had inspired before her and no one since. “And what are you going to do about it?”
Courtney smacked the ball. It flew high to left field. Brookheimer didn’t have to move, simply put her glove up. Abby never turned to see it, not even as the Eagles cawed in hysterics and Courtney flipped her off. Instead, she closed in on Kate again.
“You know, San Diego is less than a two-hour flight away,” Abby said.
“Oh, really? I would like to see Isla again. Those nephews of yours are pretty cute too.”
“Well, you know where they get it…”
Kate scoffed. “Yeah. Your sister.”
“What’s going on? Do you two need us to stop the game?” Mick asked.
“No!”
“Okay, then maybe pick it up after this, Cruz,” Mick said before addressing the field. “One out! Runner on one, infield turn two, outfield cut three!”
Abby grumbled and jogged back to shortstop. She worked the leather of her glove, spit, flexed her knees, and Kate swore they’d gone back in time. Her heart could hardly take it.
“You know, flights to San Francisco are pretty cheap too,” Kate said, as Madison Quong went up to hit.
Abby grinned. “I heard they even have a baseball team.”
“Yeah, me too. A little one, I think. Field by the water. Won some sort of trophy.”
“That’s the one,” Abby said as the pitcher started her windup. “Maybe there’s someone worth scouting up there.”
Madison drilled a ball to shortstop. Abby glanced from Kate not a second too soon, jolted a step to her right to snag the ball on a skip with her backhand. Kate didn’t doubt that she’d get it, never slowed on her route to second, the ball always stopping in Abby’s wake. She squared to Kate, took a step, and flipped the ball from her glove. Kate caught it, tapped second base before T.K. reached it, and fired a bullet to first for the double play. Turning two—the only time they got it right.
Both teams cheered. Kate shivered as she approached Abby for a high five, but she never received it. Abby hugged her, lifted her off the ground, and Kate held tight.
“Hey,” Abby whispered when she released her.
The teams cleared the field, shaking hands and exchanging high fives.
“Hey,” Kate said back.
They stared at each other, in the careful distance. Abby’s breath shook on the way out, and Kate tilted her head.
“You okay?” she asked.
Abby nodded, her brow quirking, so that Kate didn’t know if she might laugh or cry. “I think I’m just overwhelmed by you.”
Kate’s throat tightened at the admission, at how far they’d come, and the unknown ahead. She longed for the right words to take what she wanted, but faltered at the ghost of their failures and the reality of their separate worlds. After tonight, another end loomed until the next alumni game called them back. For all her progress, she was still in the middle, unsure of how to have both the life she’d worked so hard to craft for herself and the part of her heart she’d never learned to live without.
“I’m uh, going to get my stuff.” Kate cleared her throat.
The two of them slipped into the throngs of their teammates, losing each other in the catching up and goodbyes, the shuffle in and out of dugouts. Kate joined Mick, Jill, and T.K. in the parking lot as the rest of their teammates tore off ahead for Sunny’s. Another breath of old times. The four of them long ago had come together as scared freshmen and hadn’t broken apart since.
