The Shortstop (19 page)

“Nothing.”

“You want nothing from me?”

“You can’t give me what I want.”

“No, Quint, only you can. You’re the only person who can.”

He releases a short, sarcastic laugh. “Okay,” he says, snapping his fingers. “I give me my old life back.”

“Stop it.” The sarcastic smile falls from his lips. “Stop pushing me away. Why are you trying to hurt me? Does it make you feel better if I hurt as much as you’re hurting?” Tears blur my vision, but anger is what’s fueling my words.

“You can’t be hurting as much as I am.”

“Really, because I haven’t loved you since the age of five? I couldn’t possibly be affected by all this as much as you are, if not more? Well, guess what? You’re fucking wrong! I am hurting as much as you. I may not be hurt physically, but what’s happening inside me, what I feel every waking moment of every day is a pain like I’ve never felt before. The worst part is I never thought I’d ever feel that pain in association with you. I never imagined you’d be the one to make the pain I feel worse with every malicious word out of your mouth.”

He gives me a resigned smile. “That’s been my point. You’re hurting
because
of me.”

“That’s what happens when you love someone, Quint. If they hurt, you hurt.”

“Someday, you’ll realize that being away from me will make your hurt go away.”

My breathing becomes so labored that I begin to pace the room, fearing I’ll pass out. My hands tremble from the despair that’s pouring from me uncontrolled. I can’t even bring myself to look at him. His silence is like a knife to my already bleeding heart. While staring at the ring on my finger, I ask again, “What are you saying?”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“You can’t do what?” I ask, my voice quivering from fear.

“Pretend that I haven’t been ripped in half.”

“You haven’t been pretending, Q. For days, you’ve been showing me just how you’ve been ripped in half. You’ve been pushing me away at every turn.”

“I’ve been holding it in. You have no clue what I’ve been desperately trying to keep inside.”

“Maybe that’s because you won’t talk to me? Stop being a coward and tell me what you can’t do. Say it out loud.”

I watch him work a swallow as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down. “I can’t be the man you fell in love with. Not now, maybe not ever again. I’m in hell, and I love you too much to take you with me.” He watches me calmly. The only indication of his angst is his chest rising and falling with each breath and the glassiness in his eyes. “Annie, my heart is filled with so much resentment, I’m no longer sure there’s any room left for you.”

I suck in a breath from his words. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” I wait for him to take it back, tell me he didn’t mean it, or that he’s so distraught he doesn’t know what he’s saying. But he doesn’t. The words are out, and he’s choosing not to take them back. 

Slowly, I wipe away the tears that continue to roll down my face. After a few very long minutes, I quietly walk toward our room to pack an overnight bag. As I’m mindlessly throwing in things I’ll need, he appears in the doorway.

“Where are you going?”

“You’re serious? After what you just said to me, you question where I’m going? I have no idea where I’m going. But it’s not your concern.” Truth is, I really don’t know where I’m going. By calling my parents that would confirm this is real. The pathetic fiancée who loves him more than anything desperately clings to the possibility he’ll wake tomorrow and realize this was a huge mistake.

Suddenly I feel like I’ve been hovering, suffocating him while he needs space to work this shit out in his head. We’ve been together twenty-four seven and we both need a breather.

I pray to God this is just that, a breather.

“Annie. I love you, but I can’t recover physically, or even emotionally, if I’m constantly worrying about you.” I won’t justify his fucked-up reasoning with an answer. It’ll do no good, except to expose me to even more rejection. “Annie,” he repeats as I walk toward the door.

Without turning, I wait for him to continue. I’m giving him one more chance to take it back. When I can hear him scrub his hand over his scruff over and over, I know I’ll be waiting for a very long time. Just as I take my first step toward the door, he whispers, “I’m sorry I can’t be what you want.”

With my back toward him, I respond, “You are what I want. You’re all I ever wanted my whole life. I’m sorry I’m not enough to make you happy.”

I don’t look back as I walk away for fear of what I’ll see. I need to believe he’s as devastated as I am at the moment. I need to visualize him welling with tears and struggling to keep it together. That’s the visual I choose to hold in my mind even knowing damn well the Quint I leave behind is probably scowling. The Quint I just walked away from is a stranger who has cruelly taken over my Quint’s life.

Quint

Even though I pushed her out that door, even though I sent her away, I stand dumbfounded for the longest time, hoping upon hope that she’ll come back. At the sound of her slamming the door, what little life I have in me dissolves to ash. The snap I felt in my knee, and the excruciating pain that followed was nothing compared to what I now feel in the center of my chest.

With every breath, I’m reminded of what I lost. She’s always been my heart, but baseball was my blood. One doesn’t work without the other. My heart isn’t enough to keep my will to live alive without blood running through my veins. It sickens me to feel that way.

It really has nothing to do with my love for her. Pushing her away needs to be done for her own protection. The longer I waited, the more she would break my resolve.

On our happiest days, I knew she was giving up so much because she chose to love me. I convinced myself it was okay because it was temporary. Once I got my career where I wanted it, we’d focus on her. After I settled in with my new team, we’d focus on her. Besides, we were happy...that’s all that really mattered. Let’s call it what it was, a big fat fucking string of denial. Just because she was happy and I was happy, I swept making her a priority under our proverbial rug.

Well, that rug has now been yanked from under my feet. There’s nowhere to sweep the crap anymore. There’s nowhere to hide the truth. I was her world and she revolved around me. My injury is an asteroid heading right for her world. With Annie in my orbit, I’ll be taking her down with me. She’s better off without me. No one can convince me otherwise. She’s young, beautiful, pure goodness. She’ll survive as long as she’s not in the line of impact.

It doesn’t make the hurt feel any less in my chest. Just as I can’t survive without the half of my heart that contained the love of my sport, I can’t survive without the other half that contained my love for her. It doesn’t matter what’s left of me. I’m already broken. I can’t be fixed. I’m facing months of physical therapy to fix my knee. I’m probably facing years of psychological therapy to fix my head.

The combination exhausts me. I’m so tired, and I haven’t even begun yet. I used to push my body to insane physical limits without breaking a sweat. The mere thought of what my life will be like over the next year, or five, or ten, is enough to make me want to go to sleep and never wake up. Obviously, I’m depressed. I know the fucking signs.

I open the website I’ve been scouring for the past three days. The signs of emotional trauma caused by a physical injury stare me in the face, mocking me as I sit and read them once again. I have them committed to memory. Yet, I can’t stop reading them.
Shock, denial, confusion, anger, irritability, mood swings, guilt, shame, self-blame, hopelessness, anxiety, fear, withdrawing from others, feeling disconnected, feeling numb
…those fucking sardonic words continue to dance on the screen and continue to mock me.

I slam shut the lid of my laptop with such force the screen shatters. My next brilliant move is to hurl it across the room. It smashes against our dresser, taking the framed picture of Annie and me when we were five with it. The sight of something I treasured so much for so many years lying broken on the rug causes sobs to violently reverberate through me. That shattered picture frame is now a metaphor of what has become of us. The pain suddenly becomes too much to bear.

“Make it stop!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Please, make it stop,” I whimper pathetically, but no one hears me. Regardless, I keep pleading in my darkened room for some relief, for someone to put me out of my misery. Annie’s pillow muffles my cries for help as I clutch it to my face. It smells like her. It becomes my life support as I continue to sob for all that I’ve lost.

My parents pounding on my door brings me back to the hell I’m living on earth. It must be day, based on the light filtering through the tiny space in the blinds. I have no idea if I slept for hours or days. It doesn’t matter because I’m not ready to leave my bed yet. I finally found a tiny bit of bliss. Annie and I were on the beach, coming very close to fucking each other publicly. Her pillow became a substitute for her body as I clutched it to my hardened cock. With each bang on the door, the vision of her gorgeous smiling face evaporates along with my hard-on.

Scrunching my eyes closed, I try to recapture the dream I was having. The knocking continues, but I ignore them. They are stubborn as shit and resourceful. A few minutes later, the building manager opens my door. All I can hear once they bust in are my mom’s sobs and that she thought I was dead. Their murmurs travel through the air. They are shocked to see what has become of our condo. I had several bouts of rage last night. The evidence is lying around in the form of broken glass, dented walls, and smashed reminders of my former life.

My dad is the first one in my room, staring at me from the doorway like I’m an escaped mental patient. He’s not too far off the mark. I feel absolutely insane—straitjacket candidate.

My mom sniffles behind him with tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Annie was with us last night. She told us everything.” She proceeds to relay all the details of our last conversation, feeding it back to me word for word as if I wasn’t there. I let her. Why bother stopping her? Instead, I retreat to my padded cell, which is otherwise known as my mind. It’s my prison, a real fucking shithole of a place.

“Quint, you need to stop. You’re going to kill yourself. As is, you’re killing her…you’re killing us.”

Well, fucking duh. My mother just proved my point. I’m killing everyone around me who deserves better than my toxic existence.

“Quint,” she insists, waiting for a response.

All I can do is stare back at her impassively, choosing to remain mute. She sits on the side of my bed, waiting for something…what, I have no fucking clue. I have no idea what it is she’s waiting for. I’m not capable of giving anything. She’s going to be waiting a very long time.

My dad sinks into the chair in the corner. He bends and picks up the shattered picture. The look on his face is one I’ve never seen before. I couldn’t even begin to know what he’s thinking right now, nor do I care.

I’ve reached a new low. It’s obvious in the way I’m blatantly ignoring two people who love me more than anything on earth, and I’m wishing they would leave me the fuck alone.

The voices around me are getting on my nerves. I’ve been awake for a while now, but I pretend to still be out of it. It’s easier this way. I know I’m only prolonging the inevitable. My surgery is over. According to the voices, it went well. Two of the voices are my parents, one is my surgeon, and I don’t recognize the other three. The one voice I was hoping to hear isn’t here. I waited for her to come before I went in. She never did. I was actually hurt that she didn’t come. I tore her heart out of her chest with my bare hands, and my feelings are hurt that she didn’t come to wish me luck…or that she didn’t call or text? I haven’t spoken to or seen her for three days. I can’t even bring myself to ask my parents how she is, because I haven’t spoken to them for three days either.

It hasn’t been easy, nor have they gone easy on me. Part of me wants them to walk away like Annie did. Ignoring and avoiding under the guise of anger and indifference is hard work. If they’d just leave me alone, I could withdraw into my own prison and not be held accountable for my actions. Annie leaving was a gift. They need to do the same and let me be.

Pretending to still be out of it for the sake of avoiding may be a cowardly thing to do. It doesn’t stop me from continuing this charade until the room goes quiet. I wait until I hear no one around me. The only sounds are coming from the machine that’s monitoring my vital signs.

I open my eyes and they immediately land on Annie’s face. She sits in a chair in the corner, watching me. She looks tired, worn out. Even with her hair pulled into a messy ponytail and the dark circles under her eyes, she still looks beautiful. Our eyes remain locked for a few seconds before I turn away.

“How do you feel?” she asks quietly.

Ignoring her question, I look back at her to ask, “Why are you here?” Her eyes never waver, her facial expression remains void of any emotion. If it weren’t for her shallow breaths, I wouldn’t know how badly this is hurting her.

“You can’t be that dumb.”

“I’m tired. I think you should go.”

“You don’t get to call all the shots, Q. I think I have a say in what happens between us. I think I deserve one.” Again I turn away, closing my eyes to hide from her interrogation. “You can ignore me all you want. You can try to push me away, pretend it’s easier than sticking it out.” She continues to speak, knowing I’m listening. “I left without argument the other night because I know you need time, space to figure out your shit. If you think for one fucking second that you’ll get rid of me that easily, you don’t know me at all. It’s disappointing, actually. How little you think of me. Do you honestly think I’m not strong enough to stick this out? You may think I’m dumb enough to throw what we have away without argument, but you couldn’t be more wrong.”

She pauses long enough for me to think she’s done. Reluctantly, I open my eyes to glance her way. Her defensive stance and the determination in her eyes tell me she’s ready for a fight. It’s the look she always gets when we argue. That look once challenged me to be a better person. Today, it’s having the reverse effect. With that look, she’s killing my resolve. I’m not strong enough to pretend seeing her, hearing her voice, isn’t killing me. I’m not that good of an actor. I should have known Annie wouldn’t have made it easy for me. How dumb can I be?

“Please go,” I ask again. “I can’t do this now.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“Does it fuckin’ matter?” I spit out angrily.

“You asked me to marry you. This ring means something to me. In a few months, we’re supposed to stand before our friends and family and vow to love each other through
sickness and health
. I would hope if the tables were turned, you’d be here trying to get through to me. You’d be fighting for us.” She stands and walks toward my bed. The urge to reach out and grab her hand is so strong that I clench my fist to squelch it. I focus on a spot on the ceiling to avoid her scrutinizing gaze.

Undeterred, she reaches for me instead and runs her fingers through my hair. “I’ll go. But let me ask you one more question. Does it make you feel better when you push me away, or does it worsen your pain?”

At my silence, she bends and kisses my lips softly. Just one kiss, just enough to torment me. “I love you,” she says before turning and leaving my room.

I love you, too. So fucking much. I love you more than you’ll ever know. I love you enough to let you go. I love you, Annie Weber. I’ll always love you.