The Sweetest Game (16 page)

“Either Anaheim or Toronto.”

“Okay. Okay.” Her eyes lost focus for a second, then the rapid-fire questions began. “So then what? We have to move, right? And get rid of this place. Do you help me move? Of course you don’t. How does this work?” She paused, the wheels in her head clicking and turning clear as day, then realization set in. “I have to quit my job. Oh my God. I love my job.”

I wanted to fix it. Fix every single thing for her. Tell her she never had to quit anything for me. Or move for me. Or change her life in any possible way for me, but I’d die without her. I needed this girl the way plants needed oxygen. So I could tell her all of those things, but I’d be lying through my teeth. And she’d know it.

Cassie looked at me, her green eyes bright with tears. “How does this work? Tell me what this means.”

The look on her face broke my heart. I pulled her toward the couch and onto my lap, then wrapped my arms around her. I’d tell her anything she wanted to hear, but first I needed to feel her close to me. I needed to be touching her while I did it.

I pressed my head against her rib cage. “I have to leave the night the trade goes through. Whenever that is and wherever we are. The game will end and they’ll hand me a plane ticket.”

“What if you’re on the road?” she asked, playing with the strands of my hair.

“Then I leave from there. I don’t get to come home and see you or pack or anything like that. If we’re on a road trip, I leave straight from the road to meet up with the other team, wherever they are.”

“That’s harsh,” she said and I laughed.

“It is kinda harsh.”

She sucked in a deep breath. “And you don’t get any time off, right? I mean, you guys only get forty-eight hours when your wives have babies, so you wouldn’t get time off for this.”

“No, I don’t get any time off. But that doesn’t mean you have to do all this alone. You can talk to your boss, and make a plan. You don’t have to come with me right away. If we wait until the off-season, I can help you pack and we can move together.”

Cassie thought for a moment, then said, “Jack, look at me,” her voice soft and comforting as I glanced up. “I’m not going to stay here without you. You get traded, I get traded. We’re a team, remember?”

Hugging her tight, I spoke against her hair. “I just don’t want you to feel like you’re all alone in this. I completely understand if you want to wait until I can help. And if you need time to transition from your job to our new home, take all the time you need.” And I meant every word. It would fucking kill me to be without her, but she had a life here too. It was only fair she left it on her own terms.

She sniffed, then snuggled in closer to me. “I don’t want you to worry about me. I can handle moving and everything else that goes with it. You just worry about getting on that new team and showing the Mets that they screwed up by letting you go. I can’t believe they’re trading you!”

“Thank you, Kitten. I can’t believe it either. Good thing I still have this necklace. I think I’m gonna need it.” I pulled the key from under my shirt and stroked the letters stamped on it before letting it fall against my chest.

“It’s yours. Until you don’t need it anymore,” she said with a smile as she reached her hand out to touch it. “I feel betrayed by the team, in a way. Why do I feel like that? Do you feel like that?”

What I did feel was fucking stupid for having hurt feelings over this. What was I, a twelve-year-old? No, I was a man and grown men weren’t supposed to get butt-hurt over shit like this.

But truth be told, I was hurt. And I hated to admit it, but I vowed to never lie to my wife again and I took that seriously. “I don’t know that I feel betrayed as much as I feel let down. Like, I guess I stupidly thought they’d fight for me. Just because my pitching isn’t up to par right now, that they would know it would be back eventually. I feel like they quit on me. And it hurts because I’d never quit on them. They’re my team and I always give a hundred and ten percent when I’m on that mound. It hurts knowing it’s not a two-way street. Is that stupid?”

Yeah, I felt stupid admitting all this to her. Even though I knew she understood me more than anyone else in this world, it still sucked saying it all out loud.

“It’s not stupid at all,” Cassie said loyally. “You love this team. And it’s like you just got told they don’t love you the same way back. They broke up with you.”

I snorted. “I got dumped.”

Then she looked up at me with those big fucking green eyes and said, “I’ll never dump you.”

My heart full of love for her, I reached for her left hand and kissed the diamond I’d bought her. “I wouldn’t let you.”

She laughed, her body shaking against mine. “Yeah, I know. Been there, done that.”

“And look how well that turned out,” I teased playfully, knowing damn well she was the best thing to ever happen to me.

“I’d say it turned out better than well, Mr. Carter.”

“For me, maybe. I don’t know about your end of the deal.”

Jack got the news he’d been traded to Anaheim two days later. The Mets were in St. Louis and just like he said, he had to fly straight from there to Texas to meet up with his new team, the Anaheim Angels. Of course they went by some other name now, but growing up in Southern California, they’d always be the Anaheim Angels to me.

We really lucked out that the Angels were one of the teams fighting for Jack. That meant we got to move home, and it also meant that Jack didn’t have to try to find a place to live in his downtime. Grateful we had family in the area, he moved straight in with Gran and Gramps until I got there.

If he had been traded to Toronto, the team would have put him in a hotel for the first home stand only. It would only be for a few nights, then he would have had to find permanent accommodations on his own. That was just another harsh reality of playing professional baseball. No one helped you when you needed help the most. If Jack didn’t have me, I couldn’t imagine what he’d do. The players didn’t have time to find places to live, and deal with other necessary issues like that, when their entire days were spent at the ball field trying to maintain their position.

Of course I hated the idea of leaving work and the home we’d created in New York, but I hated being away from Jack’s home base even more. So I knocked on Nora’s door the morning after the trade.

“Hmph. I know why you’re in my office,” she said, momentarily pretending to be offended with me. Then real indignation took over. “I can’t believe they traded him!”

Taken aback, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I feel the same way.”

“I’m really going to miss you,” she said, her face solemn. Nora was a smart woman; she’d obviously put two and two together to figure out why I’d come to meet with her unannounced.

“And I can’t believe I have to move back to California. Don’t get me wrong, I love my home, but I’m not ready to say good-bye to New York yet. Is that bad?”

“Of course not. New York’s in your blood, Cassie. Plus, I have a proposition for you.” She rubbed her hands together and a devious smile appeared.

My mood immediately lifted. “What is it? Please let it be something that means I can still work here but not physically be here,” I practically begged.

She huffed and glared at me, shaking her head. “You ruin every surprise.”

“Tell me!”

“As long as you can deal with being an independent contractor instead of an employee, I can hire you on a project-by-project basis. And darling, your work more than speaks for itself, so I have no problem in doing just that.”

I stood up from my chair and ran to the other side of Nora’s desk, then reached down and squeezed her hard. “Thank you so much, Nora! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!” I exclaimed into her hair. “This means everything to me.”

“Honey, we’re lucky to have you.”

“No, I’m lucky to have you,” I practically shouted. “When should I do the switch? And how will it work?”

“I assume you need to move as soon as possible, am I right?” she asked and I shrugged. “I can’t promise you work all the time, but I will get you whatever I can. It won’t be like it is now, but it’s better than nothing. And since you’ll be an independent contractor, you can charge me per hour or a flat fee, that’s something you’ll need to figure out on your own. But the money can potentially turn out to be the same for less work, technically speaking.”

“I seriously love you.”

“Great. Now, go type up your letter of resignation and hand it in so I can let you go.”

“You’re going to make me cry,” I said, wiping at the tears threatening to fall.

“I’m trying to make your life easier, Cassie, not make you cry.” She tormented me with a knowing glance.

“You’re right. And I love you for it. I can never thank you enough, Nora. You’ve been the best boss in the world.”

She nodded and admitted with no shame, “I am pretty amazing.”

I burst out laughing. “I had no idea what I was going to do, or how I was going to leave. Thank you for making this so easy for us.”

Nora let out a little huff. “It’s your own fault for being so damn talented. Now go,” she said with a dismissive wave, “before you mess up my mascara.”

I gave Nora another hug, kissed the side of her cheek, and turned to walk out of her office for the last time in the foreseeable future.

“By the way,” she said, “the photos you took of Trina are incredible. You still want to shoot her post-pictorial, right?”

“Absolutely! Trina would kill me.” Inside, I reveled at the fact that I’d get to come back here in the near future to work. I wasn’t even gone yet, but I already longed to be back. New York City had definitely left its mark on me.

Closing Nora’s door behind me, I walked to my desk for the last time. I sat down and spun my chair around to stare at my computer screen, looking over the letter of resignation I’d already typed out for two seconds before e-mailing it over. If I looked at it for too long, I might be tempted to press
DELETE
.

Thankfully, or oddly, depending on how you looked at it, I had only acquired a small amount of personal belongings over the years. I scooped them up and slipped out of the office, then pressed the
DOWN
elevator button without making a fuss. Just the thought of leaving was hard enough; I didn’t want to make a spectacle out of it. I planned on sending a good-bye e-mail to the office once I was settled back in California.

I know, I know, it was sort of a chicken-shit move, but the reality was that co-workers didn’t let people leave easily. They had a habit of creating chaos and parties and celebrations that never ended. It was all with good intentions, but I didn’t have time for that. I needed to get our belongings packed and moved out to Los Angeles as soon as possible. Jack and I needed a new home, and it was my job to find us one. Because that was what the wife of a major league baseball player did. She took care of her man.

As I walked up the street toward the subway station, I thought I’d be more emotional. I actually braced myself for the tears and soul ache that never came. I’d fought so hard with Jack about having my own career, and had taken such a strong stand when it came to what I dreamed and wanted. But right now, all I truly wanted was to be home with my husband. I knew I told Jack exactly that the other night, but that was before I’d quit, before I’d actually resigned from my job.

Passion was a fickle thing. It could make you think you’d die for something one minute, then force you to realize you’d be just fine without it the next. A year and a half ago, I would have sworn on my life that I couldn’t survive a single moment if I didn’t have my career. Take away photography, and I assumed my soul would wither and die on the spot, leaving nothing but a memory of what once was.

But life had a way of changing your priorities. Or maybe it was me that had changed, because I’d never felt more full of life than I did right now. And none of it had to do with my career.

It was in this moment of truth, as I stood in a darkening subway station surrounded by strangers and lonely musicians, when I realized that my home was wherever Jack was. And he was no longer in New York, so I no longer belonged here. It was a simple truth, yet utterly profound in its message. I was meant to land wherever he settled, like the ocean washing seashells onto the shore. Jack was the shell, in constant motion and movement, being tossed around from place to place by the ebb and flow of something more powerful than he. And I was the sand, gripping and holding on to him, comforting his tumble with each push and pull of the tide, yet always constant.

When I walked into the waiting subway car, I had a smile plastered on my face. This understanding … this awakening … filled me with more joy than I’d ever considered possible. The best part was the acute awareness I had been given. It was like a gift. My heart wanted to burst with the sheer happiness I felt in this moment.

Before, I’d honestly never thought that following Jack’s career would ever
feel
okay to me. I had figured that I would always be fighting to keep hold of something that I felt defined me in ways that were separate from Jack. But the thing was, Jack was a part of me, and choosing to keep our family together was an okay priority for me to have.