Page 87 of Definitely Not a Thing

I checked in with my mom, who’d made a habit of sending me a prayer via text every day – not anything she copied from the internet either,herwords,herdesires for me,herencouragement. I wouldn’t front… it actually did a lot for me.

If nobody else was in my corner, her, and my sister?

Always holding it down.

And then there was Amelia.

“Please tell me you made a million goals today. --Li-Li.”

That was the text I had from her, immediately brining a grin to my face once I was settled in the car. It was from nearly an hour ago, so she was probably home and settled as well by now.

“Goals? Please be serious.” was all I texted back, knowing I was going to call as soon as I got to my place in Blackwood.

Except, she beat me to it.

“You’re focused on the wrong thing, Cross,” she said. “Goals, homeruns, whatever – I need some good news.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, frowning not just at her words, but…hm.Something in her voice.

“It has just been… a day. We had an app outage during a walk through with Rori Martin for the integration.”

“I thought you were supposed to do stuff like that in a… test environment?” I offered, recalling a conversation we’d had.

“Thank you for the confirmation that you actually listen when I talk,” Amelia said. “But, wewereusing a test environment for that… while the live site went down. I wasmortified.And panicking, because every second we’re down, we’re losing money, and customer trust, and justugh.”

“So it’s still down right now?”

“No – Rori helped us figure it out. She’s still a developer you know, and she had a major outage issue happen with herapp before, so she was able to kind of… calm me down I guess. But those hours while it wasn’t working… talk about crying, screaming, throwing up.”

“Ah man – I’m glad it’s fixed, but that’s fucked up. What was the issue – or is that too technical?”

“Above my pay grade,” she answered. “I’m just glad they fixed it – and now I have to figure out how to make it right with the customers who were affected by the outage.”

“Make it right how?”

“I don’t know,” she whined. “Discounts, bonuses, groveling apology email? I don’t know,” she repeated. “This sucks ass. Anyway—you never answered me earlier. How many homeruns today.”

“Baskets,” I corrected. “And… enough to be pretty sure I’ll be in the starting lineup.”

“Awww, congratulations! How do you feel?”

“Exhausted. They ran our asses in the ground today – I had to do the damn ice bath.”

“Oh nooo,” she groaned. “And here I am calling to complain like you don’t have your own stuff.”

“What? Don’t even play with me like that,” I chuckled. “Your shit is way worse – and even if it wasn’t, it doesn’t erase that your day sucked. And you can say that.”

“My day fuckingsucked,” she immediately shot back, laughing, even as her voice cracked.

The day’s workout was nothing compared to how tightthatmade my chest feel.

“Amelia…”

“Donotmake me cry again,” she fussed, clearing her throat. “Ijustshook the headache off. I’m fine.”

“Iknowyou don’t I believe that.”

“Well, I need to believe it, so…”