Page 17

CHARLIE

“What do you mean?” she asks, stepping further away from me, her face suddenly clouded over with an emotion that I don’t recognize, pulling free from my grasp and my hands flex into fists, instantly missing the feel of her warmth against them.

I shrug, trying clear my mind, trying to rid it of the need to reach out for her. “Look at you, you’re living your dream, how do you know what it feels like to lose it?”

“How do I . . . are you serious right now?”

Shit. That look I know well. Furrowed brow, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed dangerously. What the hell did I just say? I can’t even remember.

“I . . .” I try to gather my thoughts again, something about dreams and, yeah, that’s it, she understood, she gets me and it’s confusing as fuck that, somehow, she’s mad about it?

Then she’s gone, pushing past me off the dance floor ,weaving her way through the crowd that’s still locked on the Montana vs Montana State showdown, and I try to follow her path with my eyes, but then it hits me that we didn’t pay yet for our meals.

The last thing I need is some hit job in the press that I skip out on my meals in the middle of Small Town USA .

I go back to the table to toss some bills on it before racing out into the night.

I have no idea what I did to set her off, but clearly I hit a nerve.

I follow as fast as I can. The hotel is only down the street from and, with the game going on, there’s barely anyone blocking my view.

If my knee wasn’t held together with spit and a prayer, I’d try to sprint down the sidewalk and catch up with her.

But it is, so instead I set a steady pace, keeping her in my line of sight as she stalks into the hotel.

I make my way into the lobby just in time to see the elevator doors close with her behind them, so I call for another one and wait.

What the hell did I say? I was caught up in the moment, marveling at the way she understood me so well and then . . . she was gone.

Thankfully I have a room key in my wallet, sparing me the indignity of knocking on the door until she deigned to open it.

She’s standing in the center of the room, her back to me, staring out that window, the view even more nondescript now that it’s too dark out to see the mountain range coloring the horizon.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I begin, but she cuts me off, raising a hand and stepping right up to me, nearly chest to chest.

“Don’t, it’s not . . . I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re not?”

Shrugging, she throws her hands up in frustration. “Not entirely, I just . . . you really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what? Frankie, talk to me.”

“Do you know how many dreams I’ve lost?”

Her voice is soft, like she doesn’t want to give voice to whatever she’s about to tell me. She doesn’t let me answer, not that I have any idea what to say.

“When I was a little girl all I ever wanted to do was play baseball. And I was so good at it. You know that feeling? When you’re a kid and you’re better than everyone else on the field.

It just hits you one day, right? That they’re all here,” she holds a hand up, “and you’re here” and lifts the other one a foot above it.

I nod.

“Of course you do. I was so good, Charlie, so good , but when I was twelve, and still better than every boy in my class, they told me that my dream was impossible, that girls don’t play baseball and they certainly don’t play it in the major leagues.

That coach said it right to my face, in front of the other players, like he wasn’t absolutely crushing my soul with every word.

So I went home and cried my little pre-teen heart out about it and then asked my parents to sign me up for softball.

I remember my dad asking me if I was sure, as he knew how much I loved it, and I said that I was, that I knew it was where I belonged.

I was lying, but I wanted so badly for it to be the truth that I made it so.

I got a new dream and I learned to love that game.

They told me that, if I worked hard, I could play in college and, at the end of that rainbow, if managed to be better than all the other little girls, there could be an Olympic gold medal waiting for me.

So I went for it. I put my entire heart into it.

And I got good at it. I got so good at it schools across the country wanted me to come play for them, wanted me to lead their team to the Women’s College World Series.

You know what that’s like, right? When the college coaches come calling? ”

I nod again. They’d come calling, but I hadn’t listened. I’d gone right to the minor leagues, a chance she never had, a choice that just wasn’t available to her. The puzzle pieces start to click into place.

“And off I went and, while I was there, absolutely dominating and dreaming dreams of Olympic gold, another bomb gets dropped. Sorry, softball’s out of the Olympics.

You’re just going to have to find another dream .

. . again. But I was smart this time. I knew better than to put my entire heart and soul into one dream. ”

Another luxury I didn’t even know I had.

“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and all that,” she says, rolling her eyes, maybe at me, maybe at society.

I don’t know, but I don’t blame her either way.

“I had a backup plan this time. I majored in data analysis and focused on predictive models. I was going to show that coach who told me girls don’t make it to the major leagues.

I was going to make it. And you know what happened? ”

It’s probably a rhetorical question, but I answer it anyway. “You did it.”

“I did it. I fought tooth and nail to get my foot in the door, had to prove myself and be twice as good as everyone else out there, but I did it. I lost my dreams at twelve and at twenty and, if someone takes this dream from me, so help me God, I’ll find another one.”

“Sullivan, I didn’t mean . . .” I start, but she’s not having it.

“Of course you didn’t,” she says, throwing her hands up before letting them fall to her sides and shaking her head. “You didn’t know. How could you know? Why would you ever think that we had the same dream? I don’t even know why I’m telling you any of this.”

Her voice fades and we’re surrounded by the complete silence in the room, as there’s no noise from the city, such as it is, out that stupid window.

“I know why.”

That stops her.

“You do?”

“Because if we’re going to do this, I needed to know.”

“What?”

Something tightens in my chest at her question, and for a moment she’s that twelve-year-old girl she spoke about, her dream dead before it ever really had a chance to live.

“I needed to know just how much you have to lose . . . again. If this doesn’t work, our truce I mean, I can keep going, but you . . . you only get . . .”

“I only get one shot,” she finishes for me. “Especially now.”

Now it’s my turn to be confused.

“General manager was what I’ve been working toward, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. I thought I’d have more time to build up my reputation, to make myself hirable no matter how things ended with the Eagles.”

I blink at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Haven’t you ever heard that old saying about working in baseball?

“If you don’t win, you’re going to be fired.

If you do win, you’ve only put off the day you’re going to be fired.

” It’s what happens to us, all of us. But there’s a weird space where you might get fired, but other teams will still want you.

I wanted to make sure I was firmly in that category before . . .”

“Before you were ultimately responsible for the result.”

She hums her agreement. “Do you know how long a GM usually lasts in a job?”

“No.”

“It’s actually just a little shorter than the average playing career. Five and a half years.”

“That’s . . . not very long.”

“No, it isn’t. But assistant GM s? They tend to stick around longer – thirteen years, actually.”

“Of course you ran the numbers,” I say, trying to break the odd sort of tension between us, and it works. She lets out a shaky breath and a laugh.

“Of course I did,” she agrees. “I was hoping to stick it out as an assistant for a little longer, build a reputation as someone valuable to an organization so that, once this ends, there’d be a relatively soft landing, but here I am, so I need to make sure . . .”

“That you succeed.”

“Exactly, so I guess I just needed you to understand that I have a lot to lose here and not just a ring this year, but my chance at ever getting one.”

I step closer and all I want is to pull her into my arms and hold her to my chest and tell her it’s going to be okay, even though I’m pretty sure that’s the last thing a woman like Francesca Sullivan wants.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” I say, and brave another step toward her and reach out, lifting a hand to her face, but hesitating, giving her a moment and then another to pull away before I brush my thumb along the line of her jaw.

I’m watching in wonder as it makes her lips part and she pulls in a soft gasp at the contact.

I want to draw that sound from her again.

My fingers curl around the back of her neck and there’s no gasp this time, but a long, deep breath, and I’m so close now I feel the rise and fall of her breasts against my chest, the fabric of my t-shirt sliding against my chest in a whisper of what it would be like to feel skin against skin.

“Can I . . .” I begin to ask, just like I did two years ago in that parking lot with my world crashing down around me and her the only thing that seemed to tether me in place, but this time she shakes her head, a hand at my chest, gently, but firmly pushing me away.

“No,” she whispers, and then her shoulders straighten and I let my hand drop. “We can’t.”