Page 50 of The Battery

Leo

I slid my skis to a hockey stop at the perfect spot.

Farther up the trail by only fifty yards, Cody made slow but determined progress in his pizza-slice formation.

He carved wide esses into the empty ski trail bordered by tall evergreens laden with blankets of fresh snow from last night’s storm.

Helmeted, goggled, and puffed from a winter jacket, he looked like a granny with how slow he moved.

But overall, not bad for his second day ever on the slopes.

I loved him all the more for it.

Mentally, I braced myself the closer he came.

I had come to this stopping point countless times in the past with my family.

In fact, the last photo of us was taken here.

Dad, Mom, and myself in skis, Archie with that stupid neon yellow and green snowboard of his.

His helmet had spikes along the spine like some kind of punk rock dinosaur.

The evergreens broke for ten yards, giving way to a miles-long vista of the Adirondack Mountains.

Blue-gray lines described the range against a cloudless, impossibly blue afternoon sky.

A valley of snow stretched farther down, everything fresh, as if someone scattered endless white blankets on the world’s largest couch.

I lifted my tinted goggles to get a better view, immediately squinting and sneezing twice as my pupils adjusted.

The early February air was bitingly cold, but I had enough thermal layers to keep me warm.

We had only two more days before making the long haul to Florida for spring training.

Cody received a fat bonus at the end of last season for his clutch performance in the pennant race.

Management wasn’t overjoyed that I had called a knuckleball, a notoriously unpredictable throw that could have sent Austin forward by three runs.

In fact, I hadn’t planned on calling for the knuckleball.

But something whispered in my ear to do it.

I like to think it was Uncle Andy, urging me forward with the unknown. Among other things.

Cody and I spent the rest of autumn and early winter enjoying each other’s company and making new friends.

We went out to dinner as often as we could—and yes, we blew out every single candle the moment we sat down.

To date, our unspoken agreement continued, and we would never, officially, have a candlelight dinner again.

We leaned into our relationship like we had our bond as catcher and pitcher. It felt intuitive, almost like we could read each other’s minds at any given moment. I could read his microexpressions as easily as my own. In such a short time we had gone from newly in love to profoundly, deeply in love.

Cody came to a languid, rolling stop before me by pushing his skis out wider. That smile on his face. All joy, like a kid.

With my ski pole, I pointed toward the vista. He ripped his eyes away from me. The smile dropped, replaced by open-mouthed awe. “Oh. Wow,” he said as he lifted the goggles from his eyes. Like the first time I had seen that view, I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Which was perfect.

I lanced my poles into the ground, then sidestepped in my skis until I was close enough to him. We both faced the vista. Cody hadn’t looked away yet.

Found the box zipped up in my ski jacket. Palmed it in my glove.

“I can count on two hands,” I said, “the number of times I’ve made a serious promise in my life.”

I thought of the first one to my twin. When we decided, in secret, to make it to the majors.

Another with just my father when I was confused about the way I was feeling toward men and women, and he made me promise him to always be true to myself.

A promise to my whole family on one of our ski trips that I would be the one to look after Uncle Andy in his old age, since Archie was scatterbrained.

The last words I spoke to my mother.

The three promises I made to Uncle Andy.

And now…

“There are many things I can commit to when it comes to you, Cody.” At that, he turned sharply to look at me.

“But really only one of them matters over everything else.” I had practiced this several times in secret and managed to get it right, popping open the box with a single, gloved hand.

“I will be true to you and love you until the ink on my skin fades after my last breath. Will you let me?” I presented him with a platinum ring.

The look on his face. More joy. Bewilderment. Lots of welling tears.

“Leo,” was all he managed to say before awkwardly turning in his skis to throw his arms around me.

His face buried into my neck, nose as cold as ice.

The ring smashed between us. I extracted my hand, then wrapped my arms around to embrace him.

“Yes. Of course,” he said in a struggling voice. “You mean it, don’t you. Every word?”

I dipped my face down. Felt the heat of his neck beneath his ski jacket. The smell of his body. The waves of anticipation and happiness springing from him like a symphony.

There was only one way to respond.

“I promise.”