Page 47 of Left on Base

I watch him attack his Gatorade bottle like it personally insulted him. But I know that look. That’s not an ump problem. That’s a girl problem. “What’d Callie do now?”

He shakes the bottle until Gatorade fountains out the top, making a sticky blue puddle. “She acts all happy to hear from me and then I find out she’s been talking to Sawyer.”

“Who?”

“I don’t fucking know. That kid she’s been talking to. I think Brynn dated him last year for a bit.”

“Wait.” I raise an eyebrow. “The soccer player?”

“Yeah. Whatever.” He rolls his eyes so hard I’m worried he’ll strain something. “Him.”

“Oh, damn.”

Jameson lifts what he thinks is his water bottle and splashes his face. Blue drops fall from his nose, and he looks down at his now-stained white jersey. “That was Gatorade.”

I can’t help but laugh. It’s not the first time he’s mixed up his bottles, and knowing Jameson, it won’t be the last. He can throw a 100 mph fastball but still struggles with basic color recognition.

“Yo, my guy, what’s up with you and the journalist chick? Ink?” he asks, trying to deflect from his Gatorade shower and love life.

I almost laugh—he never says “my guy.”

“Inez?” My heart does this weird skip, mostly guilt because I’ve been ghosting her since Camdyn and I ended up in my uncle’s steam shower. Not my proudest moment, but neither is sitting here watching someone else catch for my team.

“Whatever her name is.”

I snort. He knows her name. “Nothing’s happening with her.”

“Dang.” His eyebrows scrunch together. “Actually?”

He’s not disappointed. Trust me, I know that tone. It’s the same one he uses when Coach cancels practice early.

I give him this noncommittal head roll that could mean anything from “no” to “I’m having a seizure.” “It’s whatever.”

Before he can dig deeper, Kingston pops up to end the inning, and Jameson heads back to the mound for the bottom of the seventh, probably grateful for the escape.

The bench crew is chattering about calls and plays and whatever else fills the time when you’re not on the field. But I’m not much for dugout small talk during games. Instead, I watch the freshman catcher—my replacement—work behind the plate. He’s good, I’ll give him that. But I’m better.

Or at least I was, before I let my head get tangled up in everything that isn’t baseball. Then again, maybe that’s the problem. Maybe baseball isn’t everything. Maybe sometimes it’s just a game, and there are more important things.

But for now, I’m the guy on the bench, covered in dirt, trying to figure out how to be everything for everyone without losing myself. And let me tell you, that’s harder than hitting a curveball in the dark.

The stadium lights have kicked on now, that magic-hour glow making every field look like something out of a movie. You know that scene in Field of Dreams where they talk about baseball being a constant? Yeah, it’s kind of like that—except instead of ghost players out of cornfields, I’m watching our left fielder try to catch bugs in his glove between pitches.

I should be studying the opposing pitcher’s tells—the way he adjusts his cap before a changeup, or how his glove hand twitches before he throws to first. He’s predictable as fuck. Instead, I’m thinking about how Camdyn used to make fun of my game-day superstitions. “Baseball players are just organized chaos with cleats,” she’d say, and damn if she wasn’t right.

The Texas crowd is getting restless, that special kind of antsy that happens when you’re down by three runs and the ice in your overpriced soda has melted into sugar water.

There’s a kid two rows up waving a foam finger, smacking his dad in the face every time he moves. At least someone’s making contact today.

Coach Allen’s still next to me, probably brewing up another life lesson. The man has more sayings than a fortune cookie factory, and about half of them make sense. The rest? Well, “You gotta milk the cow before you make the cheese” ain’t Shakespeare, my guy.

But here’s the thing about Coach: he’s been right about a lot. He saw something in that strikeout-prone twelve-year-old and turned him into a college catcher. He knew I had an arm when everyone else wanted to stick me in right field—baseball’s version of being picked last in gym.

Don’t look at me like that. You know I’m right.

The only thinghe’sbeen wrong about? Camdyn.

See, Coach thinks relationships are like batting slumps—something you work through or walk away from. But Camdyn? She’s that perfect pitch you see in slow motion, when everything else fades and you just know. You know?

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