Page 4 of Wild Pitch
The Jumbotron kept panning to the silent bullpen and the dugout, where the coaching staff sat quietly watching. It was as if no one was breathing.
When they panned back to the dugout, I squinted a bit closer. Was that Luc? Fuck, it was him. Support staff, my ass. Why was he in the dugout? He wasn’t a manager, was he?
I grabbed my phone and typed his name into a Google search, frustrated with myself for not doing it before today. Like an idiot, I patiently waited by the phone for him to ghost me.
Luc Lecompte, the Minutemen’s head pitching coach, had been added to the staff this year after he left Seattle. The rabbit hole from that initial Google search brought me to a Wikipedia page for Skylar Calloway Lecompte. Her photo revealed an absolutely gorgeous woman who was famous (yes, famous) for her role as a child actor in one of the longest-running television shows. She was now one of the hottest producers in Hollywood.
No wonder he didn’t bother to call me. I looked down at my worn-out sneakers, cutoff shorts, and ten-year-old jersey of my all-time favorite, yet retired, Minutemen player. I’m a public servant; this guy had been married to an A-Lister.
The ace pitcher, Sam Drummond, was well on his way to making history, and I didn’t miss the glances he kept sending my little sister’s way. He saw the baby strapped to the front of her, but from where I sat, that didn’t seem to bother him. And how did he manage to make history while being completely distracted by a woman in the stands?
Dad and I texted throughout the game. I knew it killed him that we were in the stands watching this historic game live while he was forced to watch it on television. I might have reminded him every chance possible that he had failed big time with Kelsey. For all she understood, she might as well be watching an AAA or even a Little League game.
“Sam said that if he was still pitching late into the game, that meant it was a good outing. Why is he still in the game? I thought he’d be done by now?”
“Kelsey, I’m about as superstitious as your friend Sam is. Please don’t make me explain this and jinx it,” I begged. Crew smiled at me, distracting me from finishing my sentence just as I heard the crack of a bat and watched a ball hit well to the outfield. The entire stadium let out an audible sigh of relief when Austin Monroe, the center fielder, easily caught the third out at the bottom of the ninth.
As the crowd erupted, I explained the enormity of what had just happened. To her credit, when I explained that with Sam’s perfect game, there were only twenty-seven pitchers to achieve it in the entire history of baseball, she finally understood it.
Within minutes, a security guard approached her, asking us to follow him back and meet up with Sam. I made an excuse and begged off.
Kelsey looked at me, full of confusion, “You don’t want to come back with me? Youlovebaseball, and you’re going to leave instead of going to meet one of the players?”
Would the coaching staff be with the family members? I wasn’t sure I wanted to run into Luc right now. After my Google search, I was more than a little intimidated. If he ever called me, I wanted time to figure out how I felt about his background first.
“Nah, go focus on your new friend. Maybe let him entertain you a bit. You deserve it.”
It wasn’t a lie; Kelsey did deserve a bit of fun in her life. She was one of the hardest-working people I knew, and since Crew had been born, her world revolved around him. Now that I was back, I planned to do whatever I could to give her some breathing room. If that meant babysitting so she could date an incredibly hot, and mega talented baseball player, then that’s what I’d do.
I felt a pinch of disappointment when I watched the coaching staff and noticed my personal fantasy man from the plane ride as he celebrated with the rest of the team. I wasn’t new to the dating scene, and I’d given my number to more than a few men and women. I’d even given the wrong number to some. Never in any of those years had I been so sure that I would hear from someone. So yeah, I was disappointed and more than a little confused about how I could have gotten the situation so wrong.
Ugh.
When I arrived home from Washington, I was living with my parents until I could find my own apartment. After the game, I snuck in and went straight to my room. This attraction to Luc had been a bit of an awakening. I didn’t catch his age while we were chatting, but Google had fed my nosy brain. At thirty-five, he was eleven years older than me, far older than the top range I’d set in any of my dating apps.
Fuck it.
I opened the dating apps and updated the age range I was searching for to forty. Previously, I only looked for people up through age 29. There was just something about the faint hint of salt and pepper and the added crinkling around his eyes. But was it Luc, or older men in general?
Within minutes, my notifications chimed and bombarded me with messages and requests. No, none of these men were built like Luc. It wondered if he’d been an athlete before he started coaching.
I closed out the app in frustration. Why did so many men need to post photos of themselves holding fish?
And back to Google, I went. Oh, yup. He had been a pitcher in college and made a play at pro baseball until he injured his throwing arm. His brother, Jack, was also a Major League player, and at thirty-seven, everyone expected him to retire this year. Luc’s father had passed when he was in his teens, and Ifound a brief report that mentioned a much younger sister who’d been the product of an affair. As much as I loved having all of this information at my fingertips, I felt a bit guilty for invading his privacy.
CHAPTER 4
LUC
I’d flaked about calling Kylie. After I arrived back in town, Bill Blanks had barraged me with details about our ace pitcher’s probable case of the yips. I had spent day and night looking into potential cures, and the more time I put into it, the worse it looked.
And to add insult to injury, Skylar announced her engagement to the man she’d been dating since we split, none other than Grant Davis, who had just so happened to be her co-star in the show she’d starred in as a kid. And someone I hadn’t realized was a competition to our marriage.
I willingly included Grant in our lives and saying that I felt betrayed would be a massive understatement. But what Skylar did no longer shocked me.
It was one hell of a love story. And yes, I was happy for her, but I wasn’t prepared for it.
You would think that someone with the travel schedule I maintained would be able to handle sudden changes and news, but I’d always needed to absorb major changes privately. And that was a big part of why I had put off reaching out to Kylie.
