Swing and a Mishap

by Tara Sivec

  Official Shepherd Oliver: When I saw you replied to my ridiculous messages two years ago, my hands were so sweaty I dropped my phone and cracked the screen.

  Official Shepherd Oliver: Every time you replied back to me, I felt like the luckiest goddamn man on the planet. You were always nicer than me, kinder than me, sweeter than me, and better than me. I never deserved even one minute of your time, but you still gave it to me. And I wasted it by not tell you that you were NEVER second choice. You’re not a consolation prize and you’re sure as hell not a goddamn rebound. You’re THE prize, Wren. You’re the only reason I’ve tried to be nicer, kinder, sweeter, and better, so that some day when I pulled my head out of my ass, I would be worthy of the time you give to me. And you’re the only reason I moved back home to Summersweet Island, so if you can’t find it in your heart to forgive me, I don’t know if I can stay here. Because I know damn well, especially after the things you told me, that I can’t walk around this island and just be civilized when I see you. I will never be able to be around you again without wanting to kiss the hell out of you.

  Official Shepherd Oliver: Please talk to me, Wren. Please. Give me a chance to show you everything I never told you.

  “Fuck!”

  My frustrated shout is punctuated by the sound of my cell phone smacking into the stone tile on the floor of my kitchen when I whip it across the room as hard as I’d throw a ball to make a play at 2nd. It tumbles and skitters across the floor until it comes to a stop by one of my kitchen chairs as I let my head fall to the back cushions of my couch and stare up at the ceiling.

  It was a stupid idea to send Wren all those messages. I should have run after her the other night, made her stop, and made her understand. To say I was in shock after everything she told me is an understatement. I honestly don’t even know how I managed to shout what I did to her before she disappeared around the corner of the dugout. Every word she said to me felt like someone took a knife and started carving into my chest. And if I never have to see Wren standing in front of me trying to be so strong while tears poured down her cheeks, tears that I put there, it will be too soon.

  I’ve spent the last two days since Wren left me standing by home plate at the high school walking around like a zombie. I didn’t even have the heart to run practices. I scheduled the boys for some extra training in the weight room instead, but I know I can’t keep doing this. Those boys deserve better. I took this job so I could be a good role model for them. Although being a poster boy for what it looks like when you make bad choices in life might scare them all straight.

  There’s a light tapping at my front door, and even though I’d rather ignore it and spend the rest of my night feeling like shit and word vomiting in private messages that will never be read, I’m curious who could be stopping by. And frankly, I’m starting to get tired of my own shitty company. Pushing up from the couch and suddenly feeling like a hundred years old instead of thirty-four, I slowly pad across the carpet in my bare feet to the front door, pulling it open without bothering to check the peep hole.

  “Here, take this. It’s heavy.”

  A large, rectangular box is shoved into my chest, and I quickly grab it and move out of the way as my mom pushes her way inside my cottage, bending down so I can kiss the cheek she tips up to me.

  “It’s nice to see you too after three months,” I tell her, kicking the door closed behind me as I watch her walk into the living room and survey my small, temporary home.

  “You just FaceTimed me this morning. And you still look like shit,” she reminds me, moving into my kitchen and setting a big, insulated bag on my counter that was hanging by a long strap off her shoulder. She then starts opening and closing drawers and cupboards, making sure I put everything away neatly. “You know I would have come to visit sooner to help you unpack, but your dad and I just couldn’t resist tacking on a few extra days to our Alaska cruise.”

  My sisters have always complained that I’m Mom’s favorite. Savannah and Sophia are twelve and thirteen years older than me. I’m the “oops” baby, the youngest, and the only boy, so maybe sometimes I get spoiled a little more. The only reason my mom wasn’t camped out on my floor before I even arrived on the island was because I bought my parents a cruise for their anniversary. Being the supposed “favorite” just means my mom is a lot more comfortable giving me shit all the time and telling me when I’m being an idiot.

  “Why are you bringing me your Cricut?” I ask, setting the box down on my coffee table and then moving over to one of the barstools against my small kitchen island, instead of dwelling on why I look like shit, since that’s most likely the reason for my mom’s impromptu visit.

  Her and my dad were already scheduled to come over to the island this weekend for dinner, but after our FaceTime call when they got home from the airport this morning and her freaking out that I looked miserable, I should have assumed she would stop by before the weekend.

  “You bought those Cricuts for all of us for Christmas that one year, and I love you, Shepherd, but you know I never use mine. Your sister said you had a craft emergency the other night, so I figured I’d bring it with me,” she says, quickly pulling spatulas out of a drawer and then sticking them into a silver bucket on the counter by the stove with a few other utensils.

  I quietly watch her work, not even a little bit ashamed that having my mom here makes me feel just a little bit better. She moves back to the insulated bag sitting on the island in front of me and starts pulling out what easily looks like a month’s worth of food in plastic containers, going back and forth between the bag and my freezer, stacking the containers neatly inside.

  “I forgot how small these cottages are,” my mom muses when she finishes filling my freezer and then continues nosing through my kitchen, giving me a pointed look when she sees my Tupperware cupboard is still a mess. “I can’t believe we raised three children in one of them, with only one bathroom and such a tiny kitchen. Although we only had the three of you for a few years before your sisters were off to college. It was still a struggle with just you, your dad, and me always on top of each other all the time.”

  It feels like someone just sliced me with that knife again when I think about Wren raising Owen in one of these cottages. The rentals aren’t exactly the same as the permanent resident cottages. The resident cottages have a few more square feet of space, but not much. Don’t get me wrong; Wren’s cottage is adorable, decorated in white and light-gray with turquoise accents and beach knickknacks here and there. It has a perfect view of the ocean, and it’s warm, inviting, comfortable, and perfectly her. But I know how hard she works and how much she sacrifices, and I know she deserves more than a two-bedroom cottage with a bathroom she has to share with her teenage son. She deserves space, and luxury, and a closet she can fit a semi-truck in, and a theater room she can binge her favorite shows in, and a Jacuzzi bathtub she can do laps in, and anything else in the world she’s ever dreamed of.

  “Your freezer is now stocked with comfort food. Chicken noodle soup, chicken paprikash, my homemade beef stew, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and chicken pot pie, so that should make you look a little less like garbage,” she tells me while she moves my kitchen towels to a different drawer.

  My stomach doesn’t even growl when she lists off all my childhood favorites I watched disappear into my freezer a few minutes ago. I haven’t had much of an appetite since Wren told me the only reason she got pregnant by a complete piece of shit who left her all alone all these years was because I was a pussy. I must make some kind of pitiful sound, because my mom pauses with her hand still in my new towel drawer that used to be where I kept my placemats, her head whipping around on her neck to look at me.

  “All right, that’s it!” she says, slamming the drawer closed and marching over to the other side of the island opposite me. “When I asked you what was wrong this morning, you said nothing. When both your sisters called you earlier and asked what was wrong, you told them nothing. I can clearly see it isn’t no
thing, Shepherd Christopher Oliver, so spit it out. What happened? Is it baseball? Do you miss it that much? Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I wish I could—”

  “It’s not baseball,” I quickly cut her off when she reaches across the island and places both her hands on top of mine. “I told you when you called last week everything is great on that end, and it still is. I made the right decision. I’ve got a great group of kids I’m coaching, and I can’t wait for you to meet them and see a game.”

  She gives me a smile, but it’s one filled with just a tiny bit of sadness, even though she tries to hide it. My mom has been more upset than I have about the end of my career. She always said nothing made her happier than watching me play, and she admitted a few months ago that it made her kind of sad to turn on the television and not see me playing anymore. Even though I’m almost thirty-five, she’d been watching me play since I was four years old. She said it was tough knowing she was getting old and she had to come to terms with the fact that the time of watching her baby boy play ball was finally over. I’m just hoping watching me coach will fill that void for her a little bit.

  “Well, if it’s not baseball, then what’s going on?”

  I start to explain to my mom just what happened the other night, but I quickly realize she’s going to need more than that to get the full picture. Taking a deep breath, I start from the beginning. The very beginning. Once I start talking, I don’t stop until I’m finished, the words tumbling out of me quickly, because no matter how many times I’ve relived this over and over the last few days, it hurts even worse saying it all out loud. My mom stands quietly on the other side of the counter with her hands still resting on top of mine, her eyes getting bigger and bigger as everything pours out of me, until twenty minutes have passed by the time I finish.

  “…and if she would just read her messages, she would know all this, she’d finally understand, and maybe she’d let me see her again.”

  At least two solid minutes of complete silence ticks by in my small kitchen until my mom finally processes everything I just word-vomited and will hopefully give me some much-needed advice.

  “I’m so sorry, Shepherd,” she whispers quietly, giving my hands a squeeze. “But I agree with your dad. Wren Bennett? You really should have aimed lower.”

  Just like my dad when I was thirteen, my mom snorts and shakes her head at me.

  “I’m so glad you stopped by. I feel much better now,” I reply drolly, which just makes her roll her eyes at me.

  “You’re not getting any sympathy from me. You made one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met cry. Probably more than once,” she reminds me, my shoulders sagging as my head drops to stare at the counter so I don’t have to see the disappointment in her eyes.

  “I know,” I mutter.

  “First things first. I’ve been meaning to ask you this, but I kept forgetting. Why wasn’t there ever any kind of statement made about you and that self-involved, vapid, waste of oxygen breaking up?”

  My mom only met Alana once when she came out to Washington for a long weekend just to hang out when I had a few days off. When my mom opened her arms to give Alana a hug in greeting, Alana just turned and held her phone up and took a selfie of the two of them instead. The rest of the weekend was spent wrapping my arms around my mother and pretending like I was giving her a hug every time she started to lunge for Alana to snatch the phone out of her hand during one of Alana’s thousands of selfie sessions.

  My hands pull out from under my mom’s as I drag them across the counter when I sit back on my stool, cross my arms in front of me, and sigh.

  “Honestly? I just didn’t give a shit at the time, and then I forgot. She was the last thing on my mind.” I shrug. “She asked me not to say anything until she was ready, and I just wanted her the fuck out of my condo at that point. I told my agent and publicist I didn’t give a shit and I didn’t want to hear about anything unless it was something negative I needed to handle. Since I never heard anything, it literally was the furthest thing from my mind. I told you guys and Nick, and I guess I just assumed she told people and it would have gotten around by now.”

  Another few minutes of silence go by, and my heart starts beating faster, waiting for my mom to give me the words and tell me what to do to make this better. She breaks the silence by smacking her hands down aggressively on top of my counter.

  “I didn’t raise you to be a pussy, did I?”

  Well, that certainly wasn’t what I was hoping for.

  “Jesus, Mom. Please don’t say that word ever again,” I mutter, my eyes flickering up to see her staring at me pointedly. I should have known we’d be quickly moving on to the giving me shit and telling me when I’m being an idiot portion of the evening.

  “Your sisters have bigger balls than you,” she complains with a huff.

  “Savannah, yes, but Sophia? Come on. That’s just insulting.”

  Turning away from me, she marches over to my freezer. Flinging open the door, she starts grabbing the containers she just put in there, piling them in her arms until she has them all, slamming the door closed, and then walking back over to the counter.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking back the comfort food I brought you,” she replies with a breezy smile, shoving each plastic container back into the insulated bag she brought and then yanking the zipper closed. “You don’t deserve comfort until you find your balls, march over to that young woman’s house, get down on your hands and knees, and beg for her forgiveness to her face.”

  I twist around on my barstool when she puts the strap of the bag on her shoulder and starts walking out of my kitchen, bitching at me over her shoulder the entire way.

  “Spilling your guts after all this time in a bunch of messages online… I’m gonna need to get a bumper sticker that says Honk if your kid is as dumb as mine!”

  “She won’t talk to me!” I remind my mom as she waves me away with her hand over her shoulder, her back still to me as she opens my front door.

  “Stop being a pussy, march your ass over there, and talk to her!” she shouts back, not even bothering to look at me or even say goodbye as she walks right out my front door, yanking it shut so hard behind her a framed picture of our family from last Christmas that was sitting on a small table in the entryway topples over and smacks down onto the table.

  “Well… I probably deserved that,” I mutter when I’m alone again in my cottage.

  It only takes me a few seconds of silence before I’m scrambling off my barstool and racing around the cottage, trying to find my golf cart keys. I drop them three times, because my hands are so goddamn sweaty, while I curse and mutter at myself for once again being such a dumbass. My mom is right. When Wren wouldn’t talk to me, I should have marched my ass over to her cottage and made her listen. Which is exactly what I’m going to do right now.

  If I can find my fucking wallet. Where the hell did I put my wallet?

  After five more minutes of frantic searching, my cottage now looking like it was tossed during a robbery with pillows, cushions, and mail spilled on the floor, and a few chairs toppled over, I finally find my wallet. There’s another knock at my door, and I pause from pulling it out of the crevice of my love seat, letting out an annoyed sigh as I turn and march across the living room.

  If I would have also picked up my phone from where it was still lying face down under my kitchen table while I searched for my keys and wallet, and if I would have also checked social media when I grabbed my phone, I would have seen that in the last hour since my mom’s visit, every single one of my messages had been read.

  “I know I’m a pussy! You really didn’t need to come back and call me a pussy again. I got it the….”

  My words trail off when I yank open my front door, and standing on my front porch under the glow of my porch light isn’t my mother with a pissed-off look on her face. Standing on my front porch, in a Dip and Twist T-shirt and a pair of my favorite jean shorts, with a nervous yet hopeful look in h
er eyes that are swimming with tears, and her phone clutched tightly in her hand, Wren looks up at me with those beautiful, watery blue eyes and cocks her head to the side while I try to remember how to breathe.

  “If I promise not to call you a pussy, will you promise that everything you said in these messages are true?”

  My hand is gripping so tightly to the edge of my open door I’m surprised I don’t splinter the wood. I was just cursing at myself for not saying everything in those messages to Wren’s face, and I should be repeating all of them right now to her without even hesitating. Everything I want to say is on the tip of my tongue, but she’s standing right here in front of me, and all I can think about is how I told her I’d never be able to be around her again without wanting to kiss the hell out of her. I never knew how true those words I typed to her would be until right this moment. My need for her is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, shocking me to life and finally pulling my head out of my ass.

  “Every fucking word” is all I can manage to growl before I’m stepping out onto my porch, grabbing her face in my hands, and swooping my head down, crashing my mouth against hers.

  CHAPTER 9

  Wren

  “You better bring the heat.”

  I might not have a lot of experience with relationships or sex, but I’ve been kissed plenty. The one thing all those lackluster kisses that led up to this moment taught me is that they were all absolutely wrong. They were tentative and boring, slow and dull, and I realized they were a mistake before they were even finished.

  When Shepherd’s mouth slams against mine, I swear I hear the thwack of a bat connecting with a fast ball, and everything is instantly right. We fit together like two missing pieces of a puzzle, and when his tongue pushes past my lips and tangles with my own, I feel like I’m that ball being catapulted into the sky, my feet leaving the ground, turning and tumbling as I sail through air. There’s nothing slow or dull about the way this man kisses me, and for the rest of my life, I will never, ever regret it. His tongue plunges into my mouth, swiping and swirling in a way that makes me feel it everywhere from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.