CURVEBALL

by Mariah Dietz

  Table of Contents

  Epilogue

  CURVEBALL

  Books by

  Ella

  Coen

  Untitled

  Learn More about Mariah

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  CURVEBALL

  Mariah Dietz

  Contents

  CURVEBALL

  Books by

  1. Ella

  2. Coen

  3. Ella

  4. Coen

  5. Ella

  6. Coen

  7. Ella

  8. Coen

  9. Ella

  10. Coen

  11. Ella

  12. Coen

  13. Ella

  14. Coen

  15. Ella

  16. Coen

  17. Ella

  18. Coen

  19. Ella

  20. Coen

  21. Coen

  22. Ella

  23. Coen

  24. Ella

  25. Coen

  26. Ella

  27. Coen

  Epilogue

  Untitled

  Learn More about Mariah

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  CURVEBALL

  MARIAH DIETZ

  Copyright ©Mariah Dietz, 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, printed, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical. Please do not participate or encourage piracy in any capacity.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used factiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design © Hang Le

  ISBN: 978-1-944206-04-8

  Books by

  Mariah Dietz

  His Series

  Becoming His

  Losing Her

  Finding Me

  The Weight of Rain Series

  The Weight of Rain

  The Effects of Falling

  For Jenna Chianello. Thank you for always believing in me. I hope you know I believe in you just as much!

  And for my boys. Always for my boys.

  1

  Ella

  Breathe.

  The word has become a mantra for me. While deep in my gut I know nothing is wrong, and that a bad dream or a sound outside likely is what woke me, I still sit up and peer around my darkened room. My heart hammers a familiar race, and my skin prickles with fear and anticipation. Holding my breath, I wait to hear something over the pounding of my heartbeats—a creak, a voice, a footstep … anything that will warrant my current state of anxiety.

  Several moments pass before I take a deep breath and release my comforter from the white-knuckle grip I had on it.

  Night is always the worst for my anxiety. Either because scientists are right and sunlight really does produce endorphins to suppress fears and anxiousness, or because there is nothing to contest the loud voices in my head.

  I look out the window, seeing the sky is at its darkest point, telling me morning won’t be far off. I don’t look at my alarm clock for the confirmation because it will only remind me of all the things I can accomplish before the day technically begins, and I need more sleep for a crucial presentation that will influence my career path in the morning.

  Settling back into my mountain of pillows, I fidget until I find a comfortable spot and attempt to clear my thoughts. The darkness, however, has other plans, bringing forth a rush of shadowed images and whispers of sounds. They tickle my senses and fears and have me halfway across my bedroom before I’m able to consider reasoning.

  I open my son’s bedroom door and our dog, Shakespeare, lifts her head as I tiptoe past her. Hayden is buried amid an army of stuffed animals, ones he shoves into my closet whenever he has a friend over. There are so many it takes me several minutes to clear a place for me to lie with him.

  The bed dips with my added weight, but Hayden only curls closer to me, providing me with the exact thing I am seeking—assurance. I am not looking for protection or company; I just need to reassure myself that the one who makes my heart beat is truly safe. That there weren’t traces of peanuts in anything he ate today, that someone didn’t climb up and crawl inside his second-story bedroom window, or that any of the other hundred things my imagination can conjure up within a split second happened. Softly, I kiss his forehead, and just like that, I’m able to breathe again.

  As expected, morning comes too soon. My eyelids are heavy, my neck is stiff, and I’m annoyed that once again I allowed my irrational fears to control my actions. The combination is making even talking on the phone to my best friend, Rachel, a task.

  “I need coffee to be poured intravenously today—or just straight caffeine. Think that exists?” I ask.

  Rachel laughs softly. “I think that’s called an energy drink. But I’m pretty sure what you need is sleep. Were you up all night working on your proposal for work? Are you sure you want that big account, Ella? I mean, you have so much going on.”

  I know my best friend isn’t trying to convince me to avoid the opportunity that could alter my career. She encourages and supports me more than anyone.

  Still, I construe her words as doubt. “I’m okay. I’m just not ready for it to be Monday.”

  “You and the rest of the world, babe.”

  My sleep-deprived mind is only looking for a little compassion, and while I know it’s my sensitivity making this conversation seem obnoxious, I don’t have the patience this morning to rationalize it all.

  “Patrick wants to take Hayden to baseball practice tonight.” Rachel groans at the mention of my ex. “Mind if I come by during it and look through your closet for something to wear this weekend? I don’t want to go to his practice and have it be like last time where Hayden struggled to know who to talk to or look at.”

  “Of course,” she says. “Wait! Don’t you have a date today? I forgot all about it!”

  I wish she would—maybe then I could get away with not going.

  “What are you going to wear?” she asks, her voice raised like we’re discussing something far more exciting than another first date.

  “Well, I have to dress for work since I have to be in the office today, so I’m wearing a pantsuit.”

  “Ella.” Rachel states my name with enough venom to make it sound like an obscenity. “You really need to stop having dates on your lunch break.”

  “Why? It works perfectly. This way I don’t have to arrange a babysitter, and it’s easy to cut them short if necessary. Besides, if he’s expecting a sundress and pearls, he needs to change his profile to seek out women who don’t work.”

  “Couldn’t you wear a skirt though? What about that hot gray pencil skirt with the slit up the back?”

  “I’m pretty sure you borrowed that hot skirt a few weeks ago.”

  Silence confirms she’s trying to remember. “When you come over tonight, we’ll find it. You should wear it on date two with this guy. I have a good feeling about him.”

  “You should. You’re the one who’s been talking to him.”

  “Someone has to make sure you’re optimizing your chances of finding a guy while on that dating website.”

  I choose to ignore her, tired of hearing this same line from her and my mom. “I have to go, but I’ll see you this afternoon.” I drop a juice box into Hayden’s lunch box and seal it shut with a pop.

  “Okay, text me after your date! I want to hear how it goes!”

  “I’ll try, but today’s kind of busy.”

 
“You handle millions of dollars and dozens of clients. I’m sure you can find a way. Or, maybe you could try taking a break for once.”

  “I’ll message you,” I concede.

  She laughs triumphantly. “Kiss Hayden for me.”

  “I always do.”

  “Why do they always honk?” Hayden grumbles.

  I glance up into my rearview mirror at the train of cars behind us and then to my nine-year-old son in the backseat, and try to sound convincing when I tell him it’s only about safety. Because it’s not. It’s so not. Any parent, grandparent, guardian, or unsuspecting friend who has been coerced into dropping off a child at school knows that those people who honk are just late for work or in a hurry. Unfortunately, with that single blow, an entire chorus of car horns fills the air, adding to my already prickly mood.

  “Can we do a movie night tonight?” Hayden asks, his tone still verging on whiny.

  “Dude, it’s Monday. You’ve got baseball.” I wish my words didn’t make him look so defeated.

  My rosy-mom-glasses aside, Hayden is a decent player, and prior to a month ago, he loved the game. He won’t tell me what’s changed his opinion, and I hate that nearly as much as I do that something, or someone, is ruining it for him.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I turn to face him as the traffic in front of us remains at a standstill, “after practice we can go to dinner. Your pick.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I know you aren’t now, but you will be after practice!” Neither excitement nor acceptance appear in Hayden’s bright blue eyes which are the same piercing shade of aquamarine as they were the day he was born. Four separate nurses assured me his eye color would change but my instincts told me differently. It wouldn’t have mattered, but sometimes, I really get a thrill out of proving people wrong, just like I did on that day amid a long labor. One that I faced alone just a month after graduating high school at eighteen. While my birthing plan had simply been to ensure he arrived safely, I was really opposed to the idea of a cesarean, so when the doctor mentioned it would likely happen, his disbelief unburied some hidden strength within me that allowed me to successfully give birth four hours later. With just a glance, the entire room fell in love with Hayden, laughing at his cone-shaped head and springy curls stuck to his scalp, his wide eyes that took in the entire room without a single sign of terror.

  Maybe Hayden knew he was being born into a broken home or that I barely knew how to take care of myself at the time. Perhaps the doctor and nurses were right and he was quiet and calm from exhaustion following a long labor, but Hayden was the happiest and most content newborn that night, barely crying, eager to latch, and even slept soundly beside me in his small clear crib at the hospital.

  The next day, I went home with a false sense of bravado. Although I had asked the nurses about every hiccup, deep breath, diaper, and the coloring of his skin, in those brief moments of packing up the car, I felt ready to be a mom.

  Hayden made me question it as he wailed the entire hour home and then several more times over the next two years when he wouldn’t sleep an entire night, barely ever surpassing the two-hour mark.

  Through sleep deprivation and eye masks for the heavy bags that shaded my young face, and more giggles and kisses than imaginable, I learned to navigate my way through being a single mom on a very low income. Somehow, I also managed to take courses at a community college. It took me seven years to gain my four-year degree, something I was intent on accomplishing regardless of how slow the pace I had to do it.

  I’m still learning to be a mom, and I still don’t get enough sleep, and I haven’t watched anything above a PG rating since I was eighteen. My house is often littered with laundry I have to sniff to see if it’s clean, and my fridge sometimes looks like a science experiment gone wrong. But I wouldn’t change a thing, not a single one.

  Beep!

  Except maybe school drop-off and pick-up lines. Those could use an overhaul.

  “Remember what a pack of polar bears is called?”

  “A celebration,” Hayden mumbles.

  “And how many polar bears do scientists believe are in the wild?”

  “It ranges between twenty and thirty thousand. Come on, Mom, I know this stuff.”

  I slowly release my foot from the brake to roll forward. “You do, and you’re going to do awesome on your report today.”

  He sighs, sounding less like my loving, sweet son with each inch that we roll closer to the doors of his grade school, and I hate it. It makes me want to call both of us in sick, stop by the pastry shop with the cheese danish Hayden loves so much, get into our jammies, and watch hours of the cartoons I can barely stand but gladly do just to get extra cuddles.

  I’m about to suggest we do it when he unfastens his seat belt and informs me I need to move up so he can get out.

  “Your dad will be at practice today, but if you need anything, call. Okay?”

  He mutters an agreement before swinging open the door and climbing out.

  His growing up elicits the most bittersweet feeling imaginable. I miss the days when I was his only hero. When everything I did was amazing and wonderful. But watching his personality and sense of humor develop and blossom gives me so much pride, and I’m grateful to see he’s beginning to trust and rely on himself more.

  Taking a long swig of my morning coffee, I watch as he approaches the school, his thumbs tucked into the straps of his backpack and his dishwater-blond hair cropped short so no one knows how curly it is. And, as he disappears through the doors, I feel the same pang that always hits with his absence.

  I pull away from the school as a car behind me impatiently honks, and while concerns of Hayden’s sour mood toward both school and baseball are filling my thoughts, I’m relieved to be out of the mile-long line, even if it is to head to work.

  The uneasiness doesn’t lessen when I step through the doors of Wild Waves, the marketing agency I work for; instead, it’s intensified as I begin mentally rehearsing my presentation that will kick off this morning.

  Idle conversations about the weekend and failed attempts at productivity are buzzing around me, making me wish I hadn’t refilled my coffee before coming in so I would have a valid excuse to leave for a few moments. How, after three years, I haven’t learned that nothing at Wild Waves is ever on time is my own shame.

  “Good morning, team!” Mr. Hakes stands at the front of the long conference table wearing a black pin-striped suit and bright blue polo shirt.

  We’re a successful marketing company, yet we’re in dire need of two makeovers here: one, our name, and the other, our boss’s wardrobe.

  “Ella, why don’t you get things kicked off with the Weile account?”

  There are few things I despise more than standing in front of people and trying to engage with them. If I weren’t able to work from home three days a week while receiving full benefits, three weeks of vacation, and complete flexibility when Hayden calls, I’d probably hate my job solely because of these moments. But I can’t because in addition to the previous perks, this job allows me to work just five miles from the house I can afford by working here, where my son has a yard and a dog to make up at least half of the American Dream.

  Gathering the packets I spent weeks perfecting, I stand and split the stack into two to be circulated around the room. Clarence watches me through narrowed eyes. He’s been working here for twenty years, and doesn’t attempt to mask his contempt for me being point of the largest account Wild Waves has recently garnered interest from. Pulling my shoulders back in attempt to deflect his silent oppositions of my role, ranging from being one of the youngest employees to the most inexperienced to not having received my degree from a prestigious Ivy League school like he did. While Clarence might choose to be oblivious of my talents, I know why I’ve been given this opportunity. I get shit done. Period.

  With my shoulders still squared, I smile. Confidence and warmth are essential traits for my position, but especially this morning when d
oubt is filling the room. I can’t appear too friendly though, or they won’t take me seriously, focus of any sign of hesitancy; yet, I also can’t come across too assertive or I will be seen as conceited, brash, and even more incompetent. It’s a fine line.

  I’ve learned not to wait for reciprocated smiles, rather begin my presentation and attempt to show them all the commitment and dedication I’ve poured into this project like all of my previous ones.

  As I continue speaking, many show signs of interest, intrigued with the new methods of marketing I’m proposing, and some of the older ones which have gone forgotten for years.

  Mr. Hakes claps as I conclude the question and answer period. “Well done, Ella.” He beams proudly. “This is the kind of creativity and ingenuity that sets us apart, leaving clients and competitors to believing we’re a bunch of suits in New York, rather than North Carolina.” As he laughs, others join. It’s not easy and genuine as much as out of obligation, but there has always been a sense of pride at Wild Waves where everyone was hand chosen by Mr. Hakes.

  “Let’s get out there and continue proving we’re the ones they’re all striving to be like.”

  The short walk to my small office feels entirely too long because I’m anxious to begin the next steps, which is creating the presentation for the client now that I have Mr. Hakes’ support.

  Before diving into things, I double-check my phone to ensure I don’t have any missed calls from the school—or from Patrick whose most consistent characteristic is his lack of follow-through. My relief with finding no updates ends abruptly by the harsh reminder from my alarm, telling me I need to leave for my date.

  I grab a manila folder from my briefcase and quickly scan over the profile belonging to the man I’m supposed to meet, stopping at the listed profession beneath his picture.