by Dana Mentink
“I’m the PTA president now,” Bill said. “And the new principal and I are golfing buddies. I’m going to put in a good word for you.”
“That would be so nice of you, Bill, but… ”
“What?”
“I mean, this is just a friendship thing, right?”
“What do you mean?”
She rushed on. “There’s… nothing between us anymore. We both understand that, right? You’re happily remarried.”
He sat back and smiled. “Of course. Things are going great with Vivian and me.”
Relief flooded through her. “I’m happy for you. I just didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings.”
“Not at all. As a matter of fact, Vivian was the one who suggested I come see you at spring training.”
“She did?”
“Yeah. She appreciates how good you were to Matthew when we were split up and how awesome you were when we got back together.”
In her relief, Gina almost missed the hesitation. He had more to say.
“And…?” she prompted.
“And Vivian’s the chair of the fund-raising committee at Mt. Olive for next year.”
Fund-raising. “Uh huh.”
“You know Vivian.” He quirked a smile. “That woman is competitive. She has put upon herself that it’s got to be the best, most successful fund-raising bash in the history of the school. I think it’s an ego thing. The presidential inauguration probably took less planning.” He laughed, a little nervously, she thought.
“What has she decided to do?”
“An auction.” He straightened the already straight crayons. “A big dinner type event where people bid to meet a celebrity.”
“A celebrity.” Her fingers felt suddenly cold as she reached for the stapler to connect the ears to the headband she was constructing.
“Yeah. She’s got some contacts with some TV personalities and an actor who was on some sitcom or another.”
“That’s great.”
“But you know, what would be really awesome… ” His eyes shifted to the teen pitching practice area.
Her heart thudded like a jackhammer. Surely, he was not about to say it. The words would certainly not spill out of his mouth.
Bill shifted. “It would be amazing if you could get Crawford to come.”
The name struck her like a blow. She stared, stomach sinking. “I don’t have that kind of influence with Mr. Crawford. I just take care of his dog.”
“Don’t give me that,” he said, wagging a finger. “I’ve been following the pictures on Twitter and Facebook. You two are close. He’d do it for you.”
“Bill,” she said, drilling him with a look, “Did you bring Matthew to spring training to use me to get to Cal?”
“Use you? No. Not at all. We’re old friends. I wanted to help you.”
“Okay.” She swallowed hard. “Just answer me one question then.”
He rolled the crayons under his fingertips. “Shoot.”
“Would you have put in a good word for me at the school if I wasn’t an acquaintance of Mr. Crawford?”
He blinked and his mouth worked. It was a moment of hesitation which spoke louder than a voice shouted over a bullhorn. “Sure.”
Incredulity rendered her momentarily speechless. Bill was using her and so was his wife, and worst of all, she’d been blind to it. Cal Crawford had been right about everything.
“So, do you think maybe I could get his email for Vivian?”
Gina got up, jammed the Tippy ears on Bill’s head, and left him at the table.
Cal tried calling Uncle Oscar for the fourth time in two days. Finally, he picked up.
“It’s Cal, Uncle Oscar. I’ve been calling and calling. Where have you been?”
“Busy,” Oscar said. “How’s spring training?”
“Incredible.”
“Mechanics?”
“Solid.”
“Shoulder?”
“Feels good.”
“How’s the slider?”
“Getting there.”
“Keeping your thumb out of it?”
He’d struggled to keep from snapping the ball with his thumb and middle finger, which put too much stress on the elbow. “Yes, sir. Pressure from the middle and index finger.”
“Right.”
Cal waited, but his uncle stayed quiet. “Uncle Oscar, is everything okay?”
“’Course. Did I say otherwise?”
“No, sir, but… ”
“Right. Everything is okay then.”
“May I speak to Sweets?”
“She’s busy.”
“Busy?”
“Has this phone got an echo?” he snapped.
The muscles in his stomach tensed. “No, sir. Usually she wants to chat and tell me about some nice girl in town she’s ready to fix me up with.”
“Well, today she’s busy. I’m busy, too. Gotta go.” His voice dropped a notch. “Glad it’s going well, son.”
And then he disconnected.
Cal stared at the phone, dead in his hand. A line of kids waited nearby to get their turn with him. He wanted to get into the truck and drive back to the ranch, to put his mind at ease that Uncle Oscar and Sweets were perfectly fine. His mind traveled back to the note from his father tacked to the office bulletin board. It was still sitting unread in his jacket pocket, thrown over a chair in his room.
Why did he have such a feeling of dread?
He looked to the tent where Gina knelt on the floor, next to a kid with paper dog ears on. His feet took him there, without consulting his mind.
“Gina… ” he started.
Until he realized it was Matthew she sat with. Bill stood there, wearing a cockeyed set of ears, his mouth open, face serious. They’d been in the middle of a deep conversation, not pleasantries and shooting the breeze, but heart to heart stuff.
Gina did not look at Cal. She kept her attention on Matthew and Tippy.
Bill shot him a smile and sidled over. “Mr. Crawford, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m a big fan.”
Cal took the offered hand and shook. “So you’re a friend of Gina’s?”
“More than that,” Bill said, beaming. “We’re like family.”
Cal sought Gina’s gaze, but still she did not look at them.
Family?
“There’s nothing more important than family,” Bill enthused. “Say, I was wondering… ”
“You’re right about that,” Cal said, offering a friendly nod as he walked away.
Pete caught him before the practice game. “You’re up. See how things look for thirty pitches or so.”
Cal nodded.
Pete’s gaze drifted around the grass as the players disentangled themselves from the fans and headed back to the dugout. “Good idea to bring Tippy, wasn’t it?” he said proudly.
“Freddy the Falcon doesn’t think so.”
Pete laughed. “So. Let’s see your best arm today, huh?”
Cal’s nerves ticked up. “Something you’re trying to tell me?”
“Nah. You were our ace last season… ”
“Except the last stretch,” Cal said, wishing he could erase those disastrous outings from his memory.
“And you’re still our ace,” Pete said firmly. “So get out there and show us why we write you that big fat check, huh?” Pete’s hand gripping his shoulder reminded him that he had someone firmly in his corner, rooting for his success as much as he did.
“Gonna crush it.”
“I know you will,” Pete said.
Gina and Tippy took their seats for the game. Gina was grateful they’d assigned her a place in the shade. It was a relatively isolated spot with empty seats all around, but they were close enough that she could see the pitcher’s mound in every detail. While she waited, she whispered to Tippy.
“Can you believe it, Tip? Cal was right. Bill really was using me.” Her spirit sank even lower as she contemplated that it had not only been Bill, but his wife as well. And sh
e’d been so clueless she hadn’t even had a suspicion.
Tippy shot out a tongue and licked Gina’s chin. Gina knew it was Tippy’s way of saying, “You don’t need that crummy man and his recommendations. You’ll find a job all on your own.”
Or it might have merely been Tippy slurping up an errant rainbow sprinkle, left over from her morning doughnut. She so desperately wanted to stand on her own two feet, ever since she was a delicate, spindly child. Through the rounds of therapy, the ruthlessly helpful tutors, the smothering sheltering of her parents, the cheerful physicians. I can do it, she’d wanted to scream. Maybe not the way you envision, but I can do it.
She would not tell Cal he’d been right. There was no need, since she was going home the next day, and she would likely not see him ever again.
“It’s for the best,” she told herself, yet it did not cheer her.
The team trotted out of the tunnel, uniforms pristine, and took their places for the National Anthem. Gina held Tippy as they sang. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a camera aimed in her direction.
A man with an oddly perfect mustache and a Falcons cap winked at her.
Wait a minute. She peered closer, gasping. The mustache was perfect because it was fake, and it did not fully disguise Tom Peterson. Clutching Tippy, she scanned for a security guard, but there was none nearby.
Tom shrugged. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You almost ran me and Tippy over at the beep ball practice.”
“I’m sorry about that. Purely a mistake. I’d never hurt either one of you.”
She glared at him. “Go away.”
“I’m here about the dog,” he said, snapping pictures of Tippy as she struggled to be put down to greet the newcomer.
“No, Tippy,” Gina said, tightening her hold on the dog. “This is a bad man.”
Tom looked stricken. “I’m not a bad man, Gina.”
She continued to look for a guard.
“I only want a piece of the pie. I want to be somebody, just for once.”
The downcast look on his face awakened a pang of sympathy until she remembered that she had no ability to sniff out ulterior motives. “I want you to leave, Tom. Now.”
“I just want to get what’s coming to me.”
“You’ll get it, if Cal gets hold of you.”
He gave her a wicked smile and snapped another picture, the flash blinding her. “Tell Cal I said hello. Goodbye, Tippy old scout. I’ll be seeing you soon.”
He walked away.
Sixteen
Gina’s legs were trembling as she sank back down in her seat. Cal would want to know that Tom was lurking around spring training and she could text him later, but right now he was all about his pitching, completely focused, staring at Julio Aguilera crouched behind the plate. No time to bother him, she told herself.
The smack of the ball in Ag’s glove made her flinch. A strike, she gathered from the cheer of the crowd. Cal continued to throw strikes for the three innings he pitched. The beginnings of a perfect game she also gleaned, if they hadn’t taken him out to allow some playing time for the other pitchers.
“Kid’s got it back,” said a bearded fan sitting two rows up from her. “That was the best pitching I’ve ever seen.”
Though the throws looked like nothing more than a blur of white to her, Gina found she was glad, in spite of their recent dustup. If pitching was the only thing he had in his life, she was happy that it was going well for him. She remembered the scowling Cal she’d met the first time at his San Francisco mansion. Now she knew the serious mask he wore was only a cover for someone altogether different, altogether deeper.
He’d forced her to see things with Bill as they were, through her cloud of naiveté, and though he’d been arrogant and cruel about it and the humiliation burned strong, her anger was waning. Even though he was a guy who was adored by millions, Cal Crawford was a lonely man for all his fame, and he had tried to be a friend to her.
She prayed. “God, help him know he’s more to You than a pitcher.” She thought about the future, when her life was detached from his, how she would see his grave face on the TV like all of his other millions of fans. But she would know that behind the mask was the Cal who played beep ball and supplied doughnuts for her hotel room. Much more than a pitcher.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. She would miss Cal, but their two worlds were never meant to collide, and they wouldn’t have were it not for Tippy. She leaned over and planted a kiss on Tippy’s knobby head.
“Thanks, Tippy. I sure am going to miss you, sweetie pie.”
When the game was over, Cal found her at the clubhouse where she’d gone to let Tippy rest on the shady patio with a bowl of cold water.
“You did a great job today,” she said brightly when he came and sat next to her. Tippy scooted over and pawed at his knee.
He found the spot just under Tippy’s collar and scratched, melting her into a fuzzy jelly. “Thanks.”
“All those strikes. You definitely showed great command today.”
He laughed. “You’ve been listening to the commentators.”
“Yeah,” she admitted.
He rolled his shoulders. “Feels good, real good. And you did an amazing job too, with all those kids. I think that might be harder than pitching.”
She realized from the hesitation in his tone that he’d seen Bill and Matthew with her.
“I want to apologize for the way I spoke to you before,” Cal said, after a deep breath. “It was rude and uncalled for.”
Her cheeks burned. “It turns out you were right, though. Bill was dangling his son and a job in front of me so he could coerce you into a school celebrity auction.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Me too,” she said, throat thick. “I should have realized. People really will do anything to get close to celebrities, won’t they? Tom Peterson, Bill, all those screaming fans. It’s insane.”
“Yes, it is. I never wanted that. I’ve never been comfortable with it. I just wanted to play baseball.”
“Well, anyway, it’s humiliating that I didn’t see it myself, about Bill I mean.”
He reached out a hand as if to take hers, then let it fall back to his side. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
They were silent, listening to the flapping of the Falcons flag as it flew above the patio.
Cal toyed with his bottle of water. “You know Gina, if it would help you get that job you want, I’ll do it.”
She started. “Do what?”
“The auction. Make an appearance if I can. Whatever they want me to do.”
Tenderness and mortification warred together in her chest. “You would let yourself get auctioned off at an elementary school barbecue?”
He nodded.
“For me?”
“If it would help.”
She was not sure whether to be insulted that he thought she needed the help or overwhelmed that he’d let himself be trotted out at a school auction for her. Overwhelmed won out. “I appreciate that more than you know, Cal, but I’m going to find my own job, all by myself.”
“Atta girl,” he said, giving her a gentle sock on the shoulder. Tippy squirmed to be let down.
“Oh no you don’t,” Cal said, holding her closer. “Not until I’m sure Freddy the Falcon has flown off.”
More silence. Then she told him about Tom.
Anger sizzled in his eyes. He slammed his water bottle down in fury, causing Tippy to jerk. “That guy is getting on my last nerve.”
“Mine, too.”
“I’ll inform stadium security and our people. It won’t happen again.”
“I’m driving back to San Francisco tomorrow anyway,” she reminded him.
“Oh yeah,” he said, voice flat. “I forgot about that.”
“I’ll keep Tippy on a short leash, so to speak, until you can make arrangements to have her returned to your dad. Once the media attention d
ies away and I’m not working for you anymore, Tom won’t have any reason to take pictures of us.”
Cal did not look placated. “Maybe you should stay here in Scottsdale for another few days. Better security.”
“Cal, I have a life. I need to get back to San Francisco and find a job, and your father is waiting for his dog to be returned.”
“I guess you’re right.” Cal took the note out of his jacket pocket. “That’s probably what this note says.”
“You haven’t opened it?”
“No.”
“Don’t you think you should?”
He stared at her, eyes hard. “Don’t care what he has to say. You read it, if you want to. It’s probably about Tippy.”
She picked up the note.
“Funny how he’s so committed to that dog,” Cal murmured, staring at Tippy. “Not to his boy or his wife.”
Gina opened the note and read it.
Twice.
“Oh, Cal,” she said around a clog in her throat.
His eyes met hers. “What?”
Silently she pushed the note to him with fingers gone cold. “You need to read this, right now.”
Cal was scheduled to pitch the first three innings of the game on Tuesday. He did—or at least his mind and body showed up, in spite of the crush of emotions his father’s note had awakened. Thanks to muscle memory and the fact that he’d left his heart back at that patio table, he managed to pitch another brilliant performance, near perfect. The buzz in the media rose to a roar. Cal Crawford, the Ace Is Back.
The cheers of the crowd and his teammates’ affectionate thumps did not seem to penetrate as he walked off the field with Pete.
“Not pitching again for five days,” Pete said. “We’ll see you back here next week, huh?”
Cal nodded.
“Need a ride to the airport?”
“Gina’s dropping me off before she heads back to San Francisco with Tippy. I think she’s worried I’ll crack up or something.”
“Will you?”
“No,” he fired back.
Pete gripped his arm. “Before you go, got some good news for you.”
“I could use some.”
There was a twinkle in Pete’s eyes. “Gonna start on Opening Day.”
Cal gaped. “I’m the starter?”