As the first hitter for the Bruins tapped his bat on home plate, Jack stepped off the pitcher’s mound, grabbed the rosin bag, and took a few deep breaths.
“Everything will work out,” he mumbled to himself. “Charli and I will be okay.”
But would they be? Really? The doubt consumed him.
Jack wished he had never made that comment about their future late last night in his hotel room after Charli snuck over. His coach had implemented a ten o’clock player curfew, but Jack needed Charli to help calm his nerves, so she’d climbed up to his balcony on the second story from the patio outside her first-floor room.
“This is just like when we were kids,” Jack had said as he pulled her inside. Charli used to sneak over all the time.
“Yeah, only your window didn’t have thorn bushes right beneath it,” she said. Blood was trickling down Charli’s leg.
“Ouch. Let’s get you cleaned up.” Jack draped one of her arms around his shoulder and carried her into the bathroom, setting her on the tile sink. As he cleaned the cut with a wet hand towel, Charli got him re-psyched for his game, feeding him a pep-talk like no one else could. “What would I do without you?” he said. “Thank God you’re moving with me wherever I get drafted. I don’t know how I could play if you weren’t around.”
“Yeah,” Charli said softly. Too softly. Then she changed the subject. “Want to go watch TV or something?”
“And completely avoid my last comment? That is the plan, isn’t it?” he asked. They’d discussed their post-college life before, plenty of times. Charli would move to the city Jack got drafted to. They’d get a place together. She would find a science-related job. He saw himself proposing a year or two after that. There was no doubt in his mind that Charli was The One. He got this feeling around her that he knew no one else could give him. Plus, she was his best friend.
“Let’s just talk about it after the game, okay?” She reached for the doorknob.
“Just tell me now. Since when do you keep secrets from me?”
“Jack . . . ”
“Just tell me, Charli.”
She turned back toward him but avoided eye contact, staring instead at the white tile floor.
“I had a meeting with my academic advisor this morning. She just put some new ideas in my head.”
“Like?”
“Like about applying to PhD programs after college. She thinks that with my grades and the research I’ve done that I could get into a fully funded program so that I wouldn’t have to pay anything. I was going to tell you about it later. I just didn’t want to mess with your head before the game.”
All of a sudden the bathroom felt stuffy, and Jack’s forehead began to sweat.
“I didn’t even know you wanted to get your PhD.”
“It’s something I’ve always thought about, but never seriously until this morning. I don’t know, Jack, talking about it got me pretty excited. It’s something I think I need to look into.”
“I see. Do you mind if I step outside for a second?” He walked past her and out onto the small iron balcony. A sliver of moon stared back at him, and a warm breeze rippled through his blue cotton shirt and athletic shorts.
Jack tried to keep his head about this. If getting her PhD was what Charli wanted, he didn’t want to make her feel bad for that. One of the things he loved about Charli was her independence, and he admired that she always pursued her passion. Those things made her stand out from other girls he’d dated in the past, and they made Charli, Charli. But he couldn’t help feeling depressed about the news. He’d had this clear picture of their future together, and now he didn’t know what was going to happen.
Charli came up behind him and rested her hand gently on his back.
“I’ll apply to schools in all the cities where you think you might get drafted,” she said. “This doesn’t have to change anything.”
But it could change things. Jack knew this. Charli had to too, even if she didn’t want to admit it.
The roaring applause from the crowd brought Jack back into the stadium. His ears rang with the noise, and he looked up into the stands at the sea of Beaver fans dressed in orange and black, cheering like crazy. Glancing over his shoulder, he eyed each of the outfielders jogging in place and pounding their hands into their gloves. His blood started to pump more quickly, and he stepped back up to the mound, inhaling the smells of the ballpark—raked dirt, trimmed grass, nerves, sweat. God, he loved this. Being out here. In a big game. With adrenaline running through him.
But he loved Charli too. And the rush he felt when he was with her. Why did this have to be so complicated? What would happen if he had to choose between baseball and the girl he loved?
The batter, a guy who looked like he belonged more on a football field, tapped home plate two times with his bat and then stood in his ready stance waiting for Jack to throw. Jack eyed his catcher’s, Mike’s, mitt for his signal. Fastball, inside.
He wanted to say that he’d choose Charli. After growing up with his dad picking his career over him, Jack had promised himself that if his career ever came between him and someone he loved, he would always choose that person. But the choice wasn’t as easy as Jack had always thought it should have been.
He swiped his cleat on the dirt to create a grip for his foot, feeling for the first time what it was like to be in his dad’s shoes. Then he wound up and threw the ball with everything he had in him. Whoosh. Smack.
“Strike one!” The ump yelled, turning to his right and bringing down his arm.
The crowd erupted into applause, and a grin played across Jack’s face.
Jack knew in his heart that he would always love Charli—she meant more to him than any girl ever would—but, as much as it killed him to admit it, he loved this game just as much. And truthfully, he wasn’t sure that he could ever give pitching up.
—
THE FOLLOWING DECEMBER Charli stood outside her dingy two-bedroom house in Corvallis next to her mailbox and stared in disbelief at the letter from The Medical University of South Carolina that she’d just torn open. After an initial application to their oncology PhD program, a secondary application, and a flight to Charleston for an in-person interview . . . she’d gotten in. Better yet, she’d been granted a generous stipend and been allotted two thirds of her tuition in exchange for research assistantship work.
She read the letter one more time just to make sure the offer was real. It seemed too good to be true. Three other schools had offered Charli admission into their doctoral programs thus far, but this particular one was the school Charli wanted to go to the most. Not only was it in South Carolina, near the city Jack thought he might get drafted to (Myrtle Beach, where the Atlanta Brave’s AA Minor League team played) but much of its research focused on cancer and the development of vaccines. With her mom’s recent breast cancer diagnosis, Charli knew this was the area she wanted to specialize in.
This opportunity felt like a personal calling. She saw herself working long hours in the lab and making new friends with like-minded people in her program who would understand her nerd side and not make fun of her when she did things like compare the bacterial species of yogurt cultures in the grocery store before deciding which yogurt to buy, something Jack had teased her about just the other day. Or when she picked up a household item, such as a bottle of Lysol Disinfecting Wipes, and proceeded to state the gram reaction of each of the microbes that it could kill. That fact might have impressed a trivia team, but it had had her roommate, Elaine—who couldn’t stand science—laughing at her a few weeks ago when she came home and heard Charli in the kitchen rattling those off while she scrubbed their kitchen table.
The thought of exploring Charleston, a completely new city, was exciting to her as well. During her twenty-four hour trip there for her interview, she’d been impressed by the sparkling views of the Cooper River, the rich history (and food), the horse-drawn carriages that trotted through the old, restored city blocks, and the live oak trees with Spanish
moss hanging off of them like wedding veils. And with Jack only a couple hours away, he’d have the opportunity to explore it with her whenever he had time off.
Charli looked up from the letter, and the cloudy winter day took on a new vibrancy. Feeling more thrilled about her future than ever, she jumped into her car with the letter and started driving to Jack’s. She couldn’t wait to tell him the news.
—
JACK COULDN’T BELIEVE it. His coach had just called him and told him that it was looking like he was going to be drafted by the San Francisco Giants, and that he’d play on their Class-A advanced team in San Jose come summer. For the past few months he’d been under the impression that the Atlanta Braves were going to take him, and that he’d play in their Minor League system until he got called up, but the scout for the Giants had just told Jack’s coach that they were going to trade two of their Minor League pitchers come summer and were now interested in bringing Jack on.
Jack had been a Giants fan his whole life. Growing up in Portland, which didn’t have a professional baseball team, he’d followed the Giants since he was a kid. One of his few treasured memories with his dad was flying to San Francisco for a game when he was a freshman in high school and sitting right behind the Giants’ dugout. Though his dad must have dropped a fortune on the tickets, they’d had the best time eating garlic fries and foot-long hot dogs and seeing the players up that close.
In college, he’d also made the drive from Corvallis to San Francisco a few times with some of his teammates to watch the Giants play under the lights at AT&T Park.
Just thinking about suiting up in a Giants’ uniform gave Jack chills. This was a dream come true for him. And Charli had applied to a program near San Jose, right? He was almost positive of it. He picked up his phone to call her. He couldn’t wait to tell her the news.
—
CHARLI PRACTICALLY KNOCKED down Jack’s front door she pounded on it so hard.
When he answered, he had his phone to his ear. “I’m calling you,” he said. “I have something exciting to tell you!”
“Me too.” Charli stepped inside with her letter.
“Really? You go first.”
“No, no, you!” She saw excitement all over his face and wanted to know the cause of it more than she wanted to share her own.
“You sure?” He snapped his phone shut.
“Yes. Tell me!”
“Okay,” Jack said. “The scout for the San Francisco Giants just contacted Coach Blaire. He thinks they’re going to draft me!”
Charli dropped the letter onto the hardwood floor, her stomach sinking. “I just got accepted into MUSC in South Carolina. I thought you were going to the Braves, and that you’d be playing in Myrtle Beach until you got called up.”
“Please tell me you applied to a school in or near San Jose,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Charli said breathlessly. “To Cal Berkeley. But I haven’t heard back yet. And I’m not as excited about their program as I am about MUSC’s.”
The color drained from Jack’s cheeks. “I’m not as excited at the prospect of playing for Atlanta as I am about playing for the Giants.”
Charli’s head started to spin. This couldn’t be happening. No, no, no, no, noooo. She walked into the living room and took a seat on the hearth of the old stone fireplace that Jack typically kept lit.
As she stared into the blazing flames, she tried to tell herself that this wasn’t the end of the world. She and Jack would work this out. One of them would just have to give a little. And since she loved Jack too much to ask him to sacrifice his baseball career, that person would have to be her.
“I’ll just throw my letter in the fire,” Charli said, dangling it over the wire screen. “Forget I got in.”
“No way!” Jack grabbed her arm, filling her with immediate relief. “You’d resent me forever. I couldn’t ask you to do that. And besides, we don’t know with absolute certainty that the Giants are going to take me yet. Look, maybe I could have Coach Blaire tell them I’m not interested.”
“And resent me forever for following me and not your dream? I don’t think so.”
Jack sat down beside her. “I’m not supposed to pick my career over someone I love. And you’re not supposed to let me. Remember that promise I asked you to keep me honest on?”
Of course she remembered. He’d made the request at his first high school baseball game.
“You’re not your dad though,” Charli assured him. “You’re young, and you’re supposed to go after your dream at this age.”
“I am?”
“Yes, we both are.”
That was what everyone said at least. Just last quarter in a creative writing class, her professor, Dr. Simonson, had spent her final lecture talking about how a person’s twenties were for taking risks and for going after what he or she truly wanted. “Dream big,” she’d said. “Because failing in your twenties is not so bad. Most of you don’t have children yet to take care of, and your parents might still let you move home if you screw up. So, write that novel. Move to that city you’ve always wanted to go to. Join a band. See the world. Take a job that sounds exciting, even if it doesn’t sound the most practical. If you’ve always wanted to be a doctor, apply to med school. If you’ve dreamed of being a teacher, get that credential.”
Her parents too, had been enthusiastic about her pursuing her dream when she first mentioned that she was considering getting her PhD.
“We think it’s great,” her mom had said over the phone. “This is the time in your life to do something like this for yourself, Charli. And to live up to your full potential. Go after it, honey!”
She’d even read an article in the Huffington Post recently that had been titled, “Twenty Things for a Person to Do in her Twenties.” Most of the bullet points were about following a dream, taking risks, and being selfish to figure out who you really were and what really mattered.
Jack hesitated. “So, what then, we do long distance?”
“That was my other thought too,” Charli said. Although that didn’t sit well in her gut either. Her PhD program would take five years, maybe more, to complete. That was a long time for their relationship to make it when they were almost 3,000 miles apart.
Charli saw visions of them fighting on the phone because they were both frustrated by how difficult it was to be apart. And of three-day weekends spent in crowded airports commuting across the country for a day or two together. She imagined herself rearranging her schedule and cancelling plans with new friends so that she could talk on the phone with Jack and make sure they got quality time together. And she guessed she wouldn’t dedicate herself fully to her studies with a big part of her head and her heart in California.
She didn’t voice her doubts to Jack, afraid they might upset him, and agreed that long-distance would be their hypothetical “if Jack gets drafted to the Giants” plan. But long after she left Jack’s house she kept ruminating about it, and late that night as she was tossing and turning in bed, she convinced herself that there had to be a better plan. Something she just hadn’t thought of yet.
—
WHAT CHARLI LOVED most about her work in the lab was that for every problem there was a solution to be found. Earlier in the year, for example, she’d had an experiment fail over and over again, and she finally realized it was because she hadn’t accounted for the humidity inside the lab. After realizing her oversight, she completely redesigned the experiment to take place under a hood where moisture could be more easily controlled, and everything quickly fell into place.
So, the day after her conversation with Jack, she retreated to the lab with the problem of their future on her brain, and she sat down at a stool. What else could we do? She contemplated, twirling her pencil around in between her fingers. What haven’t we thought of yet?
It took her a week and twenty sheets of notebook paper filled with ideas, notes, and drawings before Charli had it. A different plan than long distance. A crazier plan. But something she th
ought might just work.
eleven
THEN
CHARLI WAS ONE minute into explaining her idea when Jack cut her off by holding up a finger.
“Hang on here, let me get this straight.”
They were at Hayden’s. Because the restaurant played into her idea, Charli had thought sharing it with Jack here would be sort of symbolic. She hadn’t taken into account that the conversation might get heated—maybe even become emotional—and therefore would probably have been best to have in private.
“You’re telling me you want to break up for five years and then set a date to meet up here—at Hayden’s—after you’ve finished school to see about giving our relationship another shot? Are you out of your mind?” Jack practically yelled.
Maybe, Charli thought.
“I can’t believe you want to break up with me!” he went on.
“No! Not break up!” Charli scooted closer to him, trying to ignore the stares from the customers dining at the surrounding tables. “Just put things with us on pause for a while,” she explained.
“I can’t just pause us,” he said. “I’m in love with you.”
She took a deep breath in, remembering that she’d had the same initial reaction when she first wrote the idea down on her notepad as she was brainstorming. She’d actually crossed it off the list with a giant X and shaken her head, saying to herself, “No. That’s ridiculous. We couldn’t do that.” It had taken her time to warm up to it and to see all the positives. And now, after sitting with it for some time, she was convinced it was what made the most sense. Jack would get to that point too.
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