“I know I messed up, Jack,” he said. “I get it now—now that it’s too late. I chose the less important thing in life for too many years. And now . . . well . . . I have incredible success, a solid income, nice things, but no one to share any of it with.”
Immediately Charli popped into Jack’s head. And the decision he’d been belaboring for the past eight months or so. Jack had been looking for a sign that he should call his baseball career quits, and here his dad was, sitting right next to him, telling him that the most important things in life were the people in it. And if he were to get a do-over, he’d choose his family over his career.
Jack couldn’t believe that his dad was the one shedding light on his decision. It was a definite curveball, and the irony of it wasn’t lost on him. It was as though his life script read, “Dad enters left” right at this critical point, and Jack had to believe there was a reason for that.
“I’m here because I want to be at your games. I want to be able to talk to you on the phone. I want to be a presence unlike I was before.”
Jack had heard similar things come out of his dad’s mouth in the past and wasn’t sure he believed that he’d changed. But strangely he felt kind of grateful to him. His dad had made a mistake. Jack didn’t have to make the same one.
Of course, his dad had no clue that he had just given Jack the insight he desperately needed. He was just there trying to make amends. But still, that was worth something. Maybe not complete forgiveness, but a hug at least.
Surprising the both of them, Jack pulled his dad into his arms. It had been years since the two of them had embraced, and at first, the gesture felt awkward, stiff. But then both of them relaxed and eventually his dad put his arm around Jack’s back and patted it a few times.
Jack told his dad that he would keep him posted about his schedule. He didn’t want to share the details of how uncertain his baseball future looked at that very moment. It was one thing to embrace his dad; it was another to bare his soul to him. For now, he was keeping those thoughts private, but it was clear what he wanted to do.
After his dad left, he would go right to Coach Berry’s office in the clubhouse and tell him that he was done with baseball. Then he planned to pack his bags, drive home, and spend a few days with his mom to make sure she was okay. And later, he was going to fly out to Charleston, surprise Charli, and ask her to marry him.
Was it crazy? Sure. Impulsive? A little. But Jack knew it was the right thing. He didn’t want to end up where his dad was years down the road—on top of his career but without the love of his life.
Charli was too important to him. And the thought of being with her was way more exciting to him than shacking up in dingy motel rooms with a bunch of guys all chasing the same dream, which all of them realized only a very few had a slight shot at.
It wasn’t like he had to give up baseball for good. He could get a job coaching at a high school or as an assistant coach at a college. He could even start up some baseball camps out there. Those baseball equations included Charli and sounded much better to him than where he was now.
When he and his dad finally stood up and started to head down the bleachers, Jack found himself smiling. He playfully knocked his dad with his shoulder, and his dad, in turn, ruffled Jack’s hair.
“What do you say we grab a bite to eat?” his dad asked.
Jack nodded. “I just have to take care of something first.”
—
“WHAT ARE YOU doing home?” The shocked expression on Jack’s mom’s face was priceless when she opened the door for him and saw him standing there with his packed suitcases and his truck parked in the driveway. It was the same look Jack hoped to see on Charli’s face when he surprised her next week in Charleston. “Don’t you have a game tonight?”
“I quit,” Jack said, stepping inside, glad to be home, glad to be one stop closer to being with Charli again.
“You, what?” His mom gasped. “Are you okay?” She put her hands on his shoulders and checked his face for signs of regret frantically, like the mother of a toddler looking her little guy over for scrapes after a big fall.
“Never been better,” he said and smiled to assure her that he was fine. He lugged his suitcases into the house behind him and closed the door on the hot August afternoon.
Tentatively his mom reached out and rested her hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t because of your father and me, is it?”
“Actually,” he said, prepared to fully open up to her unlike he had to his dad. “This is sort of about that.”
“Oh no.” Her face crumbled.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Honestly, this is a good thing.”
He followed her into the kitchen where she immediately started to boil a pot of water and to pull out the ingredients for his favorite meal—spaghetti and meatballs. Cooking had always been her go-to when she was stressed. When he talked with her on the phone after his dad came out to San Jose and broke the news of their divorce, she joked that if he’d been around more, he would have known the divorce papers were coming because their kitchen had been full of gourmet meals that week—braised lamb, pork chops with garlic mashed potatoes, her famous jambalaya.
Jack hopped up onto the granite countertop. “Hearing Dad talk about not spending more time with you and me—it really put things in perspective. You know I haven’t been crazy about baseball in a while, but what I am still crazy about is Charli.” He cleared his throat preparing himself for his even bigger reveal. “Which is why I’ve decided to fly out to Charleston, surprise her, and ask her to marry me. I leave next week. I just bought my plane ticket.”
“What?” His mom dropped the box of opened spaghetti noodles, which hit the floor and proceeded to roll everywhere.
“Shoot!” She dropped to her knees to pick them up.
“You don’t like my idea?” Jack had thought she would completely embrace it. He had been so excited to tell her about it his whole car ride home. He’d even been hoping she’d give him his grandmother’s antique diamond wedding ring to use to propose to Charli. Years ago, before he and Charli were even dating, Charli had found it in his mom’s old wooden jewelry box stored in the attic on top of a distressed pine console table. She’d tried it on for fun, loved the look of it, and the fit had been perfect.
“You’re just . . . hitting me with a lot here, Jack.”
“Really? How can you say that?” He jumped off the counter and squatted down to help gather up the noodles. “You’ve been on the other end of my phone calls since I left for San Jose, Mom. And your advice the whole time has been to follow my heart. Didn’t you kind of anticipate that that advice might lead me to do this?”
“To quit maybe. But I did not anticipate that it would prompt you to surprise Charli with a proposal. Are you sure that’s the best idea?”
“I’ve lived with the fear of losing her for over a year,” he said. “I can’t do it anymore. I want to start a life together.”
His mom held out the box for him to stuff the noodles he’d gathered back in. “But do you have any idea where her head’s at with you? What if she’s not ready to get engaged?”
“The reason we made the pact was so that we might have a shot at a future together. Now that I’ve quit baseball and can move where she is, I’m sure she’ll want to start a future with me sooner rather than later.”
“Maybe,” his mom said. “But maybe not. What if she’s seeing someone else? Have you thought of that?”
“Well, she definitely doesn’t sound like she’s seeing anyone else from the tone of her letters.” She still wrote things at the end of them like, Miss you. And, Wish I could see you soon. She wouldn’t have included stuff like that if she was involved with another guy, would she have?
“I’d feel a lot better about you going down there if you gave her a heads up. What’s the harm in that? You could even keep the proposal a surprise. But at least tell her you’re coming to Charleston.”
Jack could feel himself starting
to lose his temper. “I don’t want to give her time to weigh in with her voice of reason. You know how she can be.”
If he called, Charli would be furious he quit baseball, encourage him to reconsider, and oppose his coming out there. But if he showed up and let her see how happy he was to have quit, he knew she wouldn’t protest.
His mom set the spaghetti down on the counter and held Jack’s hands while she looked him in the eyes. “Don’t get mad at me. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I appreciate your concern,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “But this is what I really want.”
“Will you just sit with all this for a couple of weeks, and then if you still feel like going out there and proposing is the right thing, you can do it?”
“I’ve already sat with it, Mom. And the longer I wait, the more time Charli does have to maybe meet someone else.” He turned away from her and looked over at the framed picture of him and Charli that was tacked up on the refrigerator door. The picture was actually two similar shots mounted side by side. In one they were seven years old, standing in a high pile of leaves that they’d raked up in Charli’s backyard and thrown up in handfuls into the crisp autumn air. The second picture was taken in a leaf pile too, but just a few years ago by one of their photographer friends on a sunny fall day on the Oregon State campus. Charli had her arms draped around Jack’s neck, and they were both sitting in the leaves, smiling at the camera. He wanted to be as happy as he was in both of those photos again. And he didn’t want to have to wait.
Stubbornly he said, “I’m going to go and propose either way, but I’d enjoy it more knowing you were behind me.”
For a second, the only sound in the kitchen was the water boiling on the stove. And then Jack heard his mom leave the room.
So much for being behind him. Really? That was how she was going to respond? Why was she being so negative about this? And worrying so much? Couldn’t she just be happy for him?
A moment later he heard her reenter.
“Maybe I’ll just go ask Dad for his approval,” he said, even though he knew it was insensitive. His dad’s approval really meant nothing to him.
He heard his mom draw in a deep breath. “If this is what you really want and how you really want to do it . . . then I want you to have this ring.”
Jack spun around and saw her standing by the stove, holding his grandmother’s ring in her fingers.
“Mom—” he started, apologetically.
“You do have my support and my blessing, Jack.”
“You don’t know how much that means to me.” He went to her, took the ring, and examined it, picturing the way it would sparkle on Charli’s finger. “I’ve never been so excited about something,” he confessed. “Or felt so right about a decision.”
Tears shone in his mom’s eyes. “Then I’m sure it will all work out,” she said.
Jack smiled, staring at the ring in the palm of his hand, wishing his flight was even sooner.
nineteen
THEN
JACK HAD THE proposal all planned by the time he arrived in Charleston. First, he was going to take Charli to dinner at Poogan’s Porch. It was an old historic home converted into a restaurant that served famous Southern cuisine. White lights were strung on the porch railings and on the roof, which he knew Charli would find romantic, and there was a fireside table inside, just like at Hayden’s, which Jack had reserved. After their stomachs were full of fried green tomatoes, pan-seared jumbo scallops, and oysters, and they’d had a few glasses of red wine to wash it all down, he had a horse-drawn carriage scheduled to pick them up outside the restaurant. The carriage would drive them through the bustling city and down quaint cobblestone streets. And later, their driver would drop them at The Battery, a park surrounded by majestic antebellum homes and full of stately live oak trees, where Jack planned to pop the question. He couldn’t wait to explain to Charli underneath the gazebo in the middle of the grove that he’d given baseball up and that he was ready to call off the pact and start that forever they’d always talked about, right then.
Before he could do any of that, though, he had to let Charli know he was in town.
From her letters, he knew her typical Saturday routine. In the mornings, she got up early, grabbed coffee at the two-story Starbucks on King Street and then usually spent time in the library, studying. Around one, she took a break for lunch at one of three places—Colonial Lake, if she’d prepared food herself and it wasn’t raining, Bull Street Gourmet, if she wanted a quick and easy sandwich, or Fleet Landing, a restaurant on the harbor she sometimes dined at with her friends.
Since it was twelve-thirty by the time Jack had woken up, showered, and stopped by the local Harris Teeter grocery store to buy champagne and roses for the fancy hotel room he’d rented for them that night, he decided lunch would be the best time to catch her and planned to hit all three of her usual spots.
He’d stayed at a cheap motel the night before near the lake and Bull Street Gourmet, so he took off on foot for those two spots first. Within minutes he was scanning the faces of people at the lake who were sitting on benches in the brilliant sunshine, eating and chatting. Charli didn’t appear to be one of them, but he hung out under the shade of a sycamore tree for a few minutes just to make sure.
Every time he saw a twenty-something woman with brown hair join a group or walk past, his heart leapt. It hadn’t fully hit him that he was going to see Charli so soon until now.
When there was no sign of her by one-fifteen, he pulled out the directions to Bull Street Gourmet that the front desk receptionist at his motel had written down, and jogged over there. It was a small grocery-type deli with only a couple of tables in the middle and a few barstool chairs along the windows. There was no sign of her inside, just a few college-aged students in line placing orders and a couple of businessmen dressed in suits, sitting at a table scarfing down sandwiches.
Feeling a little panicked, but still hopeful, Jack found a main street and caught a biker taxi to drive him across town to Fleet Landing, the last place she might be.
He was dropped off at one-forty in front of a historical white concrete building perched over the marsh with a wraparound deck and oversized windows aimed right at the Charleston harbor. Tall sea grass shot up from the river, and a couple of people were leaning on the side deck railings talking with glasses of beer in their hands.
Jack tipped his driver and headed inside first, but there were only a couple of people in the heavily air-conditioned room sitting at the high bar looking out through the windows at the harbor. After confirming that Charli was not one of them, he walked back out and started around the side of the restaurant toward the back deck, where he could hear boisterous laughter and a clamor of voices.
As he rounded the corner, he paused to keep himself hidden, surveyed the area, and within seconds spotted Charli. She was at the table furthest from him, right up against the railing, underneath an orange umbrella. Jack took in the sight of her, and that was enough to set his heart racing. She had on a dress, and her hair was tied back loosely, a couple of strands blowing across her forehead in the easy breeze. Damn, she looked beautiful in that natural way that made her stand out from the rest of the women dining alfresco that afternoon. She had what looked to be a taco in her hands and brought it up to her lips to take a bite. A moment later she stole a glance at a tugboat tooting its horn as it drove by, and then she reached for her glass of iced tea and fixed her attention across the table on . . . a guy. A curly haired guy. Jack couldn’t see his face, but from the look on Charli’s face, she was certainly enjoying his company.
Taking a few steps back, he hid behind the side of the building and leaned up against it, gathering his thoughts.
What had he just walked in on? Not a date, right? Just a friendly lunch between two friends? His mom’s concern that Charli was seeing someone else couldn’t possibly have been right, could it have?
He closed his eyes for a brief second and told
himself not to jump to any conclusions. He had no idea the nature of the lunch Charli was having, and until he did, he shouldn’t assume the worst.
Still, this was making him sweat. Thinking maybe he could get a better idea of what was really going on between the two of them if he spied for a moment longer, he peeked around the corner at their table again. For a second, as they continued to eat and talk, Jack convinced himself that it was just a casual lunch and that he had nothing to worry about. Probably just a study break, he told himself, before they regrouped to cram for a test together. But just as he was about to walk over toward them, the guy leaned across the table. And then, before Jack knew it, he’d tilted his head, and his lips were on Charli’s and her lips were on his.
Jack’s stomach dropped. No! Why? Shit! Tearing his attention away, he darted back around the side of the building.
He hadn’t just seen that, had he?
He shut his eyes, and the image of Charli and the curly haired guy kissing played back like an instant replay in his head. Fuck, he had.
Turning toward the wall, Jack punched it, scaring away the few customers who were leaning on the railing nearby and sending a blond, teenage waitress running inside, probably to get her manager. His hand started to throb and bleed at his knuckles, but he punched the wall again, preferring to feel the pain there than in his chest, which was suddenly heavy, swelling.
“Damn it!” he cursed and leaned up against the wall, feeling sick. Either he was going to throw up or the manager was going to come out and ask him to leave. One way or the other he was going to make a scene for everyone, including Charli to see, if he didn’t get out of there fast.
—
ONE MINUTE CHARLI had been talking about how delicious her fish tacos were and the next minute Christopher’s mouth was over hers, and his tongue was sliding along her front row of teeth.
Paralyzed with shock for a couple of seconds, she let him kiss her. But when she snapped out of it, she reached out, put her hand on his chest, and gave him a little shove. “What are you doing?” she asked him breathlessly. She brought her napkin up to her lips and blotted them with it.
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