by J. Sterling
Stadium Seating
We picked up two of the tickets from the will-call booth and headed inside the stadium. I’d been here a hundred times before, but tonight felt different.
I’d always felt so detached when I watched the games here growing up, insignificant, merely an observer watching strangers play a game I had no part in. But tonight, with my brother actually playing on the field, I felt like an insider, part of an exclusive club.
Melissa skipped into our aisle first and sat down, leaving the extra seat open, and I plopped down to her left. Jack stepped out from the dugout, his expression curious. He looked up at me and Melissa before pointing at the open seat with a shrug, asking if Cassie was coming.
Melissa glanced at me before turning back to him, and when she shook her head, his smile dropped. He mouthed something, but neither of us could understand what the hell he was saying from that distance. Jack turned to look behind him and jerked his head before returning to the dugout.
A few minutes later, the Diamondback’s batboy hopped the infield wall and walked up to us to hand Melissa a note. She unfolded it before showing it to me.
Where is she?
“He told me that I had to wait for your response,” the kid said, and shifted from foot to foot as he stood there.
Melissa reached for the pen in his hand and scribbled a response.
She couldn’t come. She said it’s too hard. Jack, she’s leaving tonight for New York! She’s moving there!
After folding the note in half, she handed it back to the batboy, and he hurried away.
“I’m switching seats,” I said before hopping up and changing to the seat on her right, closest to the dugout so I could be nearer to my brother.
The note wouldn’t make Jack happy, and I hated the fact that he was distracted by our presence. He’d always been so focused when it came to playing the game, but he couldn’t possibly be focused tonight. And that sucked because he needed to pay attention to his job, not to who was or wasn’t in the stands. He knew better than to lose his focus, and that was the worst part.
No, the worst part was that Cassie didn’t come.
“You want anything from concessions?” I asked Melissa, but she shook her head.
I stood up and had barely been gone at all when I hurried back, feeling guilty for leaving her sitting there alone. Melissa could handle herself, but I hurried back to our seats anyway.
“Where’s your food?” she asked, her brow furrowed.
“I already ate it,” I admitted. I’d only bought a hot dog, so it didn’t take long for me to inhale it.
“Pig,” she said with a huff.
“I asked you if you wanted anything,” I shot back, refusing to let her blame me for my lack of mind-reading abilities.
“Dean!”
I thought I heard my name but couldn’t be sure, so I ignored it, staring at the field and occasionally glancing over at Melissa.
“Dean!”
I heard it again and turned to find Jack looking at me from the dugout. I looked back at him like he was crazy, wondering what the hell he thought he was doing.
“What time’s her flight?” he shouted.
I glanced at Melissa, who was clearly as surprised as I was before I turned back to Jack. “She’s leaving the apartment at ten thirty.”
A crazed look came over his face, and I wondered for a moment what he was going to do.
“You don’t think he’d leave, do you? Before the game even ends?” I asked Melissa, horrified.
She shrugged. “He’s your dumb brother. You’d know better than I would.”
“When it comes to Cassie, I don’t know what he’s capable of,” I admitted as I leaned forward to peer inside the dugout for Jack, but couldn’t see anything more than a line of legs in uniform pants.
For the rest of the game, I practically held my breath, praying that my brother wouldn’t put his entire career in jeopardy just to go see Cassie. The moment the game ended, I caught a glimpse of Jack and breathed out a quick sigh of relief, thankful that he was still here.
His gaze met mine, and he jerked his head toward the rear of the stadium before disappearing.
“Shit, he’s leaving,” I told Melissa.
“We’d better hurry then!”
She jumped to her feet, reached for my hand, and tugged me out of the crowded stadium, shouldering her way past people who were moving too slowly. We couldn’t move fast enough to catch Jack, and I knew getting out of the parking lot would be madness as well.
When we finally pulled into the parking lot of her apartment complex, there were no signs of Jack or Cassie, and I wondered if maybe he did get her to postpone her flight.
“You think they’re upstairs?” I asked, my tone hopeful as we exited the car.
“I don’t know. She was pretty adamant about getting on that flight.”
“Yeah, but she hadn’t seen him yet. Maybe seeing him changed her mind.”
Melissa let out a huff. “The way seeing her changed his mind about the wedding? Fat chance.”
I threw my hands up in surrender as we walked up the stairs. “Hey. You always get so pissy with me when it comes to that. I’m not Jack,” I reminded her, and she laughed before letting out a soft gasp.
Following her gaze, I saw Jack standing alone in the parking lot, his jersey untucked, his baseball hat in his hand.
“Oh shit. Jack?”
Melissa’s sympathy came through loud and clear, both in her eyes and in her tone. She might be on Cassie’s side when it came down to it, but she had a soft spot for Jack and their relationship.
Jack turned toward our voices and looked at us blankly before recognition kicked in and he headed in our direction. He looked like hell, his posture defeated, and I sprinted down the steps to meet him.
“Come on, bro, let’s get you inside.” I wrapped an arm around his back and urged him up the staircase as Melissa unlocked the front door.
“Did you see her?” she asked once we were inside, and tossed all of her crap on top of the kitchen table with a clatter.
“I saw her.” Jack’s tone was cold as he tossed his hat on top of Melissa’s things.
“Well, what the hell happened? What did she say?” she demanded as she hooked her hands on hips.
“She left.” He shrugged, sounding completely dejected. “She’s moving to New York.”
“Well, of course she’s moving to New York,” Melissa said, as if his statement was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.
I placed a hand on his shoulder and tried to explain it better. “Melissa just means that Cassie has to start living her life for herself. She has to make decisions that have nothing to do with you.”
That got a reaction. Jack jerked his head up, his eyes burning holes through me. “I know that. You think I don’t know that?”
“Do you? Do you really, or did you think she’d just leap into your arms and you’d live happily ever after?” He needed to live in the reality of what his actions had done to her, what they had caused her to do in return.
He smiled. “I thought there might be some leaping,” he admitted, shrugging one shoulder.
Melissa’s mouth twisted into a snarl. “That’s bullshit, Jack. You expect her to give up her career because you asked her to?”
“I didn’t ask her to give up her career. I just figured she’d at least talk to me. Postpone her flight. Give me a fucking chance.”
“The way you gave her a chance before you married that skank?”
“Melissa,” I said softly in warning, wanting her to ease up a little. Jack looked wrecked enough, and her harsh words weren’t helping.
I placed my hand on her shoulder, and she relaxed slightly as she looked at me before focusing back on Jack.
His jaw was clenched; no doubt our words were swimming in his head as he tried to sort this all out. “You think it didn’t fucking kill me to leave Cassie that night? All I wanted to do was stay with her, beg for her forgiveness and—”
<
br /> “But you didn’t,” Melissa spat back, every ounce of frustration that she’d built up on Cassie’s behalf spilling out. “You didn’t stay with her. You left her crying in a parking lot alone while you left with that bitch!”
“I know what I did!” he immediately fired back, the veins in his neck throbbing. “You think I don’t fucking know what I did? I have to live with it every second of every day. I fucked up, okay? We all know I fucked up!”
Jack slammed his palms on the kitchen table where Melissa had dumped her things, and we all watched as some loose change rattled and rolled onto the carpet below. He seemed to zone out, his eyes solely focused on the quarters and nickels on the floor.
“If you want to make it right, Jack, it’s not enough to just know what you did. You have to know what it did to her.” Melissa calmed down as she spoke, her voice no longer agitated. I knew she wanted him to see, to understand.
Jack swallowed hard and unclenched his jaw. “Tell me.”
“Everyone knew what you’d done by the time Cassie got back from visiting you in Alabama. It was all over the newspapers that you were getting married and had a baby on the way. It was on Facebook. Did you know that the stupid school magazine she worked for had the balls to call and ask her for pictures of you? They said they only had old ones and wanted to know if she had any newer ones.”
“You’re kidding?” His eyes widened as he looked at her with shock.
“I wish.”
His hands balled into fists. “I’ll fucking kill them, the inconsiderate little—”
Melissa pointed an accusing finger at him, stopping him mid-rant. “It wasn’t just the newspapers and social media. It was everywhere she went. School was the worst. Cassie couldn’t even walk across campus without people making comments and snide remarks. She had the most personal and painful moments of her life on display for everyone to see and judge. And trust me, everyone had an opinion about your breakup.”
Jack cringed. His hands reached into his hair and he tugged at it, the same way he always did when he was frustrated or uncomfortable. “I had no idea that was happening or I would’ve done something to stop it. I would’ve made sure no one ever said another mean word to her again.”
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad, Jack. I’m telling you so you’ll understand the repercussions your actions had on her. You made the mistake, but she had to pay for it.” Melissa said the words calmly, but their edges were sharp.
He dropped his head fully into his hands and worried his hair, his fingers twisting the strands. When he looked back up, there were tears in his eyes.
“You broke her, Jack,” Melissa said, delivering the final blow, and my brother looked like he’d never recover.
“I broke me too,” he admitted, brushing away the lone tear that rolled down his face, and my own eyes stung at seeing him that emotional.
“Jack, look.” Melissa sat down across from him and folded her arms on the table. “I love you, I really do. But you have to let her go do this.”
He clutched at his chest as he swallowed hard. “I want her back. I need her. It’s either Cassie for me or no one.”
“I’m not the one you have to convince.” She reached out her hand, her fingertips brushing over his knuckles before he pulled away.
He tore his gaze away from hers and met mine. “I know.”
“She still loves you,” I said, deciding it was time I jumped in here. When his eyes narrowed on me, I said, “What? You don’t believe that? She does.”
Melissa frowned at me. “It’s not about whether or not Cassie loves him, Dean.”
“It’s a little bit about that, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” I said with a chuckle.
Her expression softened and she bit back a smile. “Have you even been paying attention?”
“Dean’s right,” Jack said, interrupting the byplay between Melissa and me. “I wouldn’t have a fighting chance if she didn’t love me anymore.”
“So, what are you gonna do?” Melissa folded her arms over her chest, watching him carefully.
Jack jumped to his feet. “First, I’m going to get that marriage annulled,” he said with newfound determination. “Then I’m going to hop on a plane to New York and get my girl back.”
Yes! I punched a fist in the air. If there’d been pom-poms on the table, I would have reached for them and done a victory dance.
But Melissa frowned at him, apparently not convinced. “How?”
He exhaled quickly, seeming to deflate. “I don’t know yet.”
Uncertainty lingered in the air, making the silence that followed awkward. The pressure was palpable in the room. We were all aware that if Jack went after Cassie to try to win her back, he had to do it right or not at all. If he didn’t think this through and screwed it up, he wouldn’t get another chance.
Jack cleared his throat, breaking the silence. “Can I use the bathroom?”
“Of course.”
“Can I use hers?” he asked, and I cast Melissa a sideways glance.
“Uh, yeah.” She rolled her eyes, and I stopped myself from doing it too just to mess with him.
As he walked away, I remembered what state Cassie had left her room in. Jack would be devastated to see the things she left behind—memories of him, memories of them. The jar containing the quarters he’d given her still sat on a shelf. And while the majority of her pictures were gone, one of her and Jack still remained on her bedside table.
From the living room, we could clearly hear what sounded like a jar being put back down, and Melissa and I stared at each other as we both held our breath, waiting for Jack to return.
“How come some of her stuff’s still here?” Jack asked Melissa when he reentered the living room.
She shrugged. “We figured it would be easier to leave it here for now. We don’t know how long she’s staying there, and I’m not moving anytime soon. Besides, finding a fully furnished apartment in New York is easy.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know how long she’s staying there?” He frowned and fidgeted, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“She might hate living there. Or the job might not work out. She didn’t know for sure, you know?”
Jack nodded his understanding before squeezing his eyes shut as if he was in pain.
Melissa glanced at me before asking him, “Are you okay?”
He opened his eyes and stared at us both before saying, “Just fighting ghosts.”
Jack was coming undone, ready to lose it at any second. I was about to offer him an excuse to leave when he spoke up.
“I gotta get back to my hotel before they freak out and think I’ve gone AWOL.” He reached for his baseball cap before walking to the front door.
“How’d you get here anyway?” I asked.
“I had a driver for the night. But I made him sit in the passenger seat while I drove his car here. Once I hopped out, I told him he could leave. I think he was relieved,” Jack said before adding, “I also think he shit his pants.”
I laughed. “So you need me to drop you off?”
“Unless you want me to take your car back to the hotel. But you’ll have to pick it up first thing tomorrow so it doesn’t get towed,” he said, reminding me that his team was scheduled to head back to Arizona in the morning.
I glanced at Melissa before flashing my brother a smile. “Nope. I’ll take you.”
“Jack? Don’t forget that I’m here too. You can call me anytime, and I’ll help you if I can,” Melissa said, her expression sympathetic.
“I’m gonna hold you to that.” He tried to smile in return, but it was a pathetic attempt.
“Good. Because even though you’re a stupid jerk-face, you’re her stupid jerk-face, and you two belong together,” she whispered before wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him so hard, he made a face like he was dying.
“You’re killing me, Funsize,” he choked out, and she giggled.
When Meli
ssa released him, I tossed an arm around her shoulders and squeezed as I looked down at her beautiful blue eyes. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, looking up at me with an expression so soft and warm that it took my breath away.
I released her reluctantly, wondering if that look had always been there, or if it was only because of tonight. Or maybe I was just imagining things and there was no look at all.
Jack grabbed my keys from the table, tugged his Diamondbacks cap on his head, and waited for me to follow him out the door. We walked in silence toward the Mustang he’d bought for me, its tinted windows looking almost black in the darkness.
He tossed me the keys and waited at the passenger door to be let in. I clicked the key fob and two beeps filled the night air, and we both slid into the chilly leather seats.
The engine purred to life and I backed out of the parking space, my head racing with everything that had transpired this evening.
“What’s up with you and Meli?” he asked out of nowhere.
Recognizing Jack’s need to have the focus not be on him for two seconds, I grinned as I pulled out of the complex, refusing to look at him. “Nothing. Why?”
“Don’t lie to me.” He punched me playfully in the arm, causing me to yank the steering wheel, and the car swerved with a jerk.
“Hey! Don’t do that!” Scared half to death, I shot him a mean glare before turning my attention back to the road.
“Tell me,” he said, “what’s up with you two? I saw the way she was looking at you.”
I straightened up in the seat, thankful that I hadn’t been imagining something in her eyes earlier. I’d needed my brother for the last few months to help me navigate whatever the hell was going on between me and Melissa, but he’d had his own shit to worry about. Now that I had Jack’s undivided attention, I needed to take full advantage of that.
Glancing at him, I said, “What way? How was she looking at me?”
“You’re kidding, right? You don’t see the way she looks at you with her eyes all hot like she wants to eat you up? Are you really that clueless?”