Page 3 of Really Truly Yours

Relief begins to sink into me as I grasp that perhaps I have not accomplished about the worst thing I could: creating a child whose daddy I could never be. Not the sort I want someday to be, anyway, the kind who is honorable, responsible, and…in love with his mother.

I feel like I’ve teetered, like I was this close to repeating the mistakes of my own father. Not the one who raised, loved, guided, and provided for me, either. I’m talking about the sperm donor, the one of whom I have only the vaguest memory of once calling Dad.

Right before he walked out of my life for good.

Nope, don’t want to be like that guy, but I sure as shooting flew too close to that particular flame last year.

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

In the space of one asked and answered question, hope is returning, hope that I have dodged that specific bullet and that my good behavior from here on out will indemnify me against the sort of consequences which have tormented my brain for a while now.

I motion for the lady, Sydnee, to have a seat. Belatedly, I stand, like the gentleman I was raised to be. By the look on her face, she’s stuck on the Atilla end of the spectrum. After a long moment and a quick glance around, probably finding safety in numbers, she pulls out the chair across from me.

It feels as if the hippo has simply moved his big old behind to the middle of the table. Yes, I put him there with my baby daddy question. She must think I’m a rat.

“Um…” Clasping my hands between my knees, I lean in. “Sorry about that. I thought maybe you were—”

“I know what you thought!” Well-deserved disgust drips from her tone, though I don’t see as much judgment in her eyes as I expect. She squirms awkwardly.

I’ve made this nice girl uncomfortable. No cheers from the crowd for today’s opening pitch. “I’m sorry.” Reflexively, I shrug my pitching arm, a dumb move since it hurts. “What can I say? I had a stupid stage.”

Her pretty face blanks.

Yeah, what is a stranger supposed to say to that? Suddenly, I can’t meet her eyes, and I stare at the writing hand-scrawled on my cup. Tuff. Sometimes, for the sake of anonymity, I use the ridiculous first name I was given at birth.

Speaking of, she is a stranger. How do I know she’s a nice person?

I limit my sigh to my mind. Because I do know. I’m not near-psychic like my brother, but when I’m not being a moron, I’m a decent reader of people.

I lean my arm onto the table. “So.” Smooth start, Smith.

One of her hands grabs the other on the tabletop and squeezes the life out of it.

Nervous much?

And I’ve been a huge help.

Enough self-flagellation. Something weird is up. I grab the bill of my baseball cap and mindlessly adjust it on my head. “What’s this all about…Sydnee?”

Sydnee

Sitting in a coffee house across the table from a jerk of a professional baseball player on this Monday morning in October is not where I expected to be this time last week.

A Monday or any other day, for that matter.

This is me we’re talking about. Little old, wrong-side-of-the-tracks-in-the-wrong-town me. No, Mineral Springs, or Miserable Springs, as some call it, isn’t great, but it is home, and in my tiny corner of it, I’m safe now. That means something.

I don’t know whether today should be considered an adventure or a worm hole I fell into because I wanted to help a neighbor who couldn’t help himself. This whole meet-a-stranger-who-happens-to-be-famous-no-less thing is far outside my comfort zone, which, to be exact, is my house.

I work a call center job from my kitchen table, and some days, from my saggy sofa. Two afternoons a week I keep the books for my brother in the closet-sized office of his automotive repair shop. When I take classes from the community college here in neighboring Chandor, I do so online.

The wide-shouldered man in his rival team’s ballcap couldn’t hide in the Grand Canyon, and the slumping, slouching posture I walked in on only made him more noticeable.

His wavy hair is wheat-colored and overly long, puffing out beneath his cap. His eyes are dark toffee, and his lips—

My stomach swirls. Grayson Smith, Houston’s star pitcher, is even more handsome than the pictures online suggest. I looked him up the very first night Donny told me about him. Six-foot-four, pitcher on his Houston-area high school’s state championship team. Athletic scholarship in college. Drafted by Houston after graduation. Successfully closed two championship games in Houston his first season on the team.

I am so out of my, um, league, here. A fish out of its shallow, safe pond.