Page 58 of Clutch Endgame

“Thank you.” She whispers taking the water and tentatively sipping it. She looks nervous, and I’m not sure why.

“Drink. Let me go get you something, what do you need? Aspirin? Is it a headache? You don’t feel like you have a fever.” I stand trying to remember which bathroom has the over the counter meds for headaches or sickness.

“I don’t need anything, Gun. I’m fine. Sit down,” she asks and holds out her hand. “There’s something that I need to talk to you about.”

Immediately, my brain is cataloging the events that have recently occurred. Nothing is coming to mind that would be negative and then I’m freaking out at the unknown.

What the hell could have happened since I saw her this morning leaving the house? She seemed to be fine at the game, chatting it up with Melmen’s wife and then I would have figured that she would have mentioned something in either a phone call or a text that something was wrong otherwise. So, I’m clueless, drawing a blank and panicking for the worse.

“Calm down, Gun.” She says calmly. “I need you to go into the kitchen and look on the fridge.”

Confused. I do as she ask. On the fridge is a Post It Note.

Walk over to the counter for your next note.

I do as the note asks, getting more confused as to why I’m on a scavenger hunt and what the hell this has to do with her looking like she was about to throw up all over the place.

The next note says to turn around and I do. There is another note on the handle of the stove.

Open me!!!

I open the stove and peer inside to see a hamburger bun sitting on the rack. I reach in and pull it out.

What the fuck is this? I look down at the bun in my hand and then back to the stove. Why is there a bun in the stove? What is the meaning of this?

I open the bun and see a small photo and now everything makes sense.

Sawyer put a bun in the oven, because it’s her way of telling me that I put a bun in her oven.

Holy shit!

I take a closer look at the black and white photo, and then I look at Sawyer - who is no longer sitting down on the couch in the other room, but standing on the other side of the kitchen with a soft smile on her face.

“We’re? You’re” This means?”

“We’re having a baby, Gun.”

EPILOGUE #2

Gunnar

December

I BROKE the television in the delivery room and Sawyer is pissed off at me. Luckily, she was smart and pre-packed her tablet with our spare laptop. The hospital had Wi-Fi so we pulled up Netflix, so we passed the time with watching movies until our son decided that it was finally time to grace us with his presence.

Half-way through pushing our boy out, Sawyer had decided that she had enough and told the doctor that she should have a C-Section instead. The doctor told her one more push and then ten pushes later, Sawyer was yelling at the doctor that she was a liar and out came our son.

As our boy was placed on Sawyer’s chest for some skin to skin, Sawyer looked down at our son and then up at me with a drunken gaze. She then looked at the doctor who was then stitching her up and apologizing for shitting on the table.

The doctor assured her that it happens every time and winked in my direction.

I stood beside the two single most important people in my life and never felt more complete. I looked down at my wife - who wrangled me into a walk in chapel when she was four month pregnant in Vegas - and my son in total admiration. She cooked this kid, in her own oven for months. Her body will then feed him for months, and we will raise him, hopefully to be a stellar ball player.

How is this my life?

How did I get so lucky to have met Sawyer in that stupid contest on a random chance? How did I convince her to give me another shot after the drama that originally happened with us with the Hornets previous PR person?

And how the hell did I get so lucky to get her to agree to be my wife?

I have experienced both success and failures in life and in the game of baseball. I have done well under pressure when it matters and the same can be said for Sawyer. But if today’s experience of watching my wife give birth means anything, is that having a baby is the biggest and most important moment, thus far in my life, and no ball game will ever compare.