Page 10 of Rain Delay

“It’s become a storage unit since you moved out. Once I got the smell of sweat and sex out of it.” I shoved him lightly.

Liam hit my shoulder lightly in return. “I’d rather have it smell like sex than whatever patchouli bullshit you burn in your house.”

“It’s patchouli and lavender, thank you.” I corrected him. “My house isn’t a boy’s gym locker room where it has 50 different scents of Axe cologne wafting in the air.

“Sometimes I felt like it was a Tom Ford day, and sometimes I felt like it was a Nautica kind of day, don’t hate me.” Liam holds his hands up as he backs up away from me.

Maybe I wanted him back in my house over this new, potentially serial killer stranger.

At least he came with a warning label, but whoever was moving into my home tomorrow was a complete unknown. That thought alone made me uneasy.

Chapter 4

Wyatt

IT TAKES ME A GOOD FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to get to the ballpark this morning.

I was never late to the ballpark. The Type-A part of my brain had my days thoroughly planned out down to the minute. I knew what time I would be pulling into the parking lot at the stadium. What time I have my morning coffee, and what time I would be stretching.

Routine kept things simple and predictable.

In contrast to that, the last twenty-four hours felt like everything but routine.

I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel as traffic crawled at a pace that could drive someone insane.

The entire roommate situation had my brain running laps around itself.

After talking to my sister about the entire ordeal, I should’ve felt a little better about everything. I’ve done plenty of interviews, filmed tons of promotional videos, and did awkward photo shoots.

Do you notice where those happened? Outside my home.

It was starting to feel less like a marketing initiative and more like a hostage situation.

Maybe they didn’t want me to run CCAP on them. That’s just the Wisconsin in me talking, but I also didn’t want them to be some deranged serial killer. I didn’t even know if this person was from Wisconsin.

I was convinced it was a ploy to get me dead.

They’d be really fucking dumb to want to kill me.

I spent all of Spring Training perfecting my swing. I needed to make sure I took everything my hitting coach told me during private batting lessons. I was a perfectionist – One simple error, and I was beating myself up.

Baseball consumed my life. When life got in the way of anything, I always had baseball to turn to. It was something I had as a constant in my life for as long as I could remember.

The routine with baseball stayed the same. You showed up, you did your job, you won, and you went home.

I’ve waited too long for this season to start. Spring Training games only did so much when it came to getting that fix.

It was the feeling of hearing your name being called by your hometown announcer as you step to the plate. The sound of your walk-up song being played as the crowd erupted in cheers as you mentally prepare yourself to face whatever pitcher was on the mound.

For years, my walk-up song had always been “I Would Die 4 U” by Prince, but I think it was time for a change.

I decided to make it the epic guitar solo from Purple Rain. Hearing that as we did ‘dress rehearsals’ at home, brought full body chills.

Some of my earliest memories involved Prince blasting through speakers while my dad threw batting practice with me in the backyard.

Some are a sucker for a good Michael Jackson hit, some 90’s boy band type of beat, but I was a ride-or-die Prince fan through and through. His music has been the background track in a lot of great memories in my life. Purple Rain was a song I could listen to no matter what I was feeling, and I would be jamming it with the windows down.

I couldn’t wait to hear the entire riff rip in the stadium as I made my way to the plate. A smile pulled up at my lips as I thought about the music playing.