Page 31 of Fair Ball

“I don’t have panic attacks.”

“Anxiety attack?”

“What’s the difference?”

She looks up at me like she wants to solve all my problems, but that’s not possible. Even if I were going to admit I had problems to solve, I wouldn’t want her to solve them. She has enough on her plate without all my bullshit. “I don’t know if they feel different to experience, but I know one is caused by anxiety and the other happens more suddenly. I’ve had anxiety attacks, and I can’t breathe or move. I get dizzy and nauseated. Sort of feels like I’m untethered from the world, while also like I’m glued in place.”

That’s exactly what it feels like.

“Does that sound familiar?” she asks, and I shake my head. She hums curiously. “Have you been stressed at all?”

I slant my gaze her way, and she laughs. “Why are you glowering at me?”

“Because I play professional baseball. It’s all stressful.”

“Is it?” She hangs on the railing and leans back, tilting her head up. It’s not sunny today, but she’s acting as if it is. As if she could will it to be.

Maybe she could.

I wish she would.

“Seems like it should be more fun than stressful.”

“It’s my job,” I say. “I get paid a lot of money to throw a ball, and if I don’t throw it how I’m supposed to, a lot of other people lose money. I could lose my career. I could make other people lose their careers.”

She turns to me. “It might be because I don’t understand professional sports, but it seems a little dramatic to put all that on you. You play for a team. There is an entire organization behind you.”

Yes, but I was raised not to fail. Not to embarrass my father. Not to fuck up his legacy.

“We’re building a kingdom,” he used to say. “Like it’s goddamn Camelot.”

I never understood the JFK reference, seeing as the Kennedys were in politics and we’re baseball players, but I suppose he wanted us to see that we—the Ashwoods—were greater than the sport itself.

Which is, I think, the whole fucking problem.

Because while my brother took everything away from me, I had to pretend like it never happened. I had to agree to save face. To save the legacy.

“I read that there are thirteen pitchers on an active roster,” Millie says, yanking me out of my memories. “You’re one of thirteen, Austin. You can’t tell me that the future of the entire team and organization⁠—”

“And city,” I interject, and she sends me a bland look.

“You can’t tell me all of that rests on your shoulders.”

“Feels like it sometimes.”

She huffs. “You need therapy. And I mean that literally. Not a joke.”

I turn to face her. “And you need to mind your business. I mean that literally. Not a joke.”

She steps into my space, and little Millie has some guts to stand toe-to-toe with me. “What are you mad at? That I called you out, or that you know I’m right?”

“You’re not right. I don’t need therapy.”

“Okay.” She shrugs. “So then, you’re mad I called you out, which means your delicate ego can’t handle it. If you don’t need therapy, then you shouldn’t be so defensive. Your big man feelings don’t need to be hurt.”

“My big man feelings aren’t hurt,” I mutter, pushing away from the railing to keep walking, and she jogs to catch up. But she doesn’t say anything else. Just lets me stew in her evaluation of me.

“What kind of name is Schuylkill anyway?” I eventually grumble, earning a laugh that heals something inside me.