Page 35 of Fair Ball

When I’d stretch my paycheck as far as it could go and have absolutely nothing left. Of my money or my sanity.

But Austin has given me both back.

“What are you thinking about that has you smiling?” Mom asks next to me, and I’m dragged back into the reality of a little league game. It takes a moment for me to orient myself out of the memory of the way Austin’s eyes tracked the length of my body last night, his pupils expanding.

I don’t have particularly good style. I can’t stand the feel of stiff material and mostly wear cotton everything. I don’t use a lot of makeup because I don’t like the way it feels on my skin, and most scents bother me. I am not particularly feminine—in the strictest sense of the word—but I don’t think I’ve ever felt more womanly than in the Thunder jersey and mesh shorts last night.

Because the way Austin licked his lips made me think of when I saw him shirtless and wanted to test the musculature of his pectorals with my teeth.

He looked wolfish.

Hungry.

I tug my jacket tighter around me now when I shiver, glancing over at my mother to answer her question. What am I thinking about? “Nothing.”

She arches her brow at my lie.

“Are you okay? Do you need anything? Another blanket? Water?” I lift up the reusable bottle I filled before we left home, but she shakes her head. Still, I tuck the blanket tighter around her in the wheelchair.

My mom becomes easily winded, so we use the wheelchair when we’re out. She was resistant at first, but she can do a lot more with it. She can participate in more activities, like little league games or the occasional stroll on a nice day.

“Have you talked to Austin today?” she asks, and I nod. We talk every day, and normally, I drop him off a coffee in the morning. But since we had to be in the car at eight a.m., he didn’t have his cold brew as usual. I asked him if he wanted me to have it delivered to him, but he said no, that he’d figure it out on his own.

Probably with that coffeemaker he hid in the back of his cabinet next to the stove behind the frying pans.

“He texted me this morning to remind me to film Noah and to wish him good luck.”

“That’s sweet.”

I plop my chin in my hands with a sigh. “Yeah.”

Mom laughs. “Does that make you upset? That he’s sweet?”

“He’s supposed to be mean. He has a bad reputation.”

She hums knowingly. In that way all moms do. Like she has already seen inside my brain. “Would make it easier not to like him, huh? To draw the line between boss and assistant.”

“I’m barely an assistant. I think he made the whole thing up.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Poor financial decisions.”

Mom snorts. She’s who I get it from. “You think he’s paying you just because?”

“Yeah.” I clap when one of Noah’s teammates has a hit. “He feels bad for me. I told you how he wouldn’t stop asking why I was crying at the clinic. Maybe he has some kink for crying women.”

“Millie, don’t say that.”

“What? Kink?”

“Yes.” She darts her eyes around, nervous. When I told my mother I was pregnant, I calculated a 27% chance that she’d send me to a convent like they did in the 1950s. Instead, she cried and eventually said it was a blessing. She also told me in no uncertain terms that I would be keeping the baby, and she would help me raise it. Partially because she and Dad had such a hard time conceiving me, and partially because of the Catholic guilt.

Even now, she mumbles a “Mary, Mother of God” with her eyes closed.

What differentiated me from my peers—aside from everything I am—was that my parents were forty when they had me. They were old compared to all the other kids’ parents. And that my aunt Marie, Mom’s sister, was a nun and teacher at my elementary school.

So…