Thou Shalt Not(46)

That wasn’t entirely true, but it worked.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “I am really sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” I smiled. “Those sorts of the things happen. Nothing you can do about it.”

“A few years ago, Marco hurt his elbow,” she said, between sips of her wine. “Everyone was worried it would require Tommy John surgery.”

Vaguely, I remembered reading that. Tommy John surgery is basically the worst thing that could happen to a pitcher, minus their arm flying off in the middle of a game. It usually meant they were out a year at the very least, and few pitchers every returned to pre-injury form.

“That would have been worse than blowing an ACL, for sure,” I said.

“It was the only time I have ever really seen him worry about something. He was a different person for a week or so.”

“Different, how?”

“He was just...I don’t know. Scared, mostly. He is a talker, and he can be pretty macho and aggressive. But when he got the news he might need surgery, he was quiet, melancholy for a few weeks. Like he was contemplating losing it all.”

“That’s understandable,” I said.

“He was actually pleasant to be around.”

She paused, and for a moment I think she went back to that period of time.

I knew that as a collegiate athlete I was incredibly competitive, driven by the sport I had played for so many years of my life. I knew the kind of funk I had gone into during my injury, and I could only imagine it magnifying once you had reached the professional level. It would be terrifying to think you might not ever be able to play at the same level again in the way you always had. Part of me wished for her sake that maybe he would have had the surgery, stayed “pleasant.” But, I knew if someone like him had been forced to have the surgery, he would have become bitter and angry and an even more gigantic asshole.

“Anyway,” she said, shaking her head like she was trying to shake whatever she was thinking away.

“Anyway,” I said back.

It was time to ask her. I wanted to know her story.

Terry Who Belonged at Cracker Barrel brought us our food. I had to admit, April’s dish looked better than mine, but I had eaten mine before and knew I would be happy. Plus, I would never admit that someone had out-ordered me.

“This is delicious,” she said in between her first few bites. “Good call, Harper.”

I hadn’t been called “Harper” since baseball. Part of me thought that she must know that.

“I’m glad you like it,” I said. “I used to come to this place more often. But it’s not exactly a dine alone kind of restaurant, you know?”

“What’s the matter? No hot dates lately?”

I laughed and continued eating, hoping it was more of a rhetorical question. It was either that or “Actually I took a girl out to dinner last night. We have pretty hot sex. It’s great.”

“So, what’s your story?” I asked, pausing between bites. The food had a way of filling you quickly and I was trying to pace myself. “How did Mrs. Batista come to be...Mrs. Batista? There’s quite the age difference there.”

“You don’t say?” she smirked. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“A cradle robber. I’ve done the math.”

“Oh, you have, have you?” she asked, her eyes peering up at me over her glass of wine. The light seemed to be dancing around her eyes, like there was fire inside them.

“I am not a stalker, I promise.”

“Thank God. I was going to ask if you were.”

Such a smart-ass.

“So, answer my question, Batista. What’s your story?”

She put her fork down and sighed sarcastically, like my line of questioning was bothering her. But, she smiled, and I knew it wasn’t.

“What all would you like to know?”

“Anything. Where you are from. How many siblings you have. How you met and married someone so much older than you. The usual.”

“Well, my father is basically an asshole. He moved down to Miami from Charleston after he divorced his first wife. He just left her and the kids, and went south. He’s a lawyer, so he joined a firm down there and started fooling around with one of the receptionists. This receptionist was young and newly married. And my father got her pregnant. With me.”

Wow. I was hoping my face wasn’t betraying the fact that this story was already taking me by surprise. I have a pretty good poker face, so hopefully it looked to her like I heard this kind of story every day.

“So, my mother came clean to her husband of eight months, and he left her. Almost immediately. My father wasn’t planning on getting married again, or at least not that soon. But, he knew that word would spread that he was the cause of her divorce and pregnancy. So, he swooped in like a caring father figure and married her. Everyone at the office thought my mother had gotten pregnant by her husband, and that he had cheated on her and left after finding out she was pregnant. That’s the story my parents spread around the office anyway. Whether anyone believed them or not I don’t know. They got married, my father became the hero, and I was born a few months later.”