The Problem with Sports - M.E. Clayton Page 0,3

house, outside the basics of grocery shopping and whatnot. So, I understood where she was coming from. I did need to get out more.

“Deal,” I agreed.

“You’re lying,” she accused.

I was.

Chapter 2

Nathan~

There was more to life than sports.

There was family, friends, market shares, knitting, all kinds of other things. I’ve been retired from the MLB for only a few months, but you’d think, by now, I’d have gained a new hobby or something.

Right?

Don’t get me wrong here. The decision to retire was the right one. I wasn’t experiencing buyer’s remorse or anything like that, not at all. It’s just that baseball’s been a part of my life since I was eight-years-old. I really didn’t know anything else.

Growing up, my brothers, Gideon and Sayer, had no interest in sports as a career, so they’d been able to play a little of everything. And even as good at football as Sayer had been, he’d grown up to become a firefighter, and a damn good one. Gideon was a constructional engineer and was partners with our father in their business together. Sayer was the oldest at thirty-six, while Gideon was the middle child (and had the middle-child syndrome to prove it, too) at thirty-four, and I was the baby at thirty-three.

Me, however, I had fallen in love with baseball the first time my father had signed me up for Little Tykes Baseball when I’d been six. My uncoordinated legs had run me around that diamond when I’d hit my first home run (the other six-year-old who’d been in right field had been chasing a butterfly), and when I had tripped on my shoelaces and face planted into home plate, that had been it for me.

I had fallen in love with baseball.

From there, my life had become nothing but school (because, legally, I had to), my brothers (because they lived with me), and baseball.

Well, and girls. Girls had been sprinkled in there because…well, they were girls.

And while my parents, Robert and Louise Hayes, had planned for college for all their three children, landing a baseball scholarship to USC had certainly made things easier on them financially. And when I had made it to the pros, the first thing I’d done with my money was pay off their house and cars. I had wanted to do so much more with my money, but my parents weren’t flashy people. They had taken the blessings of no longer having a house payment and car payments and had called it a day.

And when I had attempted to buy Sayer and Gideon their homes, they had reminded me that they were men and could handle their own shit. At the time, I had tried not to take it personally, but I understood where they’d been coming from. I was their baby brother, and millionaire or not, they had wanted their successes to be their own.

So, since my family was self-sufficient, my money has been doing nothing but sitting in the bank, accumulating mad interest, and retirement at the age of thirty-three really hadn’t been a problem.

Except, I was finding myself bored a lot these days.

The first couple of months of retirement had been spent moving into the top penthouse of my condominium building. But since I had a dick, it hadn’t taken much to move in. I hadn’t decorated or anything fancy like that. Despite having been a professional athlete, I’d never fallen into the money trap. Even my car wasn’t anything upper-middle class American couldn’t afford.

After getting situation in my new home, I had spent the following weeks loving on my mother. Louise Hayes had spent her entire life being a wife, mother, and homemaker, and she had loved every second of it. So, when I had finally flown the nest, she hadn’t made a secret of how badly that had affected her. Unlike Sayer and Gideon, I was traveling all over the country, and conversation was limited during the season. And Mom played the guilt card like a professional. So, I had made sure to smother her with ten years of making up.

However, these days, she had Leta to smother, and so me, Gideon, and Sayer had a little more breathing room now. Leta was Sayer’s stepdaughter. Sayer had married the love of his life in April, and Monroe had come with a fifteen-year-old daughter, who was about to turn sixteen (maybe I could buy her a car), but also a douchebag ex-husband. Oh, according to Sayer, Thomas (Monroe’s ex) was doing a better job in the fatherhood