Safe at First (The Boys of Baseball #3) - J. Sterling Page 0,2

this year?” my dad asked me from the driver’s seat. Of my own damn car.

“What?” I looked at him like he’d grown twelve heads when it was just more proof that my old man didn’t understand me at all.

“Baseball. Are you going to play? I mean, you didn’t get drafted, so what’s the point?”

He’s serious. He’s absolutely fucking dead serious, asking me this question right now.

“I have a scholarship to play baseball. I have one more season. I’m the starting first baseman. It’s not over yet. Of course I’m going to fucking play.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, Mackenzie. And watch your damn mouth when you speak to me,” he chastised, using my full name.

I cringed. He was the only person who ever called me that. Ever. No one, not even my teammates at Fullton, knew my real first name. I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of Arizona and out of my car.

“I’ve been gone all summer, playing. Why would I stop now? I just don’t understand the question,” I tried to explain in a calm tone, but I knew I sounded anything but.

Dick Davies lived to piss me off.

My dad had never been an athlete, so trying to get him to relate to my state of mind when it came to baseball was futile at best. He had no idea what it felt like to have this kind of passion burning you alive from the inside out. For better or worse, baseball gave me purpose. And in the blink of an eye, it could all be gone.

DD shifted in his seat and pulled at his tie. It was something he did whenever he was frustrated. And I was clearly frustrating him. “You’re just wasting time when you could be focusing on working for me and learning the ropes.”

Here we go again.

“You should have been spending your summers in the office, so you don’t have to start in the mailroom and work your way up the ladder.”

“I want to play baseball for as long as I can,” I said instead of picking a fight with him.

There was no use in saying all the things I’d already said a thousand times before. Dick Davies refused to listen to me anyway. He didn’t care what I wanted.

“Doesn’t look like that will be for much longer.” He looked me dead in the eyes without blinking. It was a challenge. He was baiting me. I’d tried to avoid the fight, but he wanted one.

My mom had stopped arguing with him years ago, and in return, DD had started picking battles with me instead. I’d accepted it at first because it meant that he would give my mom a break, but the dynamic had taken its toll. I thought DD liked it—the arguing. It made him feel powerful somehow. He used his words to wage war, to cut down his opponents and make them feel like nothing. He felt bigger that way.

Today, I refused to play. I knew he was just looking for an opportunity to remind me of all the ways in which his career was superior to my hobby. DD’s main point was always about how much money I’d be making if I gave up baseball already and came to work for him. As if money made a person happy. We both knew that it didn’t.

Money might buy you a bunch of nice and pretty shit, but that was the extent of its power. I should have thanked him for teaching me that lesson early on in life, but I didn’t. There was no point. And he never deserved my thanks anyway.

“Baseball’s been a fun hobby for you, but it’s time to get serious, Mackenzie.”

Cringing again at the sound of my full name, I suggested, “Maybe if you came to a game and actually watched me play, you’d understand why I love it so much.” I knew he’d never in a million years do it.

“You know I don’t have time for that,” he bit back, his tone a mixture of disgust and annoyance. “And even if I did, why would I watch you play something that’s done nothing but stop you from being the man you’re supposed to be?”

I held myself back from punching the fucking dashboard. I couldn’t remember the last time my dad had gone to one of my baseball games. I knew he’d watched me play when I was a little kid, but at some point, that’d all changed. Maybe it was once I’d started obsessing over playing