Mrs. Decker stood in the hallway with that warm, open look I’d seen so often on her son. I didn’t know I’d been about to cry until I felt the tears on my face.
“Oh, sweetheart. Come here.” She didn’t wait for me to come to her; she came to me, her arms winding around me securely. She patted my back and stayed quiet, letting me get out the tears and emotions I’d been holding inside for weeks. Finally, she gave me another squeeze before leaning back so she could look at my face. “Long distance relationships aren’t popular for a reason. They hurt like hell.”
Soren had told his family about us a few weeks ago. The not-just-roommates us. I hadn’t seen any of them since the time I visited for dinner, but Mrs. Decker had the kind of spirit a person could go years without seeing and feel right at home with when they reunited.
“I miss him,” I said, wiping my eyes as I took a few breaths to calm myself down.
“And he misses you.” She brushed the back of her hand across my cheek. “You miss each other so much because you care about each other so much. That’s a good thing. I know it doesn’t feel good all the time—times like these—but believe me, that’s a rare feeling to have for another human being. A rare one for them to feel in return.”
I took the tissue she pulled from her purse to wipe my nose. I was a sobbing, snotty mess. “Yeah?”
“Trust my fifty-plus years of life experience.” She nodded. “Absolutely.”
“It feels like we’re having a long-distance relationship living in the same, small apartment.” I glanced over my shoulder, teeth sinking into my lip when I noticed he’d washed and folded a pile of my laundry while I’d been gone. “Right when life brought us together, fate’s trying to keep us apart. Like it’s trying to tell us something.” My hand rubbed my arm as I shifted in place. There were probably better people to have this conversation with than the mother of the man I cared about, but she was right here, and I felt as though I needed to get all of this off my chest right now.
Her hand went beneath my chin, tipping it up. She had a soft smile on her face. “The only thing it’s telling you is that you’re going to have to fight for what you want. That you’ve got something special to fight for.” Her light eyes—the same shade as Soren’s—shone and made me miss him more. “Soren, he’s a good guy, the best kind. He’ll love you forever, no matter what happens. He fell in love with you—he’ll stay in love with you. He won’t let the distance come between you two. It’s up to you if you’ll let it.”
A small weight rolled off of me. The distance was daunting, but it wasn’t the only obstacle we faced. It wasn’t the one I feared most. My abandonment and trust issues ran deep. They felt woven into my character. I wished I didn’t have them, I wished I could wish them away, but that didn’t change the reality of their effect on me.
Soren hadn’t left me. But why was he always gone?
He hadn’t abandoned me either. But why did I feel so alone?
“I recognize that brooding look. I’ve seen the same one on my son’s face a lot lately.” Mrs. Decker’s arm linked through mine before she steered me out of the apartment. “You know where I take him when he’s missing you so badly it looks like he’s about to lose his mind?”
My head shook as I locked the door.
“His favorite bakery. It’s amazing what a little conversation and a lot of peanut butter pie can do to brighten even the darkest of moods.”
Finally. I was about to see him. Not through the filter of a FaceTime app either. I was about to hear his voice—not through the speaker of a phone. I was about to touch him—have him touch back—instead of imagining what it felt like.
The fall handbag campaign we’d shot in the French countryside had wrapped up a few days earlier than expected, which never happened. My flight had arrived on time too, which also never happened.
It was almost like fate had decided to stop fighting dirty and give us a hand.
I hadn’t bothered to pack a bag this time. Instead, I’d rushed to the airport, found the first flight to New York I could get on, and smiled the whole flight home. That smile deepened when I arrived at the baseball stadium.
Soren had home games this weekend, and I was going to them all. I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight until I had to board the plane back to Paris on Monday. I’d been racking up some serious frequent flyer points over the past couple of months. The client flew me back and forth as needed, but they didn’t view “as needed” as every or every other weekend to see my boyfriend back in the States.
So most flights I shelled out my own cash for, but other than sending money back home and stowing some away for a rainy day, it was the best money I spent.
It was a warm day, and the stands were pretty full for a community college baseball game. I guessed it had a lot to do with Soren’s team setting some new records and there being talk about the team’s starting catcher getting serious attention from pro scouts.
Soren didn’t like to talk about it too much—he said he didn’t want to jinx it and claimed baseball players were superstitious for a reason—but I bragged about him to anyone who would listen. He was going to do it. His dream. He was going to achieve it.
At the same time I was thrilled for him, I couldn’t ignore the nervousness I felt when I thought about what that meant. Soren would be done with school this spring. From there, he’d either be moving on to a four-year degree or getting signed by a major league team. He might not have talked about it in detail, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know what was coming.
Where would he go? Would he go? What would it mean for us?
Those were questions we were both happy to ignore, preferring instead to live in the moment. The future was too damn uncertain.
It took me a while of scanning the home side benches to find a space I could squeeze into. He didn’t know I was coming, and I couldn’t wait to surprise him. After excusing and squeezing myself into the free square of bench a few rows behind the dugout, I surveyed the scoreboard. The Devils were up a few runs, and it was the seventh inning stretch. Which explained why no one was out on the field, though a handful of players tossed a ball back and forth in front of the dugout.
I didn’t see him at first—he was warming up with one of the team’s pitchers down the right field line. My chest ached once I did see him. My lungs hurt from realizing all of those miles that had kept us apart all came down to these last few yards.
He had on his catcher’s mitt, crouching low as he focused on each pitch coming in. The smack of the ball as it hit his mitt. The whoosh it made as he sent it flying back. The intent look on his face under his mask, the curl of his hair around the brim of his cap, the muscles working beneath the snug uniform. I had to catch myself from leaping over the fence and running to him right then.