I was quiet. It was a lot of information to process. Rowan knew me well enough to let me sit there and figure it out. I shifted my weight in the chair and stretched my right leg out, feeling an ache in my lower back. Apparently having passionate sex in the back seat of a truck wasn’t that great for ex-athletes who’d taken one too many shots to the kidneys.

I kept turning one question around and around in my mind but wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. “Would you take a commentator gig if it was offered to you now?”

“No,” he said.

The uncharacteristic certainty in his voice had me straightening up in the chair.

“I get the impulse,” he continued. “And I’ll be a baseball fan till the day I die. But my team owners made it clear the only thing that mattered was wins. Our bodies, our health, none of that registered for them. I know that was true for you too.”

I stared down at my swollen knuckles. “You’re not wrong.”

“This job at the rec center has plenty of its own bullshit, like all jobs. But when I show up to work, the priority is people. Our neighbors. No one’s making money off whether my arm’s having a good day or a bad day. It’s about looking out for each other. Like what you and Tabitha are doing with the vacant lot.”

Rowan had a point, and it was a smart one. If I sat with the truth that had been bothering me since that first call, I’d pick up the phone and tell Harry to fuck right off. The confidence I’d felt with Tabitha last night hadn’t come from tugging on a pair of boxing gloves. It’d come from moving my body for joy and pleasure, without the burden of overanalyzing everything.

Maybe I didn’t have to be Dean the Machine anymore. Or have a comeback I didn’t want. Around Tabitha, I was starting to feel like myself again.

I just had to figure out how to hold on to that feeling when she packed up her bags and left.

24. Tabitha

Twenty-Four

Tabitha

I had an extremely adorable niece in my lap, demanding to watch a movie about me.

“About me?” I asked Juliet, my chin on top of her head. “Or a movie that I’ve made? I do have that one I made with all the rescue puppies in St. Louis.”

“About you,” she said.

I tilted my head to look at her, then gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I don’t make movies about myself, sweetheart. I make them about other people. For other people.”

“Show her the one you posted today,” Alexis said. “The one for the pocket park.”

By her wiggles alone, it seemed like my niece was highly amenable to that idea.