Bud catches up with me after saying something quickly to Cole. Together, we make our way behind the concession stand.

“This is great of you, Palmer,” he says. “Thank you for helping us out. This year has been pure chaos.”

“It’s fine. I’ll, um . . .”

I pause at the doorway, presumably to let Bud go in first. In reality, I stop because it hits me that I’m the team mom and Cole is the coach. That means I’ll be collaborating with him.

Oh shit.

Even if my brain rebels against the idea, my body does not. It hums with appreciation and forces my mind to visualize situations that have no business being anywhere near a baseball field.

“See the mess?” Bud sweeps his arm around the compact building filled with baseball gear. “If you could just get it in some semblance of order—so the coaches can find the baseballs and bases, things like that—it would be so helpful.”

“Oh, sure. I can try.”

Bud smiles. “I owe you one.” He starts to leave. “I have to get back to the sporting-goods store for a bit. We got a shipment in today, and I haven’t even started to go through it. I’ll come back and lock up in a couple of hours.”

I look around at the mayhem around me. “Sure.”

The shed creaks as Bud steps off the step, and I’m left alone.

There’s no good place to start, so I grab all the errant baseballs that I can find and load them into empty buckets. Then I set them in the back corner until I can formulate a better plan.

My hands are dusty and white with chalk as I peer into bags, relocate bases, and try to figure out what to do with catcher’s gear that was probably bought before I was born.

“This organization needs a fundraiser or something,” I say, taking in the state of the equipment.

I need to pull things off the shelves and start to make sense of them, but a massive pitching machine is in the way. I try to push it to one side, to no avail. Then I grab the back and try to drag it deeper into the shed, but that doesn’t work either. So I heave a breath and grab it from two sturdy pieces of metal in the front and push.

Nothing.

I rock it from side to side, wondering if it’s stuck to the wooden floor.

It’s not.

“Just move,” I groan, grabbing the metal brackets again.

I squat, feeling my butt cheeks stretch the fabric of my yoga pants, and lean back on my heels. Then I pull with every muscle fiber in my body.

I pull until my face feels like it’s going to burst. I give the machine another jiggle, hoping it will break free. But the only thing that breaks free is me.