The mattress springs creak and pop as I lie back in bed, the moon illuminating only a square of my comforter. Exhaustion weighs down my limbs and aches in my lower back. There are painkillers in the medicine cabinet in our shared bathroom, but this has beaten me. I can’t even lug my body out of bed to get them. The past week has murdered my motivation.
The pocket of my coat buzzes and I stifle my groan and roll to one side, digging my phone out.
“Leave me alone, you beautiful monster!” I shout into the quiet of my bedroom.
But it’s not Ms. Blunt. It’s Amy.
Are you coming out tonight? Everyone is here!
The relief that I’ve avoided another message from Ms. Blunt lives only for the time it takes to read the text. I put my phone facedown on the bedside table. The constricted feeling in my chest doesn’t go away. The last thing I want to do is heave myself out of bed and go meet up with our friends. On a weeknight no less. I haven’t seen most of our friends since Mom’s funeral. Before that, really.
Once her health started going downhill, I was so focused on her I lost touch with everyone. Plus it’s hard to want to go out to a bar and get drunk with your friends when your mom is getting hooked up to IVs at home. Although Amy managed it somehow.
I shake off my animosity as I sink back into the mattress, on top of the covers. Amy and I dealt with things in our own ways.
My fingers ache to wrap my hands around the grip of my bat. The only exercise I’ve had lately is running around Boston: dropping off dry cleaning, picking up dry cleaning, delivering lunches, dinners, contracts, and groceries, detailing a Mercedes-Benz (though the perk is I get to drive it), booking doctor’s appointments, hair appointments, waxing appointments, buying specific and difficult-to-source office supplies (that I apparently am not allowed to source from the office supply closet), a bridal shower gift, and coffee. So, so much coffee.
When I’m not running around the city, I’m doing everything else. I can hear that desk phone ring in my sleep. The joints in my fingers ache from hitting the creaky, old keyboard. My eyes burn from the fluorescents that buzz above me late into the night.
My phone rattles over the stained, chipped wood. Please don’t be her.
“Why don’t you just quit?” I snarl at my empty room. I let myself fantasize about walking into her office tomorrow and telling her I’m done. But it doesn’t give me the satisfaction I hope for, just like every other time I’ve dreamed this particular impossible dream. Because then she wins. I’m not leaving Hill City until I show her the kind of man I am.
I got lucky the first time my phone went off. I know I won’t be so lucky this time. The phone’s vibrations sound more urgent. Like her anger at being ignored is translated in revs per minute. I roll onto my side, my hand a lead weight as I pick the phone off the table.
A new email.
I tap the icon and renewed pain shoots through my shoulders and neck. The sky outside got dark a long time ago, but it’s like Corrine Blunt never sleeps. Even after she leaves the office for the day, she sends me emails or texts into the night.
Subject Line: Softball Team
Mr. Chambers,
Every year Hill City participates in a softball tournament with the other companies in the building; this week I was invited to manage the team. You are required to participate. Please send Emily an email with your shirt size so that she may order you a company softball shirt.
I have volunteered you to be the team manager in my place.
Your duties will include things like:
I expect you to continue to juggle both these new duties and your regular workload. And don’t worry, no one expects you to play well.
Good night.
A smile creeps up the side of my face.
Softball.
I’m going to be paid to play ball.
I’m so excited I can almost ignore the condescension in the rest of the email.
“No one expects you to play well?” I laugh.
Nothing Ms. Blunt has had me do so far has been too hard or impossible. She’s just been running me, never giving me a chance to rest, to excel. My smile stretches my cheeks.
My chest swells. Baseball saved me when I was a kid and Mom got sick the first time. Coaching saved me in college when my dad wouldn’t pay the rest of our tuition like he promised and I needed to come up with the extra money. I’ll need a refresh of the rules and my softball pitching skills.
But baseball is about to save me again.
“I’m going to blow your mind, Ms. Blunt,” I say into my moonlit bedroom.