2. Tommy

The Cougars were my last chance at redemption.

All of my poor decisions as a young kid who got access to a massive amount of money, alcohol, and women for the first time in his life had finally caught up to me, almost effectively ending my professional baseball career. I wasn't proud of any of those decisions. I was the epitome of young, dumb, and stupid. By the time I finally realized what road I was going down, it was too late for my career with San Diego. They cut me, wanting to put distance between themselves and the reputation I had made for myself. The moment that the general manager walked up to me to tell me to pack my bags and leave the clubhouse, it was like I had come back up to the surface, finally able to breathe again. From then on, I promised myself I would stick to the path that younger me would have been proud of taking. I was lucky that I was even starting my eighth season in the league. I hadn't gone to college. I joined the draft right out of high school and didn't have a degree to fall back on. I needed to focus on baseball and proving that I still deserved to be taken seriously.

But life seemed to be tempting me once again.

I watched Maggie Redford hurry back down the tunnel, her camera bag clutched tightly to her chest. She didn't glance back at us. Her steps were hurried, and if I didn't know any better, I would have guessed she was trying to put as much distance between herself and us as she could. My eyes followed her until she disappeared farther into the stadium. It wasn't until she was long gone and I was in the locker room that I realized my chest had grown tighter, as if she had wrapped a string around my rib cage and pulled.

The second I saw her at practice this morning, I was instantly intrigued. I had watched between swings the way her eyes roamed the field, looking for the next angle. She walked around the field like there was nowhere else she was more comfortable being. When she smiled at her coworker, I was like a magnet, completely drawn to her.

It had been over a year since my last relationship. At the time, I had thought it would be the relationship that would make me a monogamous man. But instead, I had my heart eviscerated. During the year after San Diego had let me go and the Cougars had signed me to a contract, I had been completely celibate. I hadn't wanted to risk potentially losing my career again to women that weren't worth my time. When I looked at Maggie, my brain had to remind other parts of my body that I had sworn off women.

Her smile had me rethinking all of my rules.

Maggie was unlike any woman I had ever seen. She was an explosion of energy. Everything about her felt like it was turned all the way up—forcing you to notice her—but what I found even more interesting was that she didn't seem to know that about herself. The moment I stood over her, offering her a hand after her close call with the foul ball, it was like she had morphed into a scared animal, unsure of what to do or where to go. The confident girl with the dissecting eyes was gone.

Her light brown hair was wild and big, curling out in every direction. When she smiled, it was like she was grinning with her whole body. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, and her smile seemed to take up half her face. When she looked up at me from her spot on the field, cradling her camera, I struggled to remember to breathe. Her eyes were like bright emeralds, the kind that gem investors would pay millions for. She was all soft curves and feminine lines. Basically, the complete opposite of any other woman I had ever dated before.

Back in California, it felt like I had a different model on my arm every weekend. I was used to the type of girls that picked at their salads when I took them out to dinner and cared about the labels they and their dates wore. At the time, it had felt like a symptom of a glamorous lifestyle, like something that came with the turf. But when my own habits had taken a turn for the worse, it felt like none of the people I had surrounded myself with cared if I ended up dead on the side of the road. All they cared about were how many likes they got on their latest photos on social media and if they were wearing something more expensive than the person next to them.

When the wool had finally been removed from my eyes, I realized I needed to turn my life in a completely different direction. I had worked my entire life to be where I was now, and if I continued dating and spending time with the people I had been, all of that hard work would be for nothing.

"Oh no, man." Jamil pulled me back into the present. "No chance."

"What?" I asked as we continued toward the player parking lot, thoughts of Maggie still hanging around the corners of my mind.

I had been nervous when I first arrived at Renaissance Field. I was expecting the entire team to hate me from my previous history. But luckily, Jamil and Adam had taken me under their wing, and as soon as the team realized that they had accepted me, the rest fell into line. I was immensely thankful to them for that and for their friendship. They were the type of guys that I should have surrounded myself with earlier in my career, rather than the guys that used their name and image for a flashy lifestyle.

"I saw the way you just looked at Maggie Redford," Jamil continued. "I'm sorry to tell you that you have absolutely no chance with that woman. She's locked up tighter than Fort Knox."

"There's nothing to worry about. Women are not my priority right now."

Jamil slung an arm around my shoulder and pulled me in closer. "I hear you, man. We may actually have a real shot at the playoffs this year. Especially since Adam over here has been throwing lasers this off-season."

Adam rolled his eyes at Jamil's comment but flashed me a smile. He had quickly become one of my favorite people on the team for his laid-back personality and dad-like tendencies. He was the first person to introduce himself to me at an early team event. It was like he had adopted me as his son. Adam was getting toward the end of his career and typically avoided any antics that happened among our teammates, sticking to the role of mentor.

"Keep your mind focused on the season and you'll be fine," he told me.

"Are you going to go out with us?" Jamil asked as we all stopped in the middle of the parking lot.

"I don't know." I rubbed the back of my neck, my hands messing with the longer strands of hair. "I've got to be careful with being seen out like that. I'm on a short leash with the Cougars, and I don't have an agent to bail me out anymore."

"You're still going to rock without an agent?" Jamil's eyes widened.

"I can't bring myself to get another one after what happened before," I told him.

"Well, if you change your mind and want to do something, the family and I are having a movie night tonight. I can shoot you our address if you decide you want to stay in." Adam started to back away toward his extended SUV made specifically for hauling around multiple little monsters.

"Thanks, man," I called after him.

"We're not going to do anything crazy, I promise. It's the only night during the season I will actually go out." Jamil started walking toward his car. "I better see you there!"

I shook my head at him as I watched him hop into his sports car. He rolled his window down before he pulled out of the parking lot and pointed at me. "I'm serious!"

"Send me the address," I called after him. He'd better be telling the truth that they weren't going to do anything crazy. The second bottle service started or women with little-to-no clothing came near, I was gone.

My car was one of the last ones in the parking lot, and as I started to make my way toward it, ready to go home and take a long shower, my phone went off. I dug it out of my pocket, expecting it to be Jamil sending me the address to the club tonight, but I saw something else that I wished I hadn't seen.

Dad: Make sure you work on your hands drifting at practice. We can't have you keep missing the inside half of the plate. The Cougars will bench you faster than San Diego did.

My jaw clenched as I read the text. I didn't bother responding. I locked the screen and tossed the phone on the passenger seat next to me. My dad had started sending me text messages about my hitting form after San Diego dropped me. It was his way of showing his disapproval for the decisions I had made that led to my dismissal from the team. All of the work that I had done in the off-season to still be desirable enough for a team to pick me up after everything that had happened with San Diego didn't seem to matter to my dad. The only thing he could focus on was the fact that I had let alcohol and women distract me from our previous shared goal.

When those texts started, all I could think about was when I was a kid and how excited I would be to dissect my practices with him when I got home. After every game in high school, the two of us would chat over dinner about different at bats or plays I made in the field. It never felt overbearing then. At that time, we both had a shared vision for my future success. When my professional baseball career was almost lost, it seemed like my dad didn't know what to do with me or how to talk to me. It was as if we only had baseball as a commonality. My camaraderie with him felt almost like a phantom limb, the pain always there, reminding me of something that I had lost. I was beginning to wonder if professional baseball wasn't our shared dream anymore, but only his.

Even with how I felt, there was still a massive part of me that wanted this season to end well, to give my dad something to be proud of again. If I didn't, I was worried I'd always be a failure in his eyes, and the thought of that made my chest tight, like a million pounds of pressure had been put on top of me.

My mind flashed back to Maggie and her brilliant emerald eyes. If there wasn't so much weighing on this season for me, she would have been the type of girl that I would have wanted to get to know. The type of girl that I probably needed. But right now, she was a risk I couldn't afford. A distraction that I didn't want.

However, I knew as much as the next guy that if I focused solely on this season for the entirety of it, I would be burned out before the All-Star break. That was the very reason why I saved the address that Jamil sent me into my favorites. An under-control night out would give my brain something else to think about besides every swing I took at practice today. My phone buzzed in the seat next to me again, and I saw my dad's name flash across the screen on my dash, notifying me that he had sent another text. I backed out of the parking lot, leaving the phone facedown next to me.