The Game

Insight (Ben's POV)

I saw her, sitting in the bleachers.

She came after her practice with Gretchen.

I've never seen someone watch a game so intently like she did.

Every time I looked up at her she was fully engaged, never on her phone and was always cheering.

I could feel her eyes on me every time I threw a pitch, she was hypnotized by this sport. Natalie never was.

After the game she came up to me, I could see the pride in her eyes. The way they sparkled as she talked about the game was something I always wished Natalie had.

When Chase and Sam left, Cooper turned to me.

He put his hands on both my shoulders, "Finally found a girl that will watch a full game of baseball without getting distracted."

I laugh as I pull out my phone, I saw I got a text from Ava.

Sorry I missed the game, work kept me late. I totally will go to the next one.

I hear Cooper breathing over my shoulder, "You know a good way to tell if Ava is worth you time, invite her to the next game and see if she will actually watch it."

I rolled my eyes as I patted Cooper on the back and waved goodbye to Gretchen as she began to walk to Coopers car.

"Looks like your girlfriend is waiting, we can talk about this another time." I said as I gave him a push towards his car.

He laughed as he got in, "You know Ben, you're more stubborn than I thought."

~~~~

(TW)

I was looking over old photos of me and my dad, back when he came home every night after work and insisted we go outside and throw.

I smiled as I flipped through the photos, many of them were of us at my baseball tournaments. He'd work hard all week long to make sure he could have Saturday and Sunday off to watch me play.

There were some pictures of me and my mom too. They are mostly us at my baseball tournaments as well. My whole childhood was centered around baseball and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

He cared about me I know he did, my mother used to tell me the second I was born he was the happiest man in the world. He went out and bought tee ball equipment and had games on the television every minute of every day just so I would grow up familiar with the sport.

I guess what I never knew was how much my dad was hurting on the inside.

His job was becoming too much, he barely had time for life anymore.

After dealing with clients all day, he'd come come home and go in the basement more and more frequently.

My mom had just had Emma and that made my dad even more stressed out. He would argue with my mother about the craziest things, he was slowly going insane.

When Emma was two, he told me to get in the car. He told me that we were going shopping and of course I was 12 and I didn't think how weird it was that we were going shopping at 11 pm.

When we got in the car, he began to drive faster and faster. We were in a Mustang so I had no worry in the world as we were cruising down the road.

That's until I noticed we were heading straight into oncoming traffic, I reached up from the back seat and luckily was able to grab the wheel in time and swerve up back across the lane and into the ditch.

He was crying as we laid flipped over in the ditch, "I'm so sorry son, I didn't mean to do it. Believe me, I don't know what came over me."

I was quiet, I didn't know what to say.

My dad attempted suicide and he almost took me with him.