Mr. Baseball & Sunshine{Christian Yelich}

ONE

Today was the day. The day I get to surprise my little brother with tickets to a Brewers game on his own birthday. He was turning 16 on July 8th and the Brewers had a home game that day against the Braves. It seemed like a perfect gift for him since I know he loves the Brewers and especially just the game of baseball.

Kalen Pierce is my soon to be 16 year old brother. He's been living with me since he was 14 when he walked to my dorm room in the middle of the night because our parents had kicked him out of the house.

Our parents have never been the best. They never showed any type of affection towards us or anything like that. They were never physically abusive, but they did verbally tell us many times that we had ruined their lives and that they never wanted to have kids in the first place. It confused me because if they didn't want to have kids, they should've used protection but I guess they just weren't as smart for that.

It broke my heart when I found out what they did to my brother that night that he got kicked out. He told me that he got back from his baseball practice and he knew that something wasn't right. When he went up to his room, all his clothes were thrown on his bed and there were duffel bags set out for him. He was confused and went to ask our dad what they were doing in his room. They started arguing and it ended up with my parents saying some horrible things to him and kicked him out of the house.

Kalen has always been the type of guy to stand his ground and speak his mind at all times. I basically raised him his whole life and that's what I showed him. I taught him to be strong and express his emotions in a healthy way no matter who it was. He was never disrespectful when he did so, but we all know how parents are when their kids talk back. Always thinking it's disrespect when it's not.

I've tried my best since he came to me to help him make his dreams come true as best as I could. I got a small apartment with two bedrooms instead of living in my dorm because Kalen couldn't live with me in a dorm. He joined a summer league baseball team and has been doing amazing. 

I try to make ends meet by working as much as I can which means a lot of overtime and sometimes long weeks without days off. Kalen also got a little job helping out little kids play baseball during the weekends. He tries to give me some of the money he makes but I secretly put it in a box so that when he gets older I can give it back to him and he can do whatever he likes with it. 

Unfortunately, I had to drop out of college because of the debt. I didn't have enough money to pay for college for myself and also pay bills of my apartment, phone bills, groceries, and Kalen's summer league.

At the moment Kalen was at his baseball practice and I was waiting until he got home so that I could surprise him with the tickets. I spent the next hour cleaning the apartment until I heard the door open. 

"Ray, I'm home!" I heard Kalen's voice from the living room. 

I grabbed the tickets that were on top of my bed and hid them in my back pocket, walking out of my bedroom. "Hey, how was practice?" I asked as he put his bag on the ground. 

"It was pretty fun today actually. We just scrimmaged the whole time." He tells me and gives me a side hug. "I'm going to go shower."

"Okay, just don't take too long because I have a surprise for you." I told him and he looked at me weirdly. 

"What's the surprise?" He asked as he crossed his arms over his chest. "You know I hate surprises."

I chuckled and shook my head. "You're going to love this one, I promise. Go take a shower and I'll tell you when you're done."

Kalen sighed and said, "Fine, whatever." He started walking towards his room and said, "Hopefully the surprise is food because I'm hungry." 

"I'll make you something, just get your stinky butt in the shower." I laughed.