The Life We Made

Chapter 9

Because Taylor's plan was "so crazy it might just work", we were at Citi Field on a Wednesday afternoon for a game against the Marlins. It was only the first full week of regular season and because school was still in session, I didn't foresee this being a packed game.

Somehow, and I don't want to know how because they were expensive seats, Taylor had gotten us tickets behind the Mets' dugout. I was a little freaked out by that because this felt stalker-ish. But with a friend like Taylor, what did I expect?

We got to the field in time for the gates to open so that we could be there for batting practice.

As we got through the gates, we were faced with a wall of people. I was honestly surprised by how many people showed up.

"Let's go to the team store!" Victoria said. She wanted to buy a sweatshirt to wear today. She had gone to a couple stores earlier in the week but couldn't find one she wanted to spend the money on.

As for me, I wasn't buying any Mets apparel. I had a royal blue and white striped baseball tee that had smaller gray and white striped sleeves and an orange neck. I decided to wear that under my vest since it was still quite chilly out. The sun provided some warmth, but April weather wasn't always the nicest.

We got to the shop and there were a ton of people in there milling around and buying Mets attire. "I think I'm going to stay out here," I said. I didn't want to go in there and fight through the crowd of people.

"I'll stay with you," Logan offered. "I don't want to get in that mess."

We stood outside the door and waited, talking about how crazy we were. And did we actually think this would work? But we were doing it anyway. No turning back now.

They came out after about half an hour, a bag full of stuff.

"Did you guys buy the whole store?" I asked incredulously.

"We bought some things," Taylor said.

"We can see that," Logan said.

Because it was a 1:10 pm game, we hadn't eaten lunch before we came. We went to the concession stand and each got something different. I had decided on nachos, a hot dog, and and a Sprite since I was sans caffeine.

Once we all got our food, we walked to find our seats, hands full. They weren't too hard to find as we knew we were behind the home team dugout on the first base line.

The view from these seats really were great; we were 4 rows up closest to home plate. I decided that if this plan was going to work, these seats were the best they could possibly be.

Batting practice was still taking place and lots of little kids who weren't yet in school (I assumed) were gathering a little further down the line to meet players and get autographs.

I spotted him almost immediately. He was in the outfield throwing the ball back and forth with a teammate. I watched as he threw the ball with ease and it suddenly made more sense to me why he was so fit and muscular. I hadn't thought about it until I actually saw him again.

We ate our food as the team continued on. We sat there carrying on conversation to pass time as the stadium became more crowded.

After about 20 minutes, the team started wrapping up and heading toward the dugout. I watched for Ty and when I spotted him, I held my breath. I think it was just me being wishful, but I could've sworn I saw him look up at me before he dipped down into the dugout.

"Did he just look at you?" Victoria asked.

"I don't know," I answered honestly. There were a lot of people around and he could've been looking somewhere else.