One for the Record Books

Chapter Three

Bottom of the 4th

Being back on a college campus for the first time in over eighteen months was weird for Joanna, especially at a school that she wasn't familiar with. But Oklahoma was home, and the Griffins were just down the road, and she was finally doing all the things she loved with her guardian angels watching out for her from heaven.

Getting back into the grind of a regular baseball schedule brought Jo peace. Following her dad's death, it had taken her a couple months to pick up a bat again. Really what had made her do it was Blake. The letter he'd written her had come with all the things he'd had sent to the service, but she couldn't bring herself to read it. Guilt curled in her stomach every time she thought about her best friend, because she hadn't told him what was wrong when she should have.

The Miss Oklahoma pageant took place just before the start of her final season of eligibility. This time she didn't have to go it alone. Taylor's wife, Marieka, was a former beauty queen, and she loved pageants and photography and everything along those lines. She jumped on the chance to help her, and even shouldered some of the costs—which Jo tried to talk her out of. But with a bigger competition came a bigger spending, and if Jo wanted to do well like her mother she needed help.

Marieka tried to get her to cover up her tattoo that ran along her rib cage. The large, ornate dream catcher with her mother and father's initials and death dates in Roman numerals, and the bible verse her parents had taught her to live by when the goings got tough adorning the feathers. But Joanna refused, because that tattoo was a part of her now. It meant way too freaking much to her to cover up for some pageant. If the judges were going to crown her Miss Oklahoma, then they were going to crown all of her. Not just the parts they wanted to see.

The competition had been a lot harder than the local one Joanna had won last month, mainly because pretty much every single girl had a lot of experience and multiple coaches on their team that helped them make sure they knew what they were doing. The only place Jo seemed to have an upper hand in was talent and the interview portions, because she was a quick thinker on her feet and her talent came naturally, it wasn't forced or too...fake, like some of the other girls.

Becoming Miss Oklahoma was a huge accomplishment for someone who'd only been doing pageants for such a short period of time. But Joanna knew her strengths and played towards them when she competed. And now she had a handful of months before she needed to worry about competing in the Miss America pageant, and it allowed her to focus on baseball—her true passion—and her school work, where she was doing an internship with the football team's athletic training staff as well as obtaining a third major, because she'd completed her other two and she needed something to pass the time with.

Tommy and Gail drove down to Norman for every single home game, to be the parents that Jo no longer had. She never knew how to thank them with words, so she mainly just did what she could to make not only her parents in heaven proud of what she did on the diamond, but her parents in the stands too.

"Hey sweetie," Gail said after a particularly trying game. The older redhead welcomed Joanna into her warm, familiar embrace. "You were fantastic."

"Thanks, Momma," Jo said. "Did you enjoy the game?"

"It was nerve-wracking. Almost as good as you and Blake in little league," Tommy said. He offered a hug to her as well, which Jo accepted. "You think you can be pulled away from your studies long enough to go to dinner?"

"Don't you have a game to go to?"

The Clippers were in Oklahoma City to play the Thunder that night in a later game than usual. With the baseball game over and done with, there was nothing holding Tommy and Gail from packing back up the road to watch their son with his teammates.