The Baseball Player

Chloe

I promised myself I'd wait. I'd wait for when I got home and was alone at ten o'clock tonight in my bedroom with my pillow. I didn't think it would be this hard. Turns out, I was wrong.

So utterly wrong.

I asked Mrs. Duncan if I could run to the restroom, but I didn't even reach the door before the first tear fell and I was wiping it away. Today it hit me. It hit me hard. Of course, I'd realized before this that they were gone. It's been seven years since they died, and if I was still in the delusional faze, I'd be seeing a shrink. No, today I realized they were not only miss me going to my senior prom, but they weren't going to see me walk down the aisle for graduation. And that aisle got me thinking of other aisles, like my wedding.

Stupid announcements, stupid prom tickets.

My parents died in a car crash exactly seven years from today. I promised myself not to break down in the middle of the day. Yet another lesson that promises are always broken.

Wiping my eyes as tears dripped down my face into the sink was not my idea of keeping my own promise. Of course, I didn't stay alone for long which I wasn't surprised about. He always seemed to know.

Daniel Jennings comes bursting into the bathroom, staring at my mascara streaked face in the mirror.

"You always come to talk to me." Are his first words as he takes a step toward me. It only takes that one step for me to turn around, take a step of my own, and hug him. I sob into his muscular batting arms, staining his plaid shirt.

I'm not going to get into it because of the level of complicatedness, but Daniel used to be my best friend. Until four years ago he was a perfect best friend. And then he said some things that I couldn't ever un-hear so I just stopped talking to him. I didn't need anymore heartbreak at the time. Less than a year later he caught me crying on my way into school in ninth grade. He touched my shoulder, knowing I wasn't talking to him. Ever since, to calm myself down, I talk to him the morning of my parents death anniversary. I didn't this morning because the past two years I felt I didn't need to. Talking to him one day a year always broke my streak of not talking to him.

Yet here he was, as he always is.

"How'd you know I was in here?" I ask through a sob. He wasn't in my English class, so he didn't see me leave from there.

"I was heading back from taking Jimmy to the clinic. He got hit in the face by a kickball, and I happen to see you wipe away a tear before you came in here." He answered. I turned my head to look up into his light blue eyes, being accented by his golden hair. His amazingly perfect chiseled jawline stands out besides his high cheekbones. Daniel is a lean guy except for his strong arm, which is beefier than Justin and Jacksons combined.

"So you just followed me into the girls bathroom? Stalker." I reply not taking my eyes off him.

"Awwww, yes. Justin says I have a bad habit of saving you." Daniel retorts with a cheeky grin. I barry my head back into his shoulder and he pulls me in tighter. "I know you're missing them."

Daniel's been doing this since I was eleven. He's gotten pretty good at it.

I nod and then dig through my memories of the two most wonderful parents. I settle on the one that always seems to make me the happiest. I know doctors and people say, you're not supposed to remember things before the age of three, but this happened when I was two.

My mom had me on her hip while dad had my younger brother Matthew on his. We were at my grandma's house, celebrating some family or holiday thing with my huge Italian family. My grandpa was still alive and he was talking with his eldest daughter, better known as my mother's sister. Anyway, my mother brought us farther into the backyard and sat me down on the blanket, while my dad went off to talk to someone or another. I clung to my mom and she kept saying things that made me laugh, though I can never quite remember what. Soon enough another mom and her baby were sitting down next to us. The baby immediately rolled out of his mom's lap and crawled over to me, grabbing my leg. He was a pudgy little two year old with blonde curls and huge shimmering blue eyes. I let out a wail and so did the new baby. My mom hugged me closer and whispered calming things into my ear. I can still feel her breathing the word Chloe on my neck.