Married To Baseball

@JJYelich.13

Jailyn~

Aimlessly scrolling through my phone, I pay no attention to the Zoom meeting I'm supposed to be a part of—something about some director's meeting for Adidas. My interest was lost after the commentary on my line wrapped up. There were no real expectations for me to contribute anything meaningful for the time being, making it easy to tune out. 

Scrolling through Instagram, I can't help but smile, seeing different edits of my highlights on my explore page. God, five years ago, I was watching Christians like this when they came through, and now people have them for me? There's still a couple mixed in for Christian, the algorithm knowing that I tend to watch them, but there are twice as many made for me that I can see. That's crazy. 

Double tapping my way through a handful of them, I check in on my DM's, knowing that I haven't gone through them in a while. Mixed in with the DM's of posts and stories that people have tagged me in are random messages from fans, most of which say nothing immediately important. Liking a handful of the messages and then deleting them, I get to one that stands out more than the others. 

"Olivia.Taylor63: Odds are you never see this, but I figure what's it hurt to try? I've been a fan ever since your debut back in 2020, and I was just hoping to maybe get some clarity on things that my boyfriend, Nick Kelley, has claimed." Unable to help myself, I suck in a breath just reading his name, furrowing my eyebrows before reading her second message. "We've been dating for about five months now, and from the day we met, he would almost brag about having dated you. He's already had a tendency to lie about dumb little things like that but has shown me like one picture of the two of you together. I was just curious if there was any truth to his claim, let alone any truth to what he said about how your relationship was. Just from being a fan of yours, I can't imagine his side of the story is the truth, but I don't even know anymore. If you see this, can you help me figure some things out?" 

My heart has been pounding in my chest since reading his name. As removed from the trauma he put me through as I am, it doesn't change the anxiety I've never been able to escape. Looking back at my laptop screen, I take a moment to interrupt the meeting, "I'm sorry," I say, cutting off one of the heads of the design team, "Is it okay if I leave this meeting? Something's come up that I need to deal with, and I think I've contributed where I can." 

"Of course," The promotional director says, "Thank you for taking the time to join in today, Jailyn. I'm sure we'll be seeing you in the office in the near future." 

"Probably," I say, forcing a chuckle, knowing I've got a couple of things set up already. "Thanks!" I say before finally exiting the meeting and shutting my laptop. How do I even respond? It's been seven years since we broke up. It's not exactly a relationship I've wanted to be lingering on since it ended, let alone since I found Christian. 

Taking a breath, I look back at the message again and see that it was only sent yesterday. Time could be important here, especially if her relationship with him is anything like mine had been. There's also the issue of how much access he may have to her accounts. Pursing my lips to the side, I start typing. 

"Hey, yes, Nick and I dated for about six months back in 2017. I don't know if you've got a second account or an account that he doesn't have access to, but for both of us, I'd rather you message my personal account, @JJYelich.13, off that. I can answer any questions you've got for me, and I want to make sure that it's the safest way I can think of for both of us." That feels okay. Re-reading the response, I nod to myself before hitting send. It gives her a little extra protection and ensures her messages don't get lost in my DM's now that people know I'm lurking. 

Letting a heavy breath out of my nose, I rest the back of my fingers on my lips, not sure what else to do from here. It's not like I can just tell her to leave him; it's been seven years, I have no clue what he's like anymore. While I don't believe he'd have changed, you never know. One would hope that he'd have grown and learned from the shit he put me and others through, but the patterns do say otherwise.