The Long Slide Home by Kate McMurray

Author:Kate McMurray [McMurray, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

NATE COULDN’T help but think about old times as he went to bed the night after Carlos kissed him.

He thought about playing with Carlos’s action figures on the floor of the living room at Mama Lulu’s apartment. He thought about first days of school and summers playing baseball and starting college. He remembered their first season with the Rainbow League, a million practices and games, afternoons at Yankee Stadium, the winter Carlos more or less moved in with Nate because the heat in his apartment wouldn’t come on, and so many family parties. So many memories, so many small moments, cumulatively left a warm feeling in Nate’s belly and enough happiness to float on while he figured out what he really wanted to happen with Carlos now.

One memory stuck in his mind. It had been one of the greatest moments of Nate’s young life and, as he had been for all such moments, Carlos was there to witness it.

When they were twelve, Nate and Carlos’s Little League team made the World Series. They’d gotten a little bit of national media attention because everybody liked an underdog story. They were on a down-on-its-luck, poorly funded team from the Bronx. But they had the power of Nate’s stellar pitching and Carlos’s solid hitting, and they’d made quick work of the competition in the regional finals, including—as they found out years later—Mason’s team from the other side of the borough. So now here they were at the Little League World Series.

They didn’t win the Series, but they made it further than anyone had imagined they could, so the city decided to have a dinner in their honor when they returned home. And Don Mattingly had been a guest.

Nate had spent a good portion of the first ten minutes inside the hotel ballroom freaking right the hell out, because Mattingly, one of Nate’s favorite baseball players ever, was just standing around casually chatting with people in all his mustachioed glory.

“Are you going to be okay?” Carlos asked. “You look like you’re about to have a heart attack.”

“Carlos. He’s coming this way.”

It was true. Don Mattingly was on his way over. He shook hands with a few of the other kids, but then he stopped right in front of Nate.

“I heard you pitched a shut-out in Game 2,” Mattingly said.

Nate was paralyzed. He just stared, unable to speak. One of his heroes was standing right in front of him, and he could only open and close his mouth like a fish.

“He did pitch a shut-out,” Carlos said. “It was awesome.”

“That’s great. Hard to do. You thinking about the Majors, kid?”

Nate did the fish thing for another few seconds, but then he swallowed and managed to say, “Maybe,” even though it wasn’t true. He had no particular desire to play professionally. But if Don Mattingly thought he should, well, he supposed his future plans weren’t written in stone.

“It’s so great that a team from the Bronx did so well,” Mattingly went on. “Nate, right?”

“Yeah. Um. Thanks, Don Mattingly.

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