There was no later. We’d have to leave New York in just a few short days.
I dialed her phone and paced the floor as I waited for her to pick up.
“Hey, babe,” she said, her voice a soothing balm on my shattered nerves.
“Kitten, what time will you be home tonight?” I tried to hide the urgency in my tone, but failed.
“Why?” she asked sharply, immediately on high alert. “Are you okay? I can leave right now if you need me to.”
“Yes. I need you to,” I admitted.
“Is everything okay? Are you okay?” she asked, the worry in her tone heartbreaking.
I tugged at my hair as I paced. “I’m fine, I promise. I just need you to come home.”
“Okay. I’ll be right there.”
I paced a f**king hole in the floor the fifteen minutes it took Cassie to walk through our door. The second she did, I practically sprinted to her and pulled her into my arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“What’s going on? Jack, you’re scaring me,” she confessed, her face draining of color.
“I’m getting traded,” I blurted out.
Any of the remaining pink in her cheeks instantly vanished. “W-where?”
“They asked me if I had a preference and I said yes, but I won’t know until the trade goes through.”
“Where?” she asked again, her tone more demanding this time.
“Either Anaheim or Toronto.”
“Okay. Okay.” Her eyes lost focus for a second, then the rapid-fire questions began. “So then what? We have to move, right? And get rid of this place. Do you help me move? Of course you don’t. How does this work?” She paused, the wheels in her head clicking and turning clear as day, then realization set in. “I have to quit my job. Oh my God. I love my job.”
I wanted to fix it. Fix every single thing for her. Tell her she never had to quit anything for me. Or move for me. Or change her life in any possible way for me, but I’d die without her. I needed this girl the way plants needed oxygen. So I could tell her all of those things, but I’d be lying through my teeth. And she’d know it.
Cassie looked at me, her green eyes bright with tears. “How does this work? Tell me what this means.”
The look on her face broke my heart. I pulled her toward the couch and onto my lap, then wrapped my arms around her. I’d tell her anything she wanted to hear, but first I needed to feel her close to me. I needed to be touching her while I did it.
I pressed my head against her rib cage. “I have to leave the night the trade goes through. Whenever that is and wherever we are. The game will end and they’ll hand me a plane ticket.”
“What if you’re on the road?” she asked, playing with the strands of my hair.
“Then I leave from there. I don’t get to come home and see you or pack or anything like that. If we’re on a road trip, I leave straight from the road to meet up with the other team, wherever they are.”
“That’s harsh,” she said and I laughed.
“It is kinda harsh.”
She sucked in a deep breath. “And you don’t get any time off, right? I mean, you guys only get forty-eight hours when your wives have babies, so you wouldn’t get time off for this.”
“No, I don’t get any time off. But that doesn’t mean you have to do all this alone. You can talk to your boss, and make a plan. You don’t have to come with me right away. If we wait until the off-season, I can help you pack and we can move together.”
Cassie thought for a moment, then said, “Jack, look at me,” her voice soft and comforting as I glanced up. “I’m not going to stay here without you. You get traded, I get traded. We’re a team, remember?”
Hugging her tight, I spoke against her hair. “I just don’t want you to feel like you’re all alone in this. I completely understand if you want to wait until I can help. And if you need time to transition from your job to our new home, take all the time you need.” And I meant every word. It would f**king kill me to be without her, but she had a life here too. It was only fair she left it on her own terms.
She sniffed, then snuggled in closer to me. “I don’t want you to worry about me. I can handle moving and everything else that goes with it. You just worry about getting on that new team and showing the Mets that they screwed up by letting you go. I can’t believe they’re trading you!”
“Thank you, Kitten. I can’t believe it either. Good thing I still have this necklace. I think I’m gonna need it.” I pulled the key from under my shirt and stroked the letters stamped on it before letting it fall against my chest.
“It’s yours. Until you don’t need it anymore,” she said with a smile as she reached her hand out to touch it. “I feel betrayed by the team, in a way. Why do I feel like that? Do you feel like that?”
What I did feel was f**king stupid for having hurt feelings over this. What was I, a twelve-year-old? No, I was a man and grown men weren’t supposed to get butt-hurt over shit like this.
But truth be told, I was hurt. And I hated to admit it, but I vowed to never lie to my wife again and I took that seriously. “I don’t know that I feel betrayed as much as I feel let down. Like, I guess I stupidly thought they’d fight for me. Just because my pitching isn’t up to par right now, that they would know it would be back eventually. I feel like they quit on me. And it hurts because I’d never quit on them. They’re my team and I always give a hundred and ten percent when I’m on that mound. It hurts knowing it’s not a two-way street. Is that stupid?”