Off the Bat

The cabin smelled like coffee and recycled air, the way every flight did, but there was something oddly comforting about it. I had settled into the window seat with my carry-on shoved under the seat in front of me and my phone already pulled out, ready to ignore everyone around me for the next three hours. The seat beside me was empty. The one across the aisle too. For one hopeful moment, I let myself believe the row might stay that way.

It didn't.

I heard him before I saw him. The soft thud of a duffel bag hitting the overhead bin, the scrape of the compartment door closing. Then he folded himself into the middle seat, and my chest tightened as his shoulder brushed mine in the cramped space. I kept my eyes on the window.

A burgundy hoodie. Black sweatpants. A navy baseball cap pulled low, the brim worn soft at the edges from too many hands adjusting it. He had headphones looped around his neck and a phone in his hand, and he was looking straight ahead with the practiced blankness of someone who was very good at not being noticed.

I noticed anyway.

Dark brown hair curling out from under the back of the cap. A scatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose. Strong jaw, straight posture, the kind of broad shoulders honed by thousands of swings and daily infield drills. His hands rested in his lap — large, steady, and certain.

Mason Callahan. Nashville Rivermen shortstop. Two-time Gold Glove winner. The reason I had renewed my season ticket package three years running despite what it did to my bank account.

I turned back to the window and pressed my lips together.

Play it cool, Ava. You are a grown adult. Act like one.

I lasted approximately forty-five seconds before he glanced over and caught me not looking at him. Which somehow felt worse than if he had caught me staring. His eyes dropped to my chest briefly, and I realized with a slow flush of warmth that I was wearing my Rivermen sweatshirt. The navy one with the logo on the left side. I had grabbed it off the back of my desk chair that morning without thinking twice.

He let out a quiet breath through his nose. Almost a laugh.

Then he leaned slightly toward me and said, very low, "Please don't say anything."

I blinked. "I wasn't going to."

He studied me for a second, like he was deciding whether to believe me. Then something in his expression relaxed, just slightly, and he settled back into his seat. "Okay," he said. "Good."

We sat in silence while the rest of the plane boarded around us. A woman with a stroller folded it at the door. A man in a business suit shoved a bag into the overhead with more force than necessary. The flight attendant walked the aisle doing a final check. Mason scrolled through his phone without really reading it, and I did the same with mine, and the two of us were very politely pretending the other didn't exist.

Then he looked at my sweatshirt again.

"Big fan," he asked.

I turned my head. "Sorry?"

He nodded at the logo. "Are you a big fan? Do you come to the stadium much?"

I should have been surprised that he was talking to me. I was, a little. But something about his tone was so matter-of-fact that it didn't feel like a strange question at all. It felt like a continuation of a conversation that had already been going on.

"Forty-two games last year," I said. "My bank account is still recovering."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "Home games only?"

"Mostly. I drove to Louisville twice." I paused. "And Memphis once, which I will never do again because I got stuck in construction on I-40 for two hours and missed the first three innings."

He turned toward me a little more, and the cap shifted with him, and I got a better look at his face. He had unfairly long lashes. That was something the cameras never quite captured. "There was a walk-off last July. Bottom of the ninth, two outs. Ball came off the bat and I knew before it cleared the fence. I looked to the dug-out to celebrate and there was this one person already standing." He tilted his head slightly. "Before anyone else in the whole stadium."

I remembered that game. I remembered it the way I remembered all of them, which was completely and in order. July fourteenth. The crack of the bat had told me everything before my brain caught up with my body, and I had been on my feet while the ball was still climbing.

"That was you," he said quietly. It wasn't really a question either.

"I knew off the bat," I said. "That ball wasn't coming back."

He looked at me for a moment, and something shifted in his expression. The careful, measured blankness he had worn since sitting down softened into something more genuine. "Yeah," he said. "It wasn't."

The plane finished boarding and the door sealed shut with that familiar pressurized click. The engine hum deepened beneath us. I watched the ground crew moving outside the window, the yellow vests bright against the gray tarmac, and tried to remind myself to breathe normally.

"Have we met before? Other than that July" he said.

I turned back, nodding and reaching for my phone. I found the selfie - me squinting slightly in the sun with a Rivermen hat and Mason smiling next to me looking handsome as ever.

"Fan day," I said, showing him the screen. "Two years ago."

He took the phone from my hand, his fingers brushing mine, and looked at the photo for a longer moment than I expected. A small smile tugged at his mouth as he stared at his own younger, slightly less tired face.

"I'm trying very hard to play it cool right now, for the record," I admitted, letting out a nervous little laugh.

He laughed at that. A real one, low and quiet, the kind that came without warning. "You're doing fine," he said.

The flight attendant's voice came over the PA, walking through the safety demonstration with the routine calm of someone who had done it several thousand times. Mason reached up and adjusted the air vent above him, and I watched his sleeve fall back and reveal the edge of a faded bruise along his forearm, the kind that came from diving catches on infield dirt. He didn't seem to notice me noticing.

"So forty-two games," he said, once the announcement had finished. "You keep score? Or just watch?"

"Both," I said. "I keep a scorebook." I hesitated, then added, "My dad taught me. We grew up on the farm outside Nashville, and he used to say that if you couldn't read the game, you were just watching men run in circles."

Mason rested his elbow on the armrest between us. "He's not wrong."

"He's usually not." I looked down at my hands, then back up. "He's the reason I know when a shift is coming before the defense even sets it. And why I can tell a changeup from a slider by the way a pitcher's shoulder drops. He taught me everything he knows."

He was quiet for a second, watching me. "You actually know the game," he said.

"I grew up in it." I shrugged, but I was smiling. "The Rivermen have been in my family like a religion. We didn't really have a choice."

He smiled too, and this time it reached his eyes. He pulled the cap off his head and set it on his knee, running a hand through his hair before putting it back on. Without the brim shadowing his face, he looked younger, and somehow even more like himself.

"I'm Mason," he said, and held out his hand.

I shook it. His grip was firm and warm, and he held on for just a beat longer than a standard handshake. "I know who you are," I said.

"I know you do." There was humor in it. "But it seemed like the right thing to do."

"Ava," I said. "Ava Donley."

"Ava." He said it once, like he was trying it out. Then he settled back into his seat with the relaxed ease of someone who had make a decision. "Nice to meet you, Ava."

Outside the window, Nashville was disappearing behind us as the plane climbed and banked southwest. I watched the city shrink below the clouds and thought that for all my careful planning about this trip, I had not planned for any of this even a little bit.

I found that I didn't mind at all.