home run

mostly truths

She stepped away from their jeers at her ringtone and answered it quickly.

"Hello?" Anthony's voice came so softly through the phone that she had to turn up her call volume.

"Hey, kid." She smiled, unable to help herself. She hadn't texted him after he got eliminated in the first round since she figured his family would do the job she had tasked for herself. Sometimes he needed to be distracted and cheered up— it was perfectly normal.

"How was your night?" He asked, always considerate when he spoke to her at the end of the day.

"Anthony, honestly," She huffed, "Tell me everything about it!!"

She heard his put upon sigh and giggled. Leigh knew that he was trying to downplay his career to make her feel less inadequate but she didn't have the heart to explain to him that that wasn't the problem. She needed him to know that his career was every bit as important to her as it was to him.

"Okay, I have to whisper though, everyone's asleep." He explained and she figured they were sharing a hotel suite— his mother, father, brother, and sister-in-law. She was jealous of them as he began telling her everything from their arrival to now, his voice calm and soothing to her.

Leigh looked over her shoulder and saw that the group was still there. During a pause in his story, she waved to them and started walking alone back to the apartment.

"My parents can't wait to meet you." He said conversationally but Leigh choked on her spit. They had only been going out for two weeks! Parents!?

"Really?" She managed to get out, hoping her panic wasn't as evident in her voice as it felt in her chest.

"Yeah. I promise they aren't scary."

"It's just— they're very important to you. I don't want to mess this up so early." She reasoned, her mind filled with all the worst-case scenarios.

"Leigh, they're going to love you." Anthony replied, his voice a little harder and she was unsure if he was trying to convince her or himself.

"I'm going to screw this up." She lamented, finally reaching the apartment and sitting down on the concrete stoop outside.

"Leigh," She cringed at how serious his voice had become, "It's not an immediate concern, okay? You won't screw it up anyway. People love you."

She took a couple gulps of the sulfur-tinged Chicago night air and calmed herself down. If she could get a 3.9 GPA, she could meet his family. Eventually. Leigh couldn't fathom why he thinks that people love her though- she was awkward at best, rude at worst. She reasoned that she would cross that bridge when she came to it.

He must have heard her relax a bit because he followed it closely with, "Kris and Addison, on the other hand..."

Leigh groaned, but accepted her fate and the invitation to Fowler's cook out as Anthony's plus one a week from Thursday.

———

Leigh woke up with the sun and was at CSN for her very last day. As expected— no job was offered to her. However, there was a cake in the break room with a picture of Leigh frosted onto it. It was from her first day there and was snapped by another intern a whole year ago. She had two carriers of coffee in her hands and a to-go bag of gourmet donuts in her mouth. The days of her as a coffee-jockey were luckily brief.

David Kaplan followed her on twitter as a goodbye gift and everyone in the studio at some point told her goodbye or patted her on the shoulder. She would really miss interning at CSN, everyone was friendly and even North Side/South Side rivalries were respectful and fun. It was a great atmosphere but Leigh knew it wasn't like this in most studios and she didn't mourn the changing of her major for more than one reason.