By Friday night it was clear, my dad did not have the balls to face me and Santiago was in JV. Essentially a bench warmer, by our team's standard. Winter Park Metropolitan High School didn't count on big sponsors or rich parents. However well it did in any sport or extracurricular activity solely depended on its students' level of involvement. We sometimes played well in tournaments, though we've never been seeded. There was one time we won the district championship in the '80s, and we came very close last year when we still had Seb. So our teams were not big; they didn't normally attract the big local prospects of beyond. We were not the boarding school next door.
We have nine varsity players and 15 bench warmers. Santiago ranked 11. Even with a shitty performance, he's at the top of the worst.
I frowned at the shrine his parents had in the living room for their eldest. Sebastian's smiling face was surrounded by flowers, statues of virgin Mary and his namesake saint and a small plate with a square of plantain sweet. It had been his favorite typical Venezuelan sweet growing up. The sad thing about it was that the picture's resolution was so good it almost felt like I was staring at the real deal, like his laughter would start ringing for real, he would step out of the frame and say he was back, that it had all been a really bad joke.
I wished it so hard that when the frame rattled I jumped back, only to find out that it was Domingo coming in through the front door. He gave me a quick hug before running to the kitchen where his wife and my parents were drinking wine. Mom's team sold a big project and they were in the mood for adult party. That was: booze, food and off to bed early. I smiled at Sebastian. He'd have given them so much shit for being so weak.
I folded my arms. I hadn't lied to Santiago. Seb did tell me on more than one occasion that he thought the real contender here was his little brother. I could confess in the quiet of my mind that each time I'd reacted with incredulity. Of course I'd always known what Santi's made of, but he just didn't have the ethics. Or the commitment. Or both. Each time I'd asked Seb if a fly ball had hit his head.
"I'm dead serious," he'd said this one time, tossing a ball up in the air and catching it in his glove. We were in his backyard, waiting for our dads to fire up the grill. "I'm good, we all know that." He shrugged. "But I have to put in a lot of effort in order to outshine him. If he ran half of the miles I run every morning, if he bothered to train half as hard as I do, he'd smoke me."
I had laughed. "No way."
Sebastian had smiled the exact same way as I now saw in his portrait. God damn it, he'd known all along that his brother had what it took.
And I'd discovered it too. Late, but hey, better than never.
I cracked my knuckles and marched upstairs to his room. The door was open and I barged in. He was on his bed playing video games, so entranced that he hadn't seemed to notice my entrance. Even though I was loud. On purpose. You just couldn't trust that a boy had his hands out of his pants when alone in his room.
"Ahem." He still didn't look up, so I had to get in the line of sight.
His brow darkened but he put the game on pause and tossed the control aside. "What now?"
My index finger did the air eights at him. "Lift up your shirt."
That made him a double take. "Excuse me?"
"Don't make me ask you twice. Just do it."
Reluctantly, as if he were expecting me to suddenly produce a sword from behind me and drive it through his body, he lifted his shirt. I could tell that he had developed some modesty all of a sudden. Maybe he'd discovered my ploy.
Seeing my ploy under the dim light coming from his TV almost made me balk, too. But the quick glance at school the other day hadn't been enough. I walked over, pushed him on his back and lifted his shirt just a tad further. It hid his face, which was fine. That way he couldn't see mine. I'm sure I looked like I was torn between admiration and salivation. His muscles contracted, casting shadows in the ridges between them. So much strength, so much discipline.
I dropped his t-shirt back and looked down at him. "You have abs."
His hands travelled down to pull the fabric back in position. Still on his back he opened that smartass mouth of his to say, "As far as I know, everybody does."
I waved that aside with a motion of my hand. "That's not what I mean and you know it. You have a six pack. Eight pack, whatever the hell you call all... that."
He sat back up and grabbed the control, but didn't press play. "Your point?"
"It's not easy to get such definition. It's discipline, eating right and exercising like a horse. You've been doing this all along." I paused. He wouldn't meet my eye but his shoulders shrunk. He knew I had him in the bag. "You've been putting the effort already. You have what it takes."
Santi rolled his eyes so far back that I saw a lot of white. He stood up then, I thought to try to intimidate me with his height, but instead he parked himself across the room. Arms folded and jaw tight, he said, "It's not the same as playing ball."
"How can it not be? You have to want abs to work for them. This is the same."
"Exactly!" He threw his hands up. "You have to want it. I don't want it."
"Bullshit."
"Do you want to know what my dream was?" He started pacing, talking as if I were no longer there. "I wanted to be Sebastian's agent. When he went to the pros, I was supposed to be the guy who made sure they didn't screw him over with a shitty salary. The guy who made sure he ate right, practiced right and eventually got chosen MVP in the World Series."
He stopped and faced me, straight on. Green eyes bore into mine and I felt a tingle run down my back.
"That dream is gone now," he said, so softly I barely heard it. "He's gone and now you're all pushing his dream onto me, loading all your expectations on me, as if I were him. But I'm not."
"I know you're not," I said. He licked his lips and looked away. "You're different. The night to his day."
He was afraid, lying to himself if he really thought that was Seb's path but not his.
"Come with me." I motioned him to follow me. When he didn't, I grabbed his hand and dragged him downstairs. My mom and Barbara were euphoric around the bottle of wine, talking about a sale event they were going to together tomorrow. Our dads were outside, drinking a beer and speaking in low murmurs. I dragged Santiago past them. There always was baseball gear in our backyards. I found a bat and tossed it at him; he grabbed it as if it were a part of his body, coming back home. I picked up a glove and ball and walked all the way to the back fence. It was a shorter distance than between a mound and a plate, but that helped to conceal my shitty pitching skills.
Santiago looked back at our dads. They offered him zero support. I hid a smile behind the glove.
"Ready?"
"What the hell for?" he asked.
I pitched a fastball. My version of it, which is fairly slow but usually meets the catcher's glove fairly well. He let it pass and there was no catcher, so the ball fell on the grass and rolled for a bit. My dad got up, picked up a glove a few paces away. He threw the ball at me and got in position.
"Are you in on this, too?" Santiago asked him.
My dad looked up at him from his crouch. "Let's say I'm curious."
"Ready?" I asked again, preparing for a full windup. And I threw the ball.
There was a loud clang. A beautiful sound. The ball swooshed up, and up. We all tracked it with our eyes until it disappeared into the night sky. We waited for the thud of it hitting a rooftop. Anything.
There was no sound.
I threw my glove hard on the grass, but it didn't satisfy me enough. I picked it up and threw it again. With more violence.
"U-Um-"
I didn't let him finish whatever he'd wanted to say. I marched to him, now with a full house audience. Our moms sipped from their cups as if watching a telenovela.
I shoved him hard. "Your body remembers. You may not know what you want right now, but it knows. It knows that you're not made to sit around and waste it away playing video games or with girls or whatever it is you're doing these days to stop you from thinking about baseball."
"Playing with girls, son?" his mom asked.
"No, mom. She's just talking funny." He gave me a look. "Right?"
My chin trembled. "No, I'm not! I'm not being funny or playing around. I'm serious, Santiago. You can't keep ignoring this."
"Are you crying?"
"I'm not!" I stomped my foot on the grass and that did it. Streams of water were coming down my face. This was so not what I intended.
I never would have thought any of this would happen. I was resigned to just seeing both of them move on to the big leagues and get me VIP season tickets to all of their games forever. The next sob was so ugly that I stopped breathing for precious seconds. I felt his hand behind my head, gently pull me to his chest. As I slobbered all over his shirt, I felt him shift slightly to tell our parents that we'd be inside in just a few minutes.
He just let me cry.
I hugged him tight, the same thought running through my head, over and over. I lost one, I wouldn't let the last one go. We'd been together nearly all our lives; we were supposed to stay together for the rest of them. It had been too short with Sebastian.
Santiago sighed into my hair. "Is this all because you want me to play?"
"Yes. No." I squeezed a fistful of his t-shirt in my hand. I looked up at him and hated that it made him smile a little bit. It meant I looked like shit. "I want you to play, but I want you to want to play."
He tucked his tongue against his cheek. "I didn't know Sebastian's biggest fan had room to care about another player."
I groaned. "Oh, stop it with the green eyed monster thing. I've always been both of your biggest fan. Don't you remember that game when we were pee wees and you hit a homer?"
He cringed. "How could I forget?"
"I lost my voice for days because I cheered for you so much."
"More like you screamed at me so hard." He then attempted to mock my voice with his grave one. "Santiago, bring it home!"
I wiped my face with his t-shirt because what the hell, it was already nasty. He groaned and I laughed a bit. "You left the freaking game instead of rounding home."
He pulled the fabric away from his skin, looking as if he'd puke. "Yeah, I was preoccupied."
"You were the best in that game. That pitcher had been what, three years older than us? And you smoked his best pitch out of the park. It was incredible."
"C'mon, our parents must be gossiping non-stop and I need to change."
I stopped him, grabbing his hand. I tried to channel my best inner Anthony by giving him some severe puppy eyes. It just made him frown as if he were presented with a puzzle. "So, will you play?"
He looked away. I noticed that our parents had been watching all along. They scrambled out of sight.
Santiago threw his head back with a sigh. "I guess."
Peyton: 1.
Santiago: a firm 0.
I jumped and threw my arms around him. This time we didn't fall.