For the Love of the Game

I awoke late the next morning feeling like absolute death. I had a horrid headache from a night of crying, and my shoulder was all but frozen up completely on me. I got dressed appropriately to go outside and work out some, my stress relief, and found on my way out that Nikki’s house was full of big business people from the record company. The band and all of the other people, most of whom I didn’t even know were sitting around Nikki’s dining room table, a mess of papers scattered out in front of each one of them. I didn’t even want to know what was going on in there so I quietly slipped outside and began my workout.

I had turned to working out for stress relief about two years ago after I realized that I pushed myself way further when I was stressed out than I did with just a normal routine workout. I pushed harder and faster with whatever I did and it had paid off along with my daily workouts. I had traded off some of what little bit of body fat I did have and gained the weight back in muscle.

“I got your ice pack in the freezer waiting on you. I have a feeling you’re going to actually want that thing tonight and not just because you have standing orders to use it.” Nikki said as he walked outside by the pool at some point later that evening.I was guessing by the fact that he was shirtless and in swimming trunks that the house full of people had gone. He dropped into the pool and swam over to the other side where I was fighting to do just 25 more push-ups. That would give me 600 on the day and a new personal record.

“Have you talked to any of your friends today?” He asked

“No.” I answered breathlessly. Five more pushups to go.

“Why not? Don’t you think you should be letting them know what’s going on and that you’re okay?”

I finished the last five and collapsed onto my towel, looking over at Nikki. I hadn’t seen him all day, but he had an almost happy look on his face which kind of threw me off a little bit. Something really awesome must have come up with the tour that was fixing to start.

“Why should I? I’m fixing to get thrown into some orphan home or with some family that doesn’t give a shit about me or my past life, so I’ll probably never see my friends again anyway.”

He frowned at me. “That’s not true, Collins. Your friends will always be there for you. You know they are worried about you. You left your phone in the kitchen last night and it has been vibrating constantly all day.”

“Good to know, I guess. I may call them back tonight. I’m just not ready for all of the questions. They will want to know what’s going on and what’s going to happen with me and how can I tell them if I don’t know myself?”

The faintest of smiles played at the corner of his mouth and I was getting so confused and pissed. How could he possibly be happy or excited about anything right now? I was trying to bite my tongue though, I didn’t want to say anything mean to anyone.

“Well, I know one thing that you can tell them. You can tell them that you will be flying into Dallas tonight and they can come and see you tomorrow and that after tomorrow if they want to see you, you guys will have to make arrangements either for them to come to LA or you to go to Dallas.”

I was so confused and zoned out. I just wanted to bang my head on the concrete and make all of this go away. I had no idea what the hell he had just said. “Nikki, it’s been a long two days. Can you speak English please? I have a killer headache.”

He pushed himself up out of the pool and sat beside me, the water flowing off of him getting my ass wet but I didn’t mind. It was a warm day out today. I was going to need a shower as soon as I went back inside anyway. And about ten Tylenol.

“Collins, your dad made us all four godfathers when you were born. Your mom hated us and hated the fact that four guys that looked like us were now officially responsible to take care of her baby if something ever happened to her and your dad. Not that that matters now anyway because she split the day you came home from the hospital. I promised your dad as me and him sat in your nursery surrounded by parenting books and trying to figure out how to change a diaper, that if anything ever happened to him, we would make sure you were taken of. I promised him that you would be our little princess too like you were his. Of course with our crazy lifestyle he didn’t really believe that at first, but as you grew up and we stayed in touch and wanted to know every inch you crawled and what you were pulling up on and when you took your first steps, he realized we were serious about what we had said. Time has never changed that agreement that we made, we just always hoped we never had to act on it. Unfortunately, we did. As soon as I got that phone call yesterday morning, I had my manager start making the necessary phone calls and get the necessary people here as soon as possible. They just walked out of my front door thirty minutes ago on their way back to Dallas. It’s going to be rough during this last tour and probably even after that, and we have a lot of things to figure out in a short time, but we will make this work.”

I think I was starting to catch on but I wasn’t sure I was understanding him correctly. “So, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that you aren’t going to an orphan home and you aren’t going to some family that doesn’t give a shit about your past life. You’ll be staying here with me, and if and when you get ready to consider it so, this will be your new home.”

So I had comprehended it all correctly and holy.shit. “Are you serious?!” I asked, wanting to smile and cry at the same time.

“Yeah! I mean, unless you don’t want that. Then we can go tomorrow while we are in Dallas and make other arrangements.” He voice fell as he said that, but he didn’t have to worry. That wasn’t an option at all.

“Hell no! I fucking love you, Nikki!”

I threw my arms around him as a tear or two rolled down my face. I honestly had not been expecting that one at all and I never would have even asked this of them. This was huge for Nikki and I didn’t even want to know what all was going through his head right now, taking in a hormonal teenager that had just lost her dad and he was fixing to leave on tour in a week of which I could only tag along for so long before having to return to school.

“I love you, too, Collins. We are going to get through this and make your dad proud of you, not that he already wasn’t. Kids like you are few and far between today.”

“I’m a teenager, Nikki. I’m going to try my best to not let you guys down, but you know it’s not always going to be like it is now.”

He shook his head as if saying well duh. “Collins I was a teenager too, once but I was already halfway gone by your age. We are going to argue at times, yes, but that’s only expected. And please, please know that I am in no way trying to replace your dad. I will set some rules for while I’m gone, but mainly, just don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want to have to answer to your dad for.”

“Hm…so you mean don’t do anything like this?”

His eyes got big as I wrapped my arms around his tattooed body and threw us both into the pool. I tried to stay under the water and swim away from him because I was sure there would be hell to pay when I came up for air, but my shoulder wasn’t letting me get much of anywhere right now.

“Okay, okay! I give! Technicalities! I can’t defend myself.” I shouted, after coming up finally. Nikki was ready and waiting to attack back, too.

“Uh huh. I’ll let you off easy this time, but I can promise you there will be hell to pay.”

I drug my tired body out of the pool and got cleaned up and changed into some comfortable clothes for the flight back to Dallas tonight. Tommy had decided to tag along while Vince and Mick stayed back to get things ready for the tour. I learned that the purpose of this trip home was to figure out what I wanted to do with all of my stuff and what used to be my house as Dad had left everything to me. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it really. Part of me wanted to keep it so I would have it to go back to if I ever wanted to, but I couldn’t keep it up being in LA with Nikki and he had too much going on already. The best thing to do was just get what I wanted and have someone sell the rest and put the money up for college. I hated this so much.

“So do you think you’re going to make it through this softball season?” Tommy asked, bringing me out of my thoughts as we sat on the quiet plane headed for Dallas.

I sighed. “I honestly don’t know. I’m no good anymore, Tommy. And I’m starting a new school, so chances are they won’t even need me. I’d be a benchwarmer.”

“Like hell you would. Did you know you were the number three ranked pitcher in the nation last season? Any high school would kill to have you pitch.”

“How the hell do you know that?” I asked, I didn’t even know that about me, not that I kept up with statistics or anything.

“Google is awesome.” He smiled.

“Well, good to know you google me. I apologize but I refuse to google you.” I threw a low blow at him by referring to some sex pictures that had gotten out of him and Pamela Anderson years ago.

“Hey! Not if you have the filter turned on though.”

“No, in all seriousness, I’m not sure I could last another season. But we will see what happens.”

We landed in Dallas late that night and decided to get a hotel room for the night. I told Nikki that I would pay him back some day but I wasn’t sure if I could stay in my house again or not. He and Tommy both admitted that they had been thinking the same but weren’t going to say anything to me.

I laid down as soon as we got to the hotel, the after effects of what turned out to be my 6 hour workout earlier today, catching up with me. Like the awesome big brother that Tommy was, he spent about thirty minutes massaging my sore back and shoulder which put me into a deep, uneasy sleep. I had a long rough day ahead of me tomorrow. Picking up your life and starting over again was no easy task, but it had to be done.