Angels Walking (3 page)

“This isn’t the end, Tyler.” The medic’s hand felt warm. “It’s the beginning.”

Tyler shook his head. Angry tears filled his eyes.
Of course it’s the end.
The name on the medic’s uniform caught his attention. A name he’d never heard before.

Beck.

Figures. Brand-new medic. What would he know?
“My . . . shoulder!” The pain was killing him. Sweat dripped down his forehead and he could feel his body shaking, going into shock. Tyler lifted his eyes to the stadium lights. A strange darkness shrouded them and then gradually, everything else began to fade.

Sami would never want him now. She would blame him for making the wrong choices all those years ago.
I’m sorry, Sami. I still love you. If you only knew how much.
Two more medics with a stretcher rushed toward him, and the rest of the team gathered at a distance, silent, shocked. Tyler had one final thought before he blacked out.

He wasn’t perfect.

And after tonight he never would be.

2

T
HERE WERE TWO THINGS
Sami Dawson loved most about her job as an assistant for the prestigious Finkel and Schmidt Marketing Firm in Santa Monica, California: the independence it gave her from her grandparents, and her office’s breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean.

She had another hour of work before she would meet up with Arnie for dinner at Trastevere on Third Street—their Monday night routine. Three years dating and their traditions were pretty well locked in. After dinner they would walk along the Promenade, and after an hour he would drive her home. Sometimes they would play Scrabble or watch
The Office
at her apartment. Arnie had bought her the complete DVD series two birthdays ago. Other nights they tuned in to whatever was on TV—baseball and
I Love Lucy
reruns being the exceptions. Sami didn’t like baseball and Arnie couldn’t stand Lucy. Too much silliness.

Arnie left Sami’s apartment by nine—weekday or not.
Every time. They were early risers, both of them. Routines were rungs on the ladder to success. Her grandparents had taught her that. Arnie agreed.

“No one ever got ahead by keeping late nights,” he would say. He was right. Studies showed sleep was good for the immune system—eight hours a night.

Sami’s immune system was rock solid.

Her current work account was the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas and Dubai. Paradise Island’s think tank was located in Pensacola, with business offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Sami had worked three months to get last year’s
Fifteen Minutes
winner Zoey Davis to sing at the Bahamas resort. Zoey had straightened up her act in recent months and agreed to the gig last night. Today Sami expected to see news of the decision online somewhere.

Proof that Sami was doing her job.

Before she could search People.com, something on her Google feed caught her eye. A name from the past. It caught her off guard and made her heart skip a beat. Sami read the headline again and sat back in her chair. Her heart beat faster than before.

Tyler Ames Suffers Season-Ending Injury.

She leaned in closer to the screen, seeing him again, the freckle-faced boy with blue eyes who had captured her heart the summer before her senior year in high school. She saw him where she would always see him: on a pitcher’s mound, ball in his glove, hat low over his pretty eyes.

Baseball was everything to Tyler. He had traded her for the game, after all.

She read the headline again. Her heart was breaking for
him even before she clicked the link. A new page opened and there he was. The boy from another lifetime. A smaller headline gave her more details.

One-Time Pitching Sensation Was Almost Perfect.

Almost perfect.

Sami let the sad words play through her mind. She could still hear him saying good-bye the night before he set off to play for the Reds’ rookie league.
I’ll make it, Sami. I will. Then I’ll come find you and we can talk about forever
.

Her eyes found the beginning of the article.

Midway through what would’ve been his first perfect game since being drafted six years ago, one-time pitching sensation Tyler Ames suffered a season-ending injury Saturday night early in the seventh inning. Ames, 24, pitching for the Reds’ Blue Wahoos at Pensacola’s Bayfront Stadium, collapsed after the pitch. He was taken by ambulance to nearby West Florida Hospital. Team officials have said the injury will effectively end Ames’ season.

With each word, Sami felt her heart sink. Tyler needed baseball the way he needed air. Now he was out for the season in some hospital in Pensacola, Florida. She kept reading.

Ames gained national fame when he won the 2002 Little League World Series for the Simi Valley Royals by striking out the side in the last inning against Japan. He went on to rack up one of the most successful prep pitching careers at baseball powerhouse Jackson High School in Simi Valley. His senior year Ames was named California’s Mr. Baseball, and after graduation he was drafted in the twelfth round by the Cincinnati Reds. He turned down a UCLA scholarship for a spot in the Reds farm system.

Sami realized she was holding her breath. She slid her chair closer to the computer and exhaled. Again she looked at his photograph. The list of facts about Tyler’s life did not tell the world who he had been back then. Not at all. Not the way Sami knew him. She looked intently into his eyes.

She could still hear his laugh.

The rest of the story described the part of Tyler’s life that had happened since he was drafted. The quick trip from the Rookie League to the Reds’ A team in Dayton, Ohio. Sami kept reading.

Ames fell from grace with his fans when he was arrested a number of times for public drunkenness after playing in games for the Dayton Dragons. One fan pressed charges against him for harassing her in a bar, and when the story ran another female fan came forward with a similar story.

This many years later the truth still hurt. Sami blinked a few times and looked out the window of her office.
Ames fell from grace.
Something her grandparents would say. Sami stared at the horizon. The ocean breathed peace into her soul. The vast sea of blue and the unchanging tide reminded her that God was in control. Even if she no longer really knew what that meant.

Once more she turned her eyes to the computer.

In 2012, things seemed to turn around for Ames. He began pitching the way he had as a kid, throwing nothing but strikes. The Reds moved him up to the Blue Wahoos, where he continued to improve. Several scouts were in attendance at Saturday’s game. According to a spokesperson for the Blue Wahoos, Ames was on the brink of a move to the majors—maybe even in the next week or so.

Sami studied his face a moment longer.
We had our chance, didn’t we?
She felt no ill will for Tyler Ames. He had made his choice. They both had. But Tyler hadn’t tried to call her in three years. Besides, he wasn’t the same person he’d been back then.

Anyone who had followed him over the last six years could see that.

Sami exhaled slowly. Looking at him was like looking backward into a dream, as if that crazy wonderful year had never happened. She searched his eyes once more. She clicked back to
People
’s home page. She had to finish up and get to the restaurant.

Arnie would be waiting for her.

SAMI SENT THE
email to the Atlantis executives, grabbed her purse, and hurried to the elevator. Their reservations were in ten minutes. She wouldn’t have been late if she hadn’t spent so much time on the Tyler Ames story. If she hadn’t gone back to the story several times.

She didn’t miss him. Not the guy he was today. She didn’t even know him. Instead, she missed the girl she’d been when she was with him. That fearless girl who jumped off a rope
swing into a mountain of red and yellow leaves one October night or the girl who held a conversation with a homeless man at the beach. A girl with no walls or limits or boundaries.

The girl she no longer knew.

Except for Tyler, Sami’s life over the past nineteen years had been as predictable as the tide. Grandma and Grandpa Dawson had raised her since her parents died in a motorcycle wreck when Sami was five. Her grandparents were in their seventies now, good God-fearing church people who had never passed up the offering plate on Sunday morning or the chance to correct Sami if she strayed off the straight and narrow. Her grandfather ran several businesses, and he prided himself on never having missed a day of work.

Not ever.

Sami leaned against the back of the elevator and stared into the past. With her grandparents, there was a right way to do things. Period. A right way to dress—skirts below the knee. A right way to talk—she was the only girl in Southern California who said “sir” and “ma’am.” There was a right way to walk—shoulders back—and a right way to visit with boys—briefly and at the Sunday afternoon dinner table. Growing up, Sami never had to wonder if she was perfect.

She was. She had no choice.

After high school, UCLA was the obvious next destination for Sami for three reasons. The school offered Sami a scholarship to write for the newspaper and of course, it took her away from her grandparents—at least during the school year. But the main reason was Tyler. He had planned to go to UCLA since he was twelve. That was his plan right up until the first week of June the year they both graduated.

The day Tyler was drafted, ten rounds earlier than he expected.

Sami stepped off the elevator and hurried to her car. But she couldn’t out-pace the memories chasing her. She breathed deep the sweet ocean air and squinted through the images of yesterday.

Her first semester at UCLA, Sami’s roommates drank shots of vodka before an intramural kickball game. “Come on.” They passed the bottle to her. “We all have to do it!”

An exhilarating sensation had rushed through Sami’s veins. She’d never so much as talked about drinking, not while living with her grandparents. Suddenly the idea of so much freedom made her feel ten feet off the ground. She was her own person, an adult. She could do what she wanted. Before she could change her mind, Sami grabbed the bottle and downed three shots.

“Perfect!” one of the girls squealed. “Let’s go!”

But as the alcohol rushed into her blood, Sami’s heart had begun to pound. She felt cold and clammy and her chest ached. “I . . . I don’t feel good.”

“You’re fine.” Her roommate took her hand. “Come on, it’ll be fun!”

Sami had pictured her grandparents, their hands on their hips, looking at her in disappointment. Her heartbeat doubled, pounding so hard she’d wondered if it would rip through her body and fall to the floor. She caught a glimpse in the mirror that hung on the girl’s dorm wall. A flaming red covered her cheeks and sweat beaded up on her forehead. She tried to draw a full breath, but she couldn’t.

“I . . . I don’t feel . . . okay.” Sami sat down on the edge
of her lower bunk. All around her the walls seemed to be closing in.

“You look sick.” One of the girls came close and felt her cheek. “Maybe you’re allergic to this kind?”

Sami hadn’t wanted to tell them she’d never had a drink. But maybe the girl was right. Sami had dug her elbows into her knees and let her face fall in her hands. Her heart raced and nausea welled up within her. The worst nausea she’d ever felt. “I . . . think I’ll stay here.” She waved off her friends and when she was alone she went to the bathroom and threw up. Even then she wondered if she would die, the pain in her chest, the way she couldn’t catch her breath.
How terrible,
she told herself. If she died here alone in her dorm with vodka in her system. Her grandparents would be so ashamed. Not until the morning did Sami feel like herself again.

She hadn’t had a drink since.

Sami blinked back the memory. She was almost to her car. The drinking episode had convinced her she was allergic to alcohol. That’s what she told her friends. The next week when they offered her a drink she blamed the allergy and stayed sober. She became the responsible one, the designated driver. But the symptoms hit again later that freshman year when the girls tried to sneak out of their dorm well after curfew to meet up with some boys across campus. And again at a party when the guy she was talking to led her to a back room and started kissing her.