| Hybrid 15 Chapter 1 |
Luke scrubbed his hair with a towel to dry it as he searched through his closet with his free hand for the shirt that he wanted. He never seemed to be able to keep track of his baseball jerseys. He even went so far as to have three identical shirts so that he always knew where one of them was, but that had only worked for the first three games. After that, he was continually searching for them again. He had finished washing all of the clothes in his laundry hamper on Wednesday so he knew that they were clean, but he was never quite sure where he put them after that. Sometimes it was in his chest of drawers. Sometimes the closet. Sometimes the dresser. Once he had even found them in his kitchen cabinets and he had never been able to figure out how they had ended up there. "Hey Luke!" Luke didn't stop from his search through the crunch of clothes half folded on the upper shelf of his closet at the familiar call of his best friend. "I'm in here," he returned as a flash of forest green caught his eye. Rick walked into the bedroom just in time to see a waterfall of clothes spill over Luke's head when he jerked out a shirt from the bottom of the stack. "Lose you're shirt again?" Rick quipped as he watched his friend retrieve the fallen clothes and carelessly jam them back up on the closet shelf. "You ought to get married if for nothing else than to be able to find your shirts." Luke flashed him a rakish grin as he tossed his team jersey onto the bed before sitting down on the edge to put on his shoes. "Wait, don’t tell me. Your in-laws in town again?” he asked as he jerked at the laces of his shoes. "The only time you mention marriage is when you're feeling the noose too tight around your own neck." "Carol's mother is coming for another visit next weekend," Rick confirmed offhandedly as he tipped a small snow globe back and forth his hands, holding it up reflectively to watch the glittering flakes drift down over the winter scene. "They're going to redecorate the game room this time." “The game room?” he said in confusion. Rick rolled his eyes. “Known to normal people as the family room.” Luke chuckled as he gave his friend a sympathetic look. The last time Rick's wife and mother-in-law got together to "redecorate" they ended up throwing out Rick's old basketball trophies and his concert tee shirts that he had been collecting since they were kids. Women just didn't understand about those things. "Do you want to bring your baseball card collection over here just in case?" "I don't think that will be necessary." Rick gave him a sheepish grin. "I'm on my way over to the you-store-it place now. I've got all of my things in the trunk of my car." Luke chuckled again even though he knew his friend was totally serious. “It’s a damn shame that a man had to resort to such lengths just to keep his home safe from a meddling mother-in-law.” It was just the sort of reason that he had never married. What woman would understand that weekends at the ball park and ESPN where what kept a man alive? "Does that mean that you won't be able to make the game?" "Oh, I'll be there," Rick promised as he watched his friend shrug into his jersey. "I just need to drop that stuff off first." When Luke started glancing around, Rick picked up the worn baseball glove off of the dresser and tossed it to his friend, receiving a relieved sigh in return. It always amazed him that Luke could be so dependable and so unorganized at the same time. "When are you going to learn that you don't need to play with these boys to coach them?" "I like playing ball with the kids," he returned as he struggled to pull a duffel bag filled with an assortment of baseball bats from under his bed. As the bag finally came free with a jerk, he smiled over at his friend. "Besides, how else am I going to keep in shape so that I can get me a wife and a mother-in-law?" Luke dropped the bag onto the bed as he gestured to the object that his friend was holding. "What's that?" Rick shook up the globe once more to watch the artificial snow fall. "Just another bobble to see how good you are." Luke shook his head as he retrieved a gym bag full of baseballs from under his bed as well. Rick was constantly coming up with "bobbles" for him to see. Since childhood, Luke had been able to pick up impressions from objects that he held in his hands. It wasn't something that he did very often, but Rick had been the one to put his special talent to practical use. When they were teenagers, they had amused the girls that they liked by using the gift that Luke possessed. He would hold something that belonged to one of the girls, a bracelet or some other personal belonging, then he would accurately guess who had given it to her or tell the girl some secret about herself to prove his "powers", then he would predict some fate that was to befall the girl in the near future. That was where Rick's ingenuity would come in. Luke and Rick would agree upon some event to bring about before they spoke to the girls, usually a minor accident like the girl running into someone in the mall or some fortune like finding ten dollars along the street, then they would connive to bring about the event to impress the girls. In fact, it was using that same technique that had started the relationship between Rick and his wife, Carol, when they were in college. Even though Rick had seen the accuracy of Luke's insight on many occasions, he still tested his friend by stopping by with small items for him to hold, then asking him to describe the person who owned it. Usually Luke didn't mind trying his hand at the strange sort of game that his friend had worked up, but there had been times that his impressions hadn't been good ones. Visions of a terrible accident or even death had been enough to put him off playing Rick's guessing games, but his friend was nothing if not persistent. "I don't have time for that now," Luke protested as he straightened. "I have to get to the park before the kids start arriving." "This won't take long," Rick insisted, tossing the globe into Luke's hands before he could protest further. Luke jerked as he deftly caught the globe, but not from the bag of balls that he had dropped onto his foot from his friend's unexpected throw. The moment that his hands touched this child's toy, he felt a current of powerful emotions course through him, everything from sudden tragedy to irrevocably binding love. He couldn't remember ever feeling such overwhelming sensations from an inanimate object before. Luke quickly tossed the globe back to Rick and turned to busy himself with inspecting his baseball equipment. "I don't get anything," he lied. He could still feel the residual effect of the brief contact with the snow globe. His fingers tingled so much that he wanted to scratch them vigorously, but he was more concerned with slowing the rapid pounding of his heart and sorting through the jumble of his emotions to give his tingling hands much thought. Until then, the impressions that he had receive from the things that he touched had never affected him physically. They had just been pictures that would flash through his mind for a few seconds, then disappear. He wasn't sure what to make of this new reaction and he needed a some time to sift through his feelings, but Rick wasn't so easily put off. "Well, that's a first," Rick remarked suspiciously as his eyes narrowed. He hadn't missed the startled look on Luke's face or the trembling in his hands. Luke was hiding something. But why? "Well, there's a first time for everything," Luke remarked a little breathlessly as he slung the bag of bats over his shoulder and snatched up the balls and his glove. He brushed past Rick in the doorway before he could ask anymore questions. "I'll see you at the game." He gave Rick's shoulder a gentle slap in parting, then hurried out to his car. <*> Jeremy looked down at his cleats, scuffing up the dirt around the little rectangle of rubber on the pitcher's mound when he saw the coach heading out to talk to him. He didn't want to be taken out of the game now. If he could just strike out this last batter, the team would be on their way to the finals instead of having to play another game in the best out of five series and he wanted to be the one to do it. The coach just couldn't take him out yet! "Did you catch the Reds game yesterday?" Luke asked casually when he reached the fair-haired boy standing on the mound. Jeremy's head snapped up at the odd question and he squinted hard to make out his coach's expression through the glare of the sun over the tall man's shoulder. "Yeah," he answered meekly, not quite understanding why the coach would want to talk about the Reds game at a time like that. "They're playing better then they did on Monday." Luke shifted so that his broad shoulders shadowed the smaller boy's face, then he gave him a quirky grin. "It's hard to tell if they'll make it to the World Series, though." Jeremy gave him a blank look. Has the coach completely lost his mind? "You're not taking me out of the game?" "Naw. I was just thinking about yesterday's game and I wondered if you had seen it." Jeremy darted a look at the batter carelessly swinging his bat too close to the umpire then back up to the coach. Luke knew how important this game was to the kids, but he didn't like for his players to take the game so seriously. He had seen the stress on Jeremy's face as he walked the last batter. When he had thrown two more balls, Luke thought that it was time to intervene. "Listen, I'm getting kind of hungry,” he remarked in the same conversational tone. “What do you say about finishing this game and we'll head out for pizza?” Luke was rewarded with a tentative, then more confident smile from Jeremy before he walked off the field as casually as he had walked on. He knew that Jeremy could strike out this batter. He had already proved that he could twice before, but he had gotten flustered when he had walked the last guy and the pressure of the game was starting to weigh on his thin shoulders. "All right Jeremy! I know you can do it!" Luke called back at the boy when he had reached the dugout, clapping his hands several times to cheer him on. "Strike one!" the umpire called out. "That's my boy," Luke whispered to himself. At least Jeremy looks more relaxed now, he mused. Unfortunately, he couldn't say the same for himself. It wasn't the game that was troubling his mind, though. In fact, his mind hadn't been on the game for more than a few minutes all day. He just couldn't keep his thoughts from wandering to that silly snow globe and the life force behind it. He should have taken more time to work through the emotions that surrounded it and find out what there was that attracted and repelled him so much. But, he had been so startled by his own reaction that he had simply followed his instincts and tossed the globe back to Rick. Luke stuck his head out of the dugout to scan the crowd briefly before spotting Rick nervously waiting for the next pitch. Maybe I should ask Rick to give me the globe again. "Strike two!" Luke shifted his attention back to the game, folding his arms across his chest in the proper "coach-like" stance. He knew that he wouldn't ask for the globe again before he even made a conscious decision not to. In his mind, there were some things that needed to remain unknown and, even though he felt that the globe had something to do with his own future, he didn't want to know about that just yet. Luke was drawn out of his speculations by the roar of the crowd. He hadn't even heard the last pitch called, but his team was pounding on one another in delight as they surrounded the pitcher's mound in mass to congratulate each other. He glanced back at the dugout, but all of the remaining players were now out on the field. He was the only one that had let the town's first baseball victory slip by him without even a clap of his hands. This game had meant so much to him that he hadn't been able to think about anything else all week, but as the moment arrived, he had been thinking about a silly little snow globe with a mystery attached to it. <*> "So this is where you live?" Luke glanced around the apartment with half an eye. There wasn't much furniture and even fewer decorations in the small attic room, but it looked comfortable enough. "Only in the summer when Dad is away at conventions," Jeremy confirmed as he took a seat at a table laden with computer equipment. "Pretty impressive stuff," Luke remarked, gesturing to the computer behind Jeremy. "Is it yours?" His shoulders raised in the awkward gesture of a teenage shrug. "Naw. This is Les' system. I have a better one at home. Les just uses it to keep up with work orders and junk like that." He swung the swivel chair around to switch on the terminal and was eventually presented with a variegated screen of continually shifting patterns and colors. "I put this in though. Les forgets to turn the terminal off so I put in this screen saver." Luke watched Jeremy punch at a series of keys to pull up a remarkably well animated game of baseball. "It's all Greek to me," he admitted, then looked toward an open window across the room when he heard someone calling Jeremy's name. Without a second glance, Jeremy pushed back from the table and hurried over to the window to give the person outside a wave. Luke stepped up behind him in time to see a young boy in jeans and a baseball cap wave back. "Just wanted to make sure that you were here," the boy called up to Jeremy before walking up to the front porch and out of sight. "Who's that?" Luke asked, not thrilled with the idea of sitting with two boys instead of one until Jeremy's brother decided to put in an appearance. "That's Les," he responded, already on his way back to the computer game. Luke glanced out the window again with his hands on his hips. Les didn't look much older than Jeremy. Granted, he was three stories up, but the slight build of the boy outside couldn't be much bigger than Jeremy's. What kind of family was this that would let two young boys out on their own without any adult supervision? "Listen, Jeremy. I'm going to head out now that Les is home," Luke told him as he headed for the door. "I'll see you at practice on Monday." "See ya," he returned distractedly, his eyes never wavering from the computer screen. Luke hurried down the stairs to meet Jeremy's brother sufficiently out of earshot of the younger boy. He had a few words for Les and he didn't want to be overheard. Luke was already angry that Les wasn't at the pizza parlor to meet them like the rest of the parents. He didn't like the idea of a thirteen year old boy being left up to his own devices while the person that was suppose to be watching him was out running around town. As Luke reached the second floor landing he was prepared for battle, but was brought up short when the face that looked up at him was that of a very attractive woman instead of the young man that he was expecting. "Oh! Coach Jenkins! This is a surprise." Les smiled up at him as she mounted the remaining steps to the landing and extended her hand. "I wasn't expecting to see you here." Luke reached out to take her hand out of reflex. He couldn't believe that, even at a distance, he could have mistaken this lovely creature for anything but a beautiful woman. Granted, her hair was pulled up under a baseball cap, but even the loose fitting tee-shirt wasn't enough to cover her shapely curves and her five foot eight height was mostly due to deliciously long legs. "That really was a great game today," Les commented when he remained silent. "You were there?" he asked almost incredulously. How could he have missed this woman, even in a crowd? "Of course. I never miss one of Jeremy's games." Les slid her hands up her jean-clad thighs and hooked her thumbs into her pockets as she waited for him to continue. She couldn't remember a conversation feeling quite that awkward since she was in high school. Somehow she hadn't thought of "The Great Luke Jenkins" as being shy. From the way that Jeremy talked about him, one would almost think that he could walk on water. But she supposed that was the way that most teenage boys thought about their coaches. "I really appreciate you bringing Jeremy home," she continued when Luke didn't do anything more than stare. "I was on my way over when..." "That's what I wanted to talk to you about Miss....Collins, is it?" Luke had recovered from his initial shock at last and he willed his anger to simmer again. "Yes, but you can call me Les." She eyed him curiously. This was the man that she was use to seeing at ball games, a man in control, but she had a feeling that she wasn't going to like what he had to say from the stern expression on his face. She was right. "I really have a problem with kids being left to fend for themselves. People like you seem to think that when a boy has 'teen' at the end of his age that he can take care of himself, but that's just not the case." "People like..." her mouth dropped open in surprise. She couldn't believe that he was actually upbraiding her for her guardianship of her little brother. "Boy's of Jeremy's age still need to have some sort of supervision or they'll end up running the streets. This world is full of horror stories of kids being kidnapped or killed because no one cared enough to watch out for them." He paused for a moment when Les folded her arms across his waist and he realized that her tee-shirt was hiding more then he originally suspected. It suddenly struck him that her waist was so small that he could probably put his hands on her hips and feel his fingers touching behind her back. He recovered himself quickly and fixed his eyes on hers to keep them from drifting lower again. After all, he wasn't supposed to be attracted to this woman. He was there to look out for Jeremy's welfare. "I’ve seen this happen time and time again, Miss Collins, and I’m not going to let it happen with one of my kids. Abandonment is a crime and I suggest that you take your responsibility to Jeremy more seriously." "Oh. You suggest." Les nodded several times as she slowly counted to ten to keep her formidable anger in check. She only made it to four. "Let me tell you something, Mr. Jenkins. There isn't a moment during the day that I don't know precisely where my little brother is, what he is doing and who he is with. If I'm not here when he gets home, he knows to check in with Mrs. Smithers downstairs or the Martins here." She gestured to the door that they were standing next to with a hitch of her thumb before bracing her feet for a more direct assault. "There isn't a person that he's associated with that I don't know everything that I possibly can about before I allow him to go off somewhere with them alone, including yourself. I would have thought you were a little smarter than that since you graduated in the top ten percent at high school and from Indiana University with honors, but I guess it's true that students aren't taught anything useful anymore like being able to recognize a responsible adult when they see one." She was rewarded with a look of surprise in his eyes, but she wasn't finished yet. "If it's any concern of yours, I called the pizza place before I came home and found out that Jeremy had left with you so I wasn't worried, but I still got home as fast as I could and, if I hadn’t been detained by an emergency at work, I would have been there to pick him up myself. Jeremy knows exactly what to do if a stranger approaches him, he’s familiar with the safe places around town and he knows the number of the local police station by heart. How dare you imply that I don’t know how to take care of my brother!" The door beside them jerked open and Leslie's neighbor barely spared her a glance as he began eyeing Luke suspiciously. "Is everything all right Les?" She let out a suppressed rush of air at the interruption and tried to give Curt Martin a reassuring smile. "Everything's fine Curt. I'm sorry if we disturbed you." He hesitated for a moment as he drew his shoulders back to compare to the width of the man facing him even though he knew that he came up several inches short. Still, his stare didn’t waver. “If this guy gets out of line, I’m right here,” he told her, reluctantly stepping back into his apartment. He wasn’t one to butt into anyone’s business, but their conversation had become loud enough for him to take notice. "Leslie?" an elderly woman's voice wafted up the stairwell even before the Martin's door could close. "Is everything all right up there?" There was something to be said about friendly neighbors, but nosy, unfortunately, had a tenancy to go along with it as well. "Everything's fine Mrs. Smithers.” “I heard you yelling all the way down here. Are you sure you’re okay?” “I’m all right,” she assured her. “I'm sorry that we were so loud." "Well, if you're sure, dear," came the wavering reply. "Thank you Mrs. Smithers." Les locked her eyes with Luke's as she waited for the thump of Mrs. Smithers apartment door closing before continuing in a much softer voice. "As you can see, Mr. Jenkins, not much happens around here without the entire building knowing about it. Thank you again for bring my brother home, but I assure you that it won't be necessary in the future. I’ll make certain of that. The world has so few caped crusaders that I would hate to see your time wasted." Luke couldn't remember the last time that he had been so completely put in his place and he knew that he had deserved every word. He hadn't even given Les a chance to explain herself before he snapped on his cape and became Coach Crusader, defender of neglected children. "I suppose that I owe you an apology, Miss. Col..." "That isn't necessary, Mr. Jenkins. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going up to congratulate my brother on the game today." She held his stare a few seconds longer, practically daring him to utter one more word to detain her, before continuing up the last flight of stairs. Luke watched her retreating backside until it disappeared around the landing between floors, then listened to the sound of her footfalls on the stairs and the solid thump of her apartment door closing before he dared to breath again. "Whoa! That woman gives a new meaning to the term spitfire," he mumbled to himself, then smiled as he remembered the spark in her blue eyes and the gentle curve of her cheek. Not many women left such a lasting impression on him and he doubted very seriously if he would forget this encounter anytime soon. |
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