Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel Read Free Book Online Page A

ahead and buy plane tickets. But final-day-of-the-regular-season tickets, these she bought the day single games went on sale. And thus Sam and Meredith found them, the morning of the game, when they turned over the drawer of the bedside table in a futile but thorough search for the condoms Sam was certain he’d bought more of only the week before.
    Meredith had taken the post-Livvie baseball season off. She couldn’t bear to watch or listen or even look at box scores. Sam had followed the season online, which was fine, but now he thought they should go to this game.
    “It’d be a shame to waste the tickets,” he said.
    “I’ll get over it,” said Meredith.
    “Your grandmother would want us to go.”
    “How do you know?”
    “She was a fan. And it was tradition.”
    “It’s pouring. It’s a terrible day for baseball.”
    “There’s a roof. What else are we going to do in this weather?” It had taken Sam a while after he’d moved to Seattle to consider baseball a rainy-day activity, but he was learning.
    “I hate baseball,” said Meredith.
    “You love baseball,” said Sam.
    “I used to. Now I hate it. Now everything reminds me of her.”
    “That’s why we should go. To say goodbye.”
    “I don’t want to say goodbye.”
    “Not goodbye forever,” said Sam. “Goodbye for now. Goodbye for a few months. Goodbye like she’s going to Florida tomorrow.”
    Meredith-skeptical turned into Meredith-slightly-intrigued. They donned layers and went to the game. On the way, they stopped at Uwajimaya for sushi, Vietnamese sandwiches, and the Japanese equivalent of Cool Ranch Doritos. (“My grandmother’s idea of baseball food,” she said.) They smuggled in a thermos of hot cocoa in the inside pocket of Meredith’s too-big jacket. (“My grandmother felt seven dollars was too much for a ballpark latte.”) They traded innings keeping score, Meredith keeping the odd ones and Sam keeping the evens, his argument that it was too cold to take off his mittens trumped by hers:
    “My grandmother felt strongly that you have to keep score.”
    “Why?” Sam’s dad had taught him one season when he was a kid so he’d stop pestering him for snacks every inning and a half, but he rarely bothered anymore. “Do you ever go back and look at it?”
    “No,” said Meredith. “She always said what matters is that it’s there.”
    Despite his earlier enthusiasm, Sam began lightly suggesting that they might think about leaving when the Angels scored five runs in the sixth and the temperature dropped into the low teens.
    “My butt is frozen.”
    “Livvie’s Law: No matter how bad it gets, real fans stay for the whole game.”
    “I can see my breath.”
    “It’s like fifty-five degrees out, Sam.”
    “It’s winter.”
    “It’s the first weekend of October.”
    “Baseball is a summer sport.”
    “My grandmother thought the season should end on Labor Day. Not because she was such a big baby about the cold though. Just because she was anxious to get back to Florida and see all her friends there.”
    “I’m not a baby. It’s eight to one. It’s negative four degrees. We’re out of cocoa. I’ve been banned from the seven-dollar lattes. We could go home and remember Livvie in front of the fire.”
    “No matter how bad it gets, real fans stay for the whole game,” intoned Meredith happily.
    Just outside the gate, having seen nine sodden innings through to a miserable eleven-to-one conclusion, Meredith squeezed Sam’s mitten with her own.
    “Thank you. For making me come today. You were right. It’s what she would have wanted.”
    “It was fun,” said Sam.
    “I could tell.”
    “I was just teasing about freezing to death.”
    “Wait until Opening Day. That’ll be even colder.”
    “Opening Day?”
    “Oh yeah. My grandmother thought it should be a national holiday. Of course you go to Opening Day.”
    “Of course,” said Sam.
    “I’m sorry about the incredibly cheesy thing that’s going to happen