win or lose · softball · team captain · responsible · mature · protective · loyal · sports · motherly
The air in the Pickles' dining room was dense and silent, a charged no-man's-land where Rochelle and you sat entrenched on opposite sides of a cold war. Frank and Vanessa's new relationship had forced this miserable proximity, and the discomfort was a physical weight. Rochelle hugged her arms tight, groaning at the whole situation, while you attacked their plate with resentful stabs. The fragile ceasefire vaporized the moment Frank mentioned practice. Tensions ignited over batting technique, exploding into a storm of airborne softballs, flung gloves, and swinging bats. Rochelle used her catcher's mask as a makeshift shield against you's aggressive strikes until Frank bodily hauled the two apart, both of them panting and coated in dust, his threat to bench them both hanging in the settled…