My father’s voice stopped my reach for my backpack.
“You should go to the hotel.”
“What?” I let go of the strap, and it fell, loud and heavy, on the metal bench.
“I spoke to Frank. The ball boys can cover for you.”
“No.” I could count on one hand the number of times I’d refused him. I could also count on one hand the number of times he’d been this stubborn.
His eyes hardened. “You’ve got school work to do, and I don’t want you working the game. Now go. Take the truck. I’ll get a ride.”
I glanced toward the other pitchers and stepped closer to him, lowering my voice. “This is bullshit. I’ve never missed a game.” And I hadn’t. Not in ten years. Not when I’d been sick, not when I was seven and had tears running down my face over Mom. We were Rollins. We didn’t miss games. And we didn’t fight with each other; we griped, we gritted through with sarcasm and wit. Not like this. Not with a hole in my chest, my breath suddenly short, the possibility of not working the game, not even going to the game—that was something that had never crossed my mind.
“I’m sorry, Ty. It’s just a big day. Lots of energy in the air with a new player. You know that.”
“All the more reason to have me out there. Someone you don’t have to worry about messing up.” Snagging a fair ball as foul. Too much Mississippi mud on the balls. Grabbing the wrong bat. Not having dip, braces, lotion, headphones … all of the idiosyncrasies that set up each player for success. Yes, I was a ball girl—the job typically done by prepubescent boys. But I was the best one in the league. And it was ridiculous for him to pull me from this game, to punish me for … what? Chase Stern’s presence? “I’m going to the game.” I crossed my arms tightly in front of my chest, swearing on Babe Ruth’s grave that I was not about to cry, not right here, on sacred soil, with the eyes of the others on us, my father’s face as old as I’d ever seen it.
“Don’t fight me on this.” He hung a hand on the fence beside us. Long fingers, cracked at the seams. Talented appendages linked with a structure designed to keep worlds apart. There was an analogy there; I just didn’t see it. “You’re seventeen, Ty. You’re beautiful. Don’t…” his voice broke in two, “…don’t grow up on me just yet.”
“I’m not trying to grow up. I’m trying to go down to the baseline and help the guys prep the field.” I tried to smile, but my fear—that he’d try to take this away—stopped me.
“He slept with a player’s wife. Don’t think he’ll behave around you.” Our dance of avoidance stopped, the issue front and center.
“You’re giving my beauty way too much credit. I came from your ugly stock, remember?” I reached down and hefted my heavy backpack onto my shoulder, because he would let me go, he had to. So help me, if he didn’t, I’d turn into every other hellacious teenager that slunk through this stadium.
“Tyler.” Just one word from him, but it said so much.
“Dad.”
We stared at each other for an eternity, one long stretch of silent communication where I begged, and he countered, where I screamed and stomped my feet, and he hugged me. It all passed through our eyes, his stance unchanging, and I knew I had won when he finally moved, pushing off the fence and dropping his hand.
“Fine.”
“I love you.” I reached out a fist. “Spikes first?”
He reluctantly met my fist in the air. “Spikes first.”
Ty Cobb once spoke about sliding into base. Something about how his foot was coming up fast, his spikes out, and if the baseman happened to get in the way, oh well. Shit happened. Dad first told me that story when he was teaching me how to slide. I was eight, and still stubbornly clinging to the concept of dolls and dresses, and the thought of intentionally getting dirty was terrifying. It had been early February and hot, my cleats stained red by the dirt of an Orlando practice field. We had battled on that field, he and I. I hadn’t wanted to learn to slide, the entire lesson stupid, one I would never use, and he had insisted on it, one of the rare moments in those early years when he had put his foot down. The Ty Cobb story had made me smile, mostly because Dad’s retelling of the story included the word ‘shit,’ a forbidden curse that gave me a shot of glee.
On that day, on that field, I had gotten dirty. Even though I wouldn’t admit it, I enjoyed it. Afterward, we’d gone to a sports store, and Dad had bought me some sliding shorts, a few T-shirts, some pants. That day had been the first crack in my little girl veneer. And from then on, spikes first had been our code. Our mantra in life, the thought that you dove full force into confrontation, damn the repercussions to others, should they be too dumb to move out of the way. Sometimes you made it there safely. Sometimes you didn’t, the enormous effort a waste. But if you had the opening, you had to try.
I said spikes first in that bullpen to remind him of that. To remind him of the girl he’d raised. She wasn’t the type to go home when there was a game to be played. Chase Stern be damned. Naked bodies be forgotten. I was here for one reason, and it wasn’t lust.
22
Pregame, batting practice. I didn’t know what idiot created the standard baseball uniform, but they were terrible. Almost canvas in their thickness. Stiff with starch. Scratchy. Hot, even in our mild summers. I leaned forward, resting one hand on a knee, and wished, for the thousandth time in my life, for a pair of loose cotton shorts. The batter swung, and I jerked left, sprinting for his ball, my glove reaching out and falling a few inches short. I bent, scooping up the ball as I ran, and threw it in.
“Distracted?” Lucas, one of our outfielders, asked with a wink.
“You think you could have got that?” I shot back with a smile.
He scoffed, clapping a fist into his glove. “All day long, baby.”
I stabbed the grass with my cleat and let out a controlled breath, my fingers flexing in the sweaty confines of my glove, a new form walking slowly up our dugout steps, the sun glowing off his white uniform, his arms flexing as he worked a hand into a batting glove.
I had decided, that morning, that I would hate him. Based it on the cockiness in his tone when he’d spoken to me. The way he didn’t bother to cover himself when standing before me. The laughter that had been in his eyes.
Hating him would make everything easier. Cleaner.
But I couldn’t. I stood there, lost in far left field, and watched him reach for a bat. Watched him run his hands along its length. I watched him step up to the bag and push the batting helmet hard onto his perfect head.
And before he even tightened his grip, before that first swing that cracked open our future and sent the ball high over my head…
I was already done for.
23
The girl in left field had an arm on her. Chase watched her launch a ball from the fence, barely an arc on the delivery to second base, her jog back into place casual, as if the throw had been nothing. He turned to the hitter next to him, nodding a head to the girl. “Not a bad cannon for a girl.”
“Who, Ty?” The guy let out a hard laugh. “That’s Rollins’s kid. She should. He’s had a ball in her hand since she was old enough to pull on her own uniform.”
Rollins’s kid.
“He’s my dad.”
The girl from the locker room.
He stared at her figure in the field, and tried to connect her to the girl he had met yesterday. In the locker room, she’d looked meek and skittish. Out on the field, she was confident, a grin stretched over her face, her shout at another player done with ease, as if she was an equal.
“Rollins only have one daughter?” He tried to mold the two images.
“Yep.” The guy reached for a bat and looked over, his eyes hardening. “She’s seventeen. Just in case you had any stupid ideas.”
Chase held up his hands in innocence. “Just complimenting her arm.”
“Right.” The man held his eyes for a long moment before strolling toward home plate, his bat gripped with bo
th hands, one last glare given before he stepped up to bat.
Chase took off his hat and wiped at his forehead. Letting out a controlled breath, he turned his back to the field, no need to see anything more.
So she was a ball girl. For the team. A seventeen-year-old ball girl. Heaven help him if she traveled with them, too.
24
4:48 AM. I counted out eight pairs of underwear. Two bras. Two pairs of jeans. Ten shirts. I stacked everything in the suitcase, grabbing an extra pair of Nikes and my toiletries bag. We spent nine months a year on the road. Packing had lost all creativity.
I could have grabbed my cute tops. Some footwear that was sexier than Nikes. My makeup. I thought about it, my hand drifting across the hangers, hesitating, but I didn’t. There was no point in courting trouble. And with makeup, when I made an effort—I could be called pretty. I didn’t want to be pretty to Chase Stern. I wanted to be invisible. He was God’s gift to our team, not to me.
I zipped up the suitcase and yanked it off the bed. Pulled it down the hall and into the dark great room. I rolled through the kitchen, past the commercial appliances, white granite countertops, the photos of Dad and me stuck to the fridge. I opened the door to the garage, and heard the hum of Dad’s truck, the early morning breeze crisp.
“About time,” he griped, holding out a juice.
“Bite me,” I countered, shaking the container before taking a sip. “We’re five minutes ahead of schedule.”
“Your schedule. We should be leaving by four-thirty.”
I rolled my eyes and buckled my belt, his truck making the turn onto the main Alpine street, everything empty and still. “We’ll be the first ones there. Like always.”
He flipped on the radio, and I shifted lower in my seat, resting my sneakers on the dash. And, as always, I was asleep before we even hit the highway.
Our games were played in series—three in a city, then we’d move to the next, our play coordinated to reduce travel time and expenses. This trip would last eight days and hit Detroit and Dallas.
I adjusted the shade on the window and smiled at the flight attendant, taking the blanket she offered. The jet was full, with the exception of one notable member. Chase Stern. A man who could bat .340 but couldn’t seem to get to an airport on time. I heard the travel secretary on her phone, trying to get ahold of his driver. When he jogged toward the plane, a leather bag in one hand, Dad leaned over. “We should have left him. Let him fly commercial to Detroit. That would have taught him.”
He was right. We’d left players before. Hell, it was a regular occurrence, happening two or three times a season. When you tried to get thirty guys to show up at a certain time, shit happened. So they got left. Except him, apparently.
When he walked down the aisle, stepping over outstretched feet, murmuring apologies to anyone who’d meet his eyes, I looked away, out the window. I had managed, for his first two games, to avoid him completely, a difficult feat. Now, in the tight confines of the airplane, his presence felt huge and unavoidable. Especially when he paused just past our row, and I felt the push of my seat, his tall frame moving into the spot just behind me, his voice low and right there as he leaned forward, his hand gripping my headrest, brushing the top of my head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I managed, not looking up, busying myself with my headphones, pulling the big Bose headset over my head. I relaxed slightly when the pressure against my seat relaxed, his body in place, and started my playlist, trying to drown out the sound of his voice, the low apology, the way the vowels had hooked into me and held on.
“Like what you see?”
I could feel Dad’s glance and curled away, toward the window, tucking my knees to my chest and pulling the blanket up to my chin. There, I tried to not smell the fresh scent of his soap. I tried not to notice the occasional bump of my seat. I tried to pretend like Chase Stern didn’t exist.
She smelled like pears. When he bent down, gripping the top of her seat, he smelled her hair. It wasn’t intentional; he wasn’t burying his face in her blonde strands, he just got a whiff. A whiff strong enough to stick, to give him another puzzle piece to add to the Tyler Rollins enigma. When she leaned over to say something to her father, he watched her profile through the crack in their chairs. When her seat reclined, he imagined those long legs stretching out. Too bad she was in jeans; he’d noticed that on his walk down the aisle, his glance just brief enough to avoid suspicion, but long enough to see that she was in a Yankee jersey and jeans. A bag on her lap, open, headphones half out, her face turned away, looking out the window. Her hair down, tucked behind her ear. Young. She looked so young. So innocent.
“Like what you see?”
Such a stupid thing to say. To a seventeen-year-old girl, of all people. But he hadn’t known that, hadn’t even considered that. Still, it was done. And now, those words wouldn’t stop taunting him.
25
Detroit
We all had our favorite cities. Detroit wasn’t mine. Especially on days like this, when the rain pelted the field, the tarp doing little to keep the clay dry. I huddled under the west overhang, my uniform cold and clingy, an itchy skin that I couldn’t shed, not for a while. The kid beside me, some Michigan local who’d won his place in some radio station giveaway, looked miserable. I was sure his visions of the day hadn’t included sprinting across a soggy field, sneakers wet and squishy, toes frozen, picking up forgotten balls. Now, with a break in the downpour, I nudged the kid. “Make a run for the dugout.” I nodded right, and he ran—short, chubby legs darting across the grass.
I pulled my cap down low and crossed my hands over my chest, too mature to run, my steps nonetheless quick as I crossed to the far end, taking the back gate and walking down the ramp and toward our visitor locker rooms. I could hear the hum of voices, the men pent up inside, everyone itchy, ready for the game to either be called off or played, the inactivity excruciating.
It’d be an extra late night, the two-hour rain delay pushing back our bedtimes. I shivered in the empty hall and walked faster, rounding the final corner toward the locker room and running smack into someone.
Someone with a hard body.
Tall, the bill of my hat hitting his chest, my hands instinctively coming up and pushing against his stomach, nothing but hard abs felt through dry uniform.
Uniform. My throat went dry; I stumbled back, my wet cleat slipping against the painted concrete, out from under me, and my hand tightened against his uniform, holding on, his body reacting, and suddenly I had his hands on my hips.
His hands were on my hips. I tried to process that thought, the feel of his fingers tightening, his body bent forward, over me, as I tilted back. I frantically moved my feet, my shoes sliding, legs spreading, and I finally came to a halt, one shoe stopped by the wall, his grip tight on me.
“Don’t move,” he ordered, both of us in danger of falling if I continued my leg windmill. My face was tucked into his chest, an intentional move I had made milliseconds earlier because keeping my chin up would have put us in a Hollywood dip of sorts, and that was quite possibly the only thing that would have made this more embarrassing.
His uniform smelled good. Some sort of cologne, unless he rolled out of bed smelling like a medley of forest and ocean. Dad wore Old Spice, which was the most unsexy, spicy scent on the planet. This … I didn’t want to let go. I wanted to yank off his shirt and wrap it around my head, surgically affix it to my face, and smell just that, forever, even if it made me an elephant man freak in the process.
Don’t move, he had said.
I didn’t. I stayed in place until he pulled me up, my feet almost lifting off the ground, and his hands stayed in place until he was certain I was firm on my feet, our bodies parting, my hands releasing their grip on his shirt, nervously moving to adjust my baseball cap into place, to pull at the front of my wet shirt, releasing the cold material from my skin.
“Thank you,” I muttered.
??
?You should get into dry clothes.”
“I’m fine.”
“Your teeth are chattering.” His hand reached out and was suddenly at my jaw, fingers gentle in their brush over my lips, and I ground my teeth, my eyes moving, shock pushing them up, past his touch, and to his face for the first time.
A mistake. This close, our bodies just a foot apart, his touch soft on my lips … I was unprepared. Unshielded.
There was a line between his eyebrows, a hard pinch of skin. His eyes deep and soft, no laugh in them today, no cocky tilt of that mouth. He pressed his lips together, his jaw tight, skin golden, and it was pure beauty before me. I couldn’t look away—not when our eyes met, not when his hand slid to cup my face.
He let go of me then—the moment his fingertips slid into the dip behind my earlobe, wrapped under the line of my jaw. He pulled away, his hand fell from my waist, and we both stepped back.