Lauren laughed. “Don’t worry, I just went ahead and knocked a whole bunch of points off your score.”
Hell, she probably had—which meant that the running total must be pretty low, at the moment. “I’m kind of off my game today”—on a thousand different levels—“but, you’re kidding,” Jill said, “right?”
Lauren just laughed.
She was kidding. Probably.
“For what it’s worth, I was keeping score last fall, too,” Lauren said, more quietly, “and you aced that one.”
They almost never talked about those weeks in the hospital—the endless hours during which Lauren rarely spoke, and Jill didn’t, either, trying to sit so unobtrusively that even Lauren’s parents often seemed to forget that she was there, and witnessing all of the pain, fear, indignities, not enough medication—or, sometimes, too much medication, with awful side effects. It was all mostly a blur, but she remembered one night, when Lauren’s mother had lurched off to get coffee or something, or maybe just breathe fresh air, and they had held hands, and Lauren cried silently, so Jill did, too—without either of them looking at each other. “Well, it’s good to have data,” she said aloud.
Lauren laughed again. “Oh, yeah, the more, the better.” Then, she paused. “Was Marcus being okay last night? You were pretty upset.”
A lot of which was embarrassingly foggy. “I think he’s really mad at me, but he was just trying to help. I mean, I don’t even want to go over to the park today,” Jill said. “All of the guys are probably—” Part of the evening suddenly flashed very clearly in her mind. “Oh, God, Hector and I were all over each other. Jesus, I’m not going to be able to show my face in the clubhouse.”
“Is he the beautiful one?” Lauren asked.
Was he ever. “Yep,” Jill said. “Flat-out gorgeous.”
“How far did it get?” Lauren asked.
Good question. A few too many details were—murky. “I think Marcus broke it up before we actually started making out,” she said. Hoped so, anyway.
“Luckily you have a guardian angel,” Lauren said.
Yeah, the good one pacing nearby, while the bad angel kept whispering, “Oh, come on, just do it, you know you want to.” “Why didn’t I spend more time screwing up in high school?” she asked. “Get it out of my system? Or, at least, learn how to do it.”
“Because you’re usually a totally boring straight arrow,” Lauren said.
Yeah. Not only had she always been worried about whatever workout or game she had the next day, but she had also generally spent time at parties or dances feeling out of place, and awkward, and impossibly tall.
“I’m not going to make fun of you,” Lauren said, “although it’s very tempting.”
No doubt. “Am I going to live it down?” Jill said.
“Well, don’t walk in there today and throw your arms around him,” Lauren said, and paused. “At least, not immediately.”
Yes, there was humor in this. There was even probably some humor to be found in giving up nine damn runs in a single inning.
Maybe.
CHAPTER 26
After an “I’m fine, just didn’t pitch well” conversation with her mother, she decided to call Theo, too, even though she wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to take calls at his internship. But, she knew he would pick up—which he did immediately, and she told him everything that had happened the night before, and then retold him other things—and wished like hell that they were in the same room together, and could just talk for hours.
“Have you been telling Mom this stuff?” he asked. “Other than vague little details sometimes?”
There was no point in fibbing, since he knew the truth. “Not really,” she said. “I mean—well, I don’t want to upset her.”
“God, you two drive me crazy sometimes,” he said. “Neither one of you is at all as fragile as the other one thinks she is.”
It probably did go both ways, although Jill rarely looked at it like that.
“Plus,” he said, “you know, the part where she isn’t stupid, and knows perfectly well that there’s always a lot going on that you never say. So, do better.”
An entirely deserved chiding, she suspected. And—she would try.
“Anyway, we saw the press conference, when they showed it later,” Theo said. “You were amazing.” He laughed. “You and your trope. Hell, you probably earned the right to go get smashed.”
One young man’s perspective. “I thought that guy was going to ask if I thought Dad would have been ashamed of me,” she said.
Theo was silent for a minute, and she started worrying that their father might have felt— “Do you remember Bunky?” he asked, unexpectedly.
Ancient blast from the past. “You mean, Bunky the Balloon Dog?” Jill said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Or the Balloon Fox or the Balloon Lion, or whatever he was supposed to be.”
Bunky had been lopsided, and misshapen, and malformed—and she had brought him home proudly, after making him at a birthday party when she was about eight, and insisted upon displaying him on the table in the front hall for one and all to admire. “Mammal of undetermined species,” she said. “And you popped him.” The tragic coda, a week or so later.
“It was a mercy popping, believe me,” Theo said.
Maybe. Although she remembered crying, and throwing a book at him as hard as she could. “That was like, ten years ago,” she said. “What made you think of that?”
“Dad was impressed by Bunky,” Theo said. “And I don’t think he was just being nice to you. He actually thought you were showing imaginative creative flair, or whatever it was that Mom said to make you feel good. He gushed.”
“So, that’s why you popped him?” Jill said. Sibling rivalry, being what it was sometimes.
“No,” Theo said without hesitating. “He was an atrocity, and needed to be destroyed. The point is, Dad was always proud of you, even when you didn’t really deserve it. And in this situation, when you totally do deserve it, he’d be over the moon.”
For a second, she felt tears in her eyes, and wondered if Theo had also instinctively reached for his dog tag. “He was always proud of you, too,” she said. “Remember how he said you did it just right, so it popped with a real bang, instead of sadly deflating, or whatever?”
Theo laughed. “Yeah, actually. And when you beaned me with that stupid little cat book, he said something like, ‘Look at her velocity.’”
She didn’t quite remember that—but, it sounded like exactly the way he would have reacted.
“Jill,” Mrs. Wilkins said from the dining room door.
She looked up, and Mrs. Wilkins tapped her wrist. So, she checked the wall clock—which had twelve bright little flowers, instead of numbers—and saw that she was in grave danger of running late. “I need to hurry, if I’m going to get over there in time for, you know, my fluffing,” she said to Theo.
“And I’m not making a lot of friends here in the lab today,” he said.
Which made her appreciate his answering the phone just that much more.
When she got to the stadium, she wasn’t the only one slinking across the parking lot in dark sunglasses. Raffy gave her a weak wave on his way inside, and her wave back was similarly feeble.
Scott was slowly getting out of his host family’s car, and she waited for him to catch up with her.
“I feel awful,” he said, looking red-eyed even behind his shades, his hair sticking up in several directions.
“I bet I feel worse,” she said.
“No way,” he said, and opened the players’ entrance door with an effort. “Remind me not to get that wasted ever again.”
“Only if you remind me, too,” she said, and he nodded.
After getting changed, she stood outside the clubhouse door for a minute, trying to get up the nerve to go inside.
“Is that a hungover little ladybug?” someone asked from behind her.
She turned, still wearing her sunglasses, and saw Di
mitri, who looked alert and energetic. “You look cheerful,” she said—maybe rather ungraciously.
“It was fun,” he said. “I mean, I had fun. It does everyone some good to rock out, every now and then.”
She might beg to differ—but, she nodded, as though she agreed, and followed him into the clubhouse. When Owen saw her, he laughed, and pretended to stagger around like a drunk, and there was a lot of joking around, some of it at her expense—but, no one seemed to be connecting her with Hector, so maybe Marcus had stopped things just in the nick of time. She was too embarrassed to meet eyes with either of them, though, and went straight to the training room.
“Good morning,” Sofia said. “Let’s start with—” Then, she stopped, sniffed the air, and looked exasperated. “Oh, are you kidding me?”
On the way indoors, she had noticed that Scott still reeked of beer—so, apparently, she must, too. Jill shrugged, not looking at her.
“Get on the bike,” Sofia said. “See if you can sweat some of it out.”
“I’m just tired,” Jill said.
Sofia looked at her grumpily. “Shut up and pedal. Go at least thirty minutes. Forty-five would be better. We’ll have to work on your arm and shoulder later.”
The exercise felt as though it was taking hours, but she gutted her way through it, pedaling extra hard to try and perspire as much as possible. Perspiration that did, indeed, have kind of a sour alcohol smell, she noticed.
The lights were way too bright, and she kept her sunglasses and cap on, with the brim pulled down low over her eyes.
“Here,” Sofia said, and slapped a large bottle of Gatorade into her hand. “Drink all of it, and then keep hydrating, you irresponsible infant.”
On the planet of People Who Did Not Suffer Fools Gladly, Sofia was probably a queen. So, Jill drank, and pedaled—and had just enough time to wipe the bike down with a towel, before making her way outside to team stretch on wobbly legs.
Bannigan zeroed in on her right away, with rather slitty eyes, and she wondered why it was so utterly obvious that she had—overindulged—last night. But, he didn’t say anything, and she found a spot to stretch behind Scott and Danny—who looked almost as bad as Scott did. Actually, half the team appeared to be in lousy shape—or, at least, really tired—and most of their stretching was sluggish, at best.
“What I’m seeing here isn’t what I expect out of professional ballplayers,” Bannigan said, sounding disgusted.
Caleb laughed. “You don’t get around much, then, because as far as I know, this is exactly what ballplayers do.”
Bannigan was not amused. “You’re supposed to show up in shape to play,” he said.
“Hey, man, I’m in shape to play,” Caleb said. “Don’t blame the rest of us, for the ones who are wusses.”
Bannigan was still not amused. “Less talking, more stretching,” he said.
After stretch, Jill went inside to have Sofia work on her shoulder and arm, and also did some light resistance band and weight work. Then, she took her second shower of the day, before heading out to BP. Caleb spent most of the time regaling everyone in the outfield—half of whom didn’t speak English, of course—about how incredibly hot the girl he’d met last night had been, and how she’d invited him over to the apartment she shared with two other “chicks”—and a number of graphic details about his evening that she would really rather not have known.
She had been going out of her way to avoid Hector, but he was in the last BP group, and motioned her off to the side, as she was leaving the field. So, she went over, hesitantly, and they both leaned against the backstop, standing about five feet apart.
“So,” he said. “It got pretty crazy last night.”
Very much so. She nodded.
They stood there.
This was mortifying. “I know you were just really drunk,” she said, “and I was acting dumb, and—well, let’s never bring it up again, okay?”
“I wasn’t, actually,” he said.
That woke her up. “What?” she asked.
“I mean, yeah, okay, I was pretty buzzed, but I made a move on you on purpose,” he said. “I wanted that to happen.” He looked sheepish. “Or, anyway, almost happen.”
It was a relief—and a surprise—to discover that they both felt the same way about it. “Me, too,” she said.
They stood there some more.
“You’re a really good guy, and I wish it wasn’t so completely—implausible,” she said. Impossible, even.
He glanced over. “If we kept it quiet, maybe no one—” He stopped. “Not really going to play, is it?”
With the team inevitably finding out right away, and gossiping enthusiastically, until it went very public, and destroyed what little baseball credibility she still had right now? She shook her head.
“Damn,” he said.
Which pretty much said it all. Unfortunately.
After taking a third shower, right before the game, she started to feel pretty close to normal, although she kept as low a profile as possible. Since Caleb was charting tonight, he was much less—voluble, which was a relief. But, she still stood as far away from him as she could, as she leaned against the railing to watch the game.
The team didn’t play well, and poor Danny was still so sick to his stomach, that he actually had to leave the bullpen and go lie down in the clubhouse for the last few innings. They lost, six to nothing, and were collectively lousy enough for Adler to snarl at them all for a few minutes, when it was over. But, he didn’t knock anything down, or swear too much, and she figured that they had gotten off pretty easily.
Naturally, there were some guys who went out drinking almost every night—especially, she had noticed, when they were on the road—but the sheer number of hungover players today must have been too blatant for him to ignore.
The next day, Caleb pitched, with Ramón catching—which meant that Marcus was going to be much harder to avoid. So far, they hadn’t interacted much, beyond a couple of hellos, and a few nods here and there. She was still embarrassed, and she assumed that he was furious at her.
Even though she had heard that Caleb had been out catting around again the night before, he pitched incredibly well. His fastball sat reliably and effortlessly in the high nineties, and the batters were pretty well baffled by his cutter and slider. He would probably move up to Low A within a week or two.
After three innings, he had six strikeouts, and no one had really even gotten the ball out of the infield yet. The other team did have a hit—but, it was a soft grounder that had just been too slow for Owen to get the guy at first.
In the bottom of the third, Marcus joined her up at the railing, and they nodded at each other, and then watched in silence as Scott was retired on a fly ball, and Dimitri and Schwartzman both struck out.
“You’ve been pretty scarce, the last couple of days,” he said. “Are you not speaking to me?”
Wasn’t it the other way around? “I thought you were mad at me,” she said.
He shook his head.
Well, that was good news. “I wasn’t very nice to you,” she said.
He smiled faintly. “No, but I may have been a little patronizing towards you.”
She nodded.
“The thing is, we only needed one fool with a cell phone to see the two of you, and the next thing you know, it would have been uploaded somewhere, and—” He sighed. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t want to see you caught up in that.”
God, she hadn’t even considered the full implications of how it all could have played out—and that would have been a disaster. “Thank you,” she said. “I was maybe not thinking very clearly.”
He grinned, and then looked curious. “Do you like him?”
For some reason, she hadn’t expected him to come right out and ask. “Well, I—” Did she? “Of course, I do,” she said. “I mean, he’s really nice, and God knows I’m attracted to him, but—” Did she? “I don’t know.”
Marcus nodded, and she couldn’t qu
ite read his expression, but it looked—complicated, somehow.
She glanced around, to make sure that no one else was paying attention to them. “Can I tell you the truth?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said, although he looked more uneasy than he sounded.
“They all want me to be this perfect role model,” she said. “You know, the ideal of what a female baseball player is supposed to be. That I have to be exemplary, in every possible way. But, I’m pretty sure that the person who they want me to be is entirely sexless, and I think I’m in the habit of suppressing that whole part of myself, you know?”
Marcus nodded, somewhat cautiously.
“And Hector was looking at me as a normal dateable woman, and I liked it,” she said. “And that’s who I felt like being, and—well, it was disappointing to have it cut off.”
He nodded again.
“The idea of having to spend months, and maybe years, that way is—I don’t know. Depressing.” She looked over at him. “And I kind of have the feeling that you know exactly what I mean, about how tiring it is, sometimes, to try and be so damn exemplary.”
He nodded. “Did you know that my father’s a preacher?”
Actually, she hadn’t, so she shook her head.
“So, I’m not precisely in your position—and I’m glad that I’m not, because I don’t envy all of that extra pressure,” he said. “But, I do know what you mean about the burden of trying to be exemplary.”
Which she had been sure that he would, for a lot of different reasons, and being a preacher’s son would just add to all of that. “I guess we can look forward to some very interesting bus conversations,” she said.
His face relaxed into a smile. “I daresay we can,” he said.
CHAPTER 27
They both watched, as Caleb pumped his fist on his way into the dugout, after getting yet another strikeout.
“He’s very good,” she said.
Marcus nodded. “Yes, he is.”
“Better than I am,” she said.
He glanced over. “You don’t generally fish for compliments.”
And she wasn’t now. “Just looking for confirmation,” she said.