3. TIM
Chapter three
TIM
“Do you and Ian want to grab a bite to eat?” I ask Duckie as I twist my still-damp hair up into a knot at the back of my head. The first day of training is a blur. I know one thing for sure. I am glad I didn’t slack off during the break because the guys who did are feeling it way worse than me right now.
“I totally would, but I’m wrecked. I was just going to grab take out from that rib place and head home and crawl into bed.”
“Ohh, The River Steakhouse. Yes, it’s Tuesday. They have the two-for-one sides. Great idea. Let’s get going before they sell out of the spicy ones.”
“Ian doesn’t like the spicy ones.”
“He’s dating you, isn’t he?”
“I’ll never get your Australian humor.”
“Please, I’m hilarious, and you know it.”
“Sure I do.”
The River Steakhouse is only a few blocks from the field, so we walk together and recap the day’s session. Duckie is about my age, a little older, but he acts younger than any guy on the field. He joined the team on our first tour, stepping up for Nate when he was injured. Personally, I think the coaches asked him out of spite. He made it no secret he didn’t think what we played was a real sport, or at least he used to. But reporting on the tour and getting his own ass out on the field changed all that. I was over the moon when I got called to fly over and meet with the GM of Banana Ball. Australian baseball is great, but it isn’t as popular as it is here in the USA, and nowhere else has anything like Banana Ball. I think it would do really well in Australia if they ever decide to actually go global with their world tour. Not that I have any plans to move home. My life is here now.
“So, how are you handling your no-phone rule, you got the shakes yet?” Duckie laughs as we reach the restaurant, and he shoves open the door, holding it for me to pass.
“It’s not a no-phone rule, just no socials unless I’m eating, and it’s going fine actually,” I lie. Truth is, it’s terrible, and his joke about the shakes isn’t actually that far from the truth. I hear the thing vibrate and I want to grab it and see if it’s a fan messaging on one of my posts or someone sharing something on my feed, and that’s all I can think about for longer than I would like to admit. “You can’t get on my case when you spend half the day with your face in yours.”
“Do not.”
“Do, too,” I reply, and he wraps his arm over my shoulder and lifts his phone to snap a selfie.
“Agree to disagree. Now come on. Let’s get dinner before Ian starves to death at home waiting for me.”
We stand in line, scanning the menu while we wait.
“We should have ordered on the way,” Duckie says, pushing up onto his toes to look over the line of people in front of us.
“We still can, here, the QR code on the menu, scan that.”
He scans the code, and I do the same, and as we stand in line waiting for the people ahead of us to be seated, we order and pay and have a pickup number ready to give to the girl standing at the lectern. They could at least get the poor girl a seat if she has to stand there all night talking with people, I think as she looks up from striking off a name on the digital tablet in her hands.
“Do you have a reservation?” she asks, and Duckie shakes his head. Before he can get out that we have an online order, the girl rolls her eyes and sighs.
“We’ve got a thirty-minute wait for a table. You can wait at the bar or outside.”
A girl behind me leans forward.
“They can sit with us. We have a reservation,” she says, and I turn to find a petite woman with bright pink hair standing beside a strawberry blond god.
“We’re actually getting takeaway, but that is sweet of you,” I tell her, and she slaps a hand against the very thick shoulder of the beefcake with her.
He looks familiar, but it could just be my brain recognizing a handsome muscle man and hoping I know him.
“This is Lion, and I’m Mary Beth. You’re Tim, right?” she asks, and that adrenaline rush of someone recognizing me spreads through my body as I nod and smile, but it’s like my mouth has forgotten how to make sound.
“He is, yes,” Duckie answers for me, and I finally find my voice.
“Yes, I’m Tim. Wait, you knew that.” He laughs, and deep fucking gorgeous dimples form in both his cheeks. “Sorry, did you say Lion?”
I’ve never met a guy called Lion, but there is something about him that seems familiar. Not the half of which is his wide muscular frame and stunning strawberry blond locks that totally look like a lion’s mane with it swept-back like it is right now. My hair is blond, too, but it’s Aussie blond, with darker undertones that make it sometimes look like it came from a bottle and not both of my parents. Mary Beth grabs my hand and shakes it, then passes it into Lion’s palm, and his thick long fingers wrap over mine, his grip calloused and warm.
“Yep. Lion is your biggest fan,” she says, and Duckie’s fingers dig into my shoulder.
“You got your order number?” Duckie asks, and I’m forced to let go to grab my phone and show it to the hostess.
“I’ll check on how long it will be,” the hostess replies and picks up the landline phone beside her.
Duckie moves closer to my side, and I catch Lion’s gaze traveling to his hand still on my shoulder, then back to me. “Really, his biggest fan? That’s a huge call. Have you seen his socials blowing up lately? Some of those fans might like to challenge you on that one,” Duckie says, and while anyone wouldn’t blame a person for being thrown by his comment, challenged even, Lion doesn’t seem fazed at all. His grin grows wider, and he nods enthusiastically.
“When you caught out Mason Besser in that last game, I thought the crowd was going to rush the field. It was so amazing,” Lion says, and my cheeks warm.
“It was okay,” I reply.
“It was more than okay. You jumped like ten feet in the air.”
“I don’t think it was that high.”
He shrugs. “I’m six-one and you could have come right over my head.”
“Oh, I’m sure he would have liked to do that,” Duckie replies, and I jab him with my elbow. Mary Beth’s eyebrows rise with a smirk to her lips, but Lion doesn’t seem to pick up on his innuendo.
“I guess it was a pretty decent jump,” I say.
“Oh, oh, oh, and you hit that home run in game four, and then again in game seven, you were really on fire last year. I can’t wait to see what you do this year.”
I know my cheeks must be on fire by now, but I don’t care. It’s the boost I needed, the reminder that maybe I am good enough and last year didn’t suck balls as horrible as I thought it did.
“Thanks. I hope I don’t let you down,” I say. He shakes his head vigorously, his swept back hair becoming a soft mess like what I imagine he’d look like climbing out of bed after a night of fun.
“Oh, no, you could never let me down. You’re amazing. Just be you and it’s going to be awesome.”
The hostess clears her throat.
“Your order will be ready in about five minutes. You can wait at the bar on the right side, and they’ll bring it out,” she tells us, and Duckie links his arm in mine.
“Have a great night,” Duckie tells them, dragging me away.
“Yeah, enjoy. The ribs here are the best. See you later,” I call back.
Duckie leans in close to my ear. “Dude, are you trying to get Misery-ed?”
“Get what now?”
“You know that old movie where the fan kidnaps their favorite author and ties them to a bed?”
I glance back at where Lion and Mary Beth huddle close, smiling and glancing our way.
“I can’t say I’d really mind if he tied me to a bed. He’s kind of hot.”
“Not exactly the brightest bulb in the box. But you just like that he is obsessed with you.”
“That’s not nice. He was sweet. You’re just pissed he wasn’t obsessed with you.”
“It’s weird. He didn’t look at me once. I swear his eyes were locked on you like you were a meal and he hadn’t eaten for a month.”
“Again, not a bad thing.”
Duckie nods, but I get the feeling he doesn’t agree. I know I’m right. There are way worse things in this world than being desired and my ex is one of them. We only dated for a few weeks at the beginning of last year, but it was the longest few weeks of my life. It’s funny how that works. A good week will fly past, but a bad one drags on forever. He was a drag, that is for sure. He loved to point out what I did wrong in games, like he knew baseball, even though he never spent a day on a field. Then he’d bag out my arms or my legs, saying I really needed more muscle if I was going to try to compete with the professionals. Yeah. I’ll take being desired by a gorgeous muscle man any day.
***
I manage to stay off my phone until I am home and on the couch with my order of ribs and two servings of mac and cheese in my lap. There are a lot of notifications to click through, more than normal, and as much as I want to check out all of them, I want to post first. Keeping my social media time-limited means that I don’t even go on to update my feed through the day, so I grab a selfie I took on the field after training and take a picture with my dinner, and a close-up of the food in my lap where you can see the restaurant bag in the background. I add all three pics then add a caption. Best start to the season ending with the best ribs in Savannah.
I shovel a mouthful of mac and cheese into my mouth, the creamy cheesy sauce coating my tongue in its deliciousness. The notifications are mostly reactions to my posts or other people’s comments, and I get through a serving of mac and cheese and half my ribs before I am through them all. But then another notification comes through. A comment on the post I just made. It’s Kittyball100, and they’ve shared a pic.
Totally agree! They’ve captioned their photo comment, and the image is of a table at The River Steakhouse with two plates of ribs and two bowls of mac and cheese. Could Kittyball100 be Lion?