CHAPTER 18
I grab a spare toothbrush from my medicine cabinet and an old t-shirt from my dresser. Ignoring the box labeled OLIVER in blocky permanent marker that lurks on the top shelf in the corner of my closet, I snag a hoodie that’s been worn down to the perfect stretch and softness, knowing full well that I may never get it back. The light blinks out, and I close the door, promising myself to get rid of that final box. Soon. After the season ends, whether or not we make it to October.
Off-key Latin pop pulls me from my self-pity and thoughts of what might have been. The guest bedroom is empty, and I follow the sound to the sliding screen door that opens onto the patio. Ramirez sits with her feet in the small pool and her face turned up to catch the moonlight streaming between passing clouds. Her ponytail sways to the beat of her own endearingly terrible singing.
“Thank god you pitch better than you sing,” I tease to announce my presence in the doorway.
“Well, I haven’t heard you do any better.”
She says it with a grin that shouldn’t affect me. We’re teammates, nothing more, and it shouldn’t make my breath catch when she turns to face me in nothing but those compression shorts and sports bra.
There’s nothing overtly sexual about it. The bra is meant for business; it isn’t some low-cut band with more straps than support. Tight spandex presses against her chest and digs into her flesh where her lats flare beneath her arms. Thick, practical straps are snug against her traps. There’s not a millimeter of cleavage in sight.
But the white spandex is a bright contrast against brown skin that’s radiant in the moonlight. Her stomach is nearly flat, with both a hint of abs and a little roll of fat where the wide band of her shorts squeezes just below her navel. The bricks lining the water’s edge dig into thighs built by and for sprinting. The definition in her shoulders catches the glow of the pool lights when she leans back and braces herself on those long, lean arms. As a light fog begins to roll in, she is a creature of wide-eyes and hard-earned muscles.
I clear my throat and hold up the neat pile in my arms. Towels, clothes, toothbrush. Everything she needs to get her through the night. Everything I need to hand off, so I can make it to my own bed before I make a fool of myself.
“You’re going to look ridiculous with my shorts hanging down to your calves, but at least they’re comfy.” I say it just to say something. Anything to break the tension that exists nowhere but within my own mind when she stands and brushes the dirt from the sort of shorts I would love to appreciate if she were anyone else.
“I really just need the shirt.”
“Well–” I set the pile down on the dresser near the door. I’m not sure which takes more effort–not wincing, or not thinking about what she’d look like wearing nothing but my shirt. “Sleep tight.”
“You’re going to bed?”
“When you’re old enough to rent a car, come talk to me about staying up all night before batting practice.” I laugh, until the laughter stabs that painful spot at my low back.
“Still hurts, doesn’t it?”
She points vaguely at my side, but she’s made no move to come to the door. Her foot, pointed with all the grace of a ballerina instead of a ballplayer, traces the outline of the bricks, and I’m not sure she even realizes she’s doing it. But my gaze won’t stop dropping. Entranced by the silver gleam of water dripping along the curve of her calf, gliding down her shin, teasing the hollow at her ankle, tickling the pale arch of her foot.
“Nothing a full night of sleep won’t fix,” I say, but I still haven’t made any move to walk away. As if I’m stuck at this door until she releases me, and I don’t have any idea how I expect her to set me free.
The way she rolls her eyes should be a reminder of exactly how much younger she is than me. Instead, I find myself trying not to smile.
“You have a whole hot tub sitting right there, Reyes. You don’t think that would help?”
I don’t tell her that I’d already have been in it, if she hadn’t agreed to stay.
“Is that your way of asking permission to use it?” I ask. “I already told you to make yourself at home.”
“Are you so difficult with everyone, or only your teammates?”
I bristle, but she doesn’t notice. Old ghosts accuse me of being too distant, too cold, too focused. Too difficult. She’s poked at yet another wound–cracked another well of emotions that I can never quite bury deep enough–but she’s already turned. I stare at her back and force my expression to stay just as calm and aloof as I have so often been accused of being.
Still, I’m rooted in that place. Staring at her. For the first time in a long while, my hurt over those memories of the worst between Oliver and me is eclipsed by something other than baseball and my family.
I should walk away before I start thinking about why.
“Are you coming, or are you just going to stand there scowling? You know, you don’t have to pretend to be in charge once you’re off the diamond, don’t you? Captain?”
The taunt shouldn’t work.
Every muscle in her back flexes as she removes the cover with ease. Moonlight ripples in the peaks and valleys between her shoulders and pools in the dimples peeking just above the waist of her shorts. She hurries up the steps and lowers herself into the water with a groan of appreciation. I’m frozen, watching water splash against the edge as she leans into the corner and rests her chin on crossed arms.
“I forgot my water.”
She says it so simply that it breaks the spell. I suck my teeth and feign annoyance, but I take a step onto the wood deck that has long since released the heat of the day. Grateful she left her glass on the table beside mine, I grab the cups without having to bend over.
She reaches out and accepts both without a word. When she sips from the glass, I’m positive is mine and glances at my hoodie expectantly, I throw caution to the wind.
It’s just a hot tub. She’s just a teammate. Neither of us is thinking about that almost moment in the elevator.
Taking off the hoodie is easy. I hesitate with my thumbs in my waistband. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before. She sat there while I was in my underwear in the ice bath without so much as a glance, a blush, or a joke. Ramirez looks at her watch, and I’m not sure if she’s rushing me or giving me an illusion of privacy. Either way, I acquiesce. I drop my joggers and step out of them, hoping I’ll feel well enough after a half-hour in front of high-pressure jets to pick them up without ending up on my knees in pain.
I’m tempted to rush. To hide my near nakedness beneath the water as quickly as possible, but I take the stairs slowly. The last thing I need is an injury getting in and out of the hot tub to end a season with a shot at the playoffs. I almost moan when the heat immerses my knees. The first splash of water against my stomach and back scalds in the best way. I sink into the corner seat and sigh when the jets hit my back.
“Isn’t that better?”
“Are you always such a smartass?”
“Only when I need to be.”
She glides through the water to balance both glasses on the edge of the spa cover. The tip of her ponytail drags through the water, and before I’ve made a conscious decision to move, I’m at the edge of my seat, hand raised behind her, wrapping thick, black hair around my fingers. I begin to lose myself in the feeling of silk against my skin, of hot water catching the evening air and cooling as it trails from her hair down my forearm, and I’m still holding her locks free of the bubbling surface when she turns back to face me.
“I know how much my sister hates when her hair accidentally gets wet.”
I’m not sure why I say that. Maybe what Ramirez said earlier is true; maybe I’m trying to distance myself again. To hide myself from the intimacy of the gesture while she is still standing so close my knees are nearly brushing her legs.
“Is she your only sibling?”
She stands clear of the bubbles, but I don’t slide away when my hand falls back into my own lap. I tell her about Nessa and Leila and watch the way droplets spill from the hollow of her throat to disappear behind her sports bra. My sentences are blessedly smooth, no words tripping on my tongue as I realize the water has turned the white spandex not quite sheer over brown nipples that have already hardened from the contrast between water and air.
I don’t falter until Oliver almost finds his way into the conversation. On clumsy syllables, I dance away from his memories–from the place he still holds in my life and my family. She raises her brows but lets me change the subject to her own family. If any ghosts from her past continue to haunt her, she steers clear of them more skillfully than I did.
Steam curls the flyaway hairs around her face. Even in this turmoil of steam and chlorine, I can smell the strawberry on her skin. Now that my pain has faded to the background, to a dull throb that doesn’t threaten to double me over if I so much as think of breathing too deeply, her scent is overwhelming in an entirely different way.
“Would you relax already?” Ramirez interrupts her own story about watching her mom play her last game in the fastpitch pro league. When I’m clearly unsure how to respond, she rolls her eyes again.
And plants one hand on my chest.
Her fingers splay from collarbone to collarbone, the curve of thumb and slender forefinger bracketing the base of my throat. I wonder if she can feel the change in my heartbeat.
I’m still trying to find something clever and appropriately irritated to say when she pushes.