13. Cj #3
Next to Chase, Mason Keller stared into the drink he held loosely in both hands.
Mason looked more worn than he should this early in the season, when it hadn’t been long enough for the grind to catch up with anyone yet.
But the heaviness in his shoulders suggested it was something else, and CJ thought about the rumblings he’d heard in the clubhouse.
Professional athletes were gossips, even if they pretended they weren’t, and CJ had heard the whispers the same way everyone else had.
The half-finished comments that died when someone walked by.
The conversations that shifted direction mid-sentence.
But no one ever said anything openly. There were just fragments, like the mention of Mason crashing on someone’s couch and the quiet speculation about problems at home.
One night, someone had murmured something about trouble in his marriage before quickly changing the subject.
Luis Alvarez sat beside Mason, halfway through a story about a video he’d seen online, reenacting it with his whole body like acting it out mattered as much as the punchline.
As he talked, his thigh stayed pressed against Mason’s under the table, casual and unselfconscious.
CJ noticed it immediately, and he waited for Mason to shift away. He didn’t.
CJ lifted his beer and took a long sip, draining a quarter of the glass as he let the cold cut through the noise in his head.
When he lowered the glass again, he glanced back toward Mason.
Mason caught his eye for a split second before dropping his gaze again, lifting his drink, and taking a careful sip that looked practiced and controlled.
The table was crowded enough that the contact could have been accidental. Knees and chairs bumped together as they all settled, but Luis never pulled back and Mason didn’t move away either. If anything, he leaned into it, like that quiet point of contact was holding him upright.
CJ glanced around reflexively, wondering if anyone else had noticed. If they had, no one cared.
Rizzo had already launched into an argument with Noah about music, gesturing wildly as he insisted some band from the early 2000s deserved more respect.
Noah listened with patient amusement, clearly unmoved, and CJ could tell by the twitch of Rizzo’s lips that he was deliberately trying to annoy the older man.
Chase leaned across the table toward CJ, laughing so hard he couldn’t get a word out. He simply shoved his phone across the table for CJ to see the video that had started the whole conversation.
Voices overlapped, glasses clinked, music hummed from somewhere overhead, and the noise of the bar filled the space between them.
Around the table, everyone else carried on like nothing unusual had happened.
CJ realized that maybe nothing had. When CJ looked back at Mason and Luis, something finally clicked.
He’d noticed the way the guys on this team stood closer, slung arms around shoulders, and hung off each other like they didn’t know the meaning of personal space.
But there wasn’t the calculation he’d been used to in Chicago, where there had been unspoken rules in the clubhouse and space was respected so much that there was an automatic distance between all of them.
Touch had been limited to high fives or quick butt pats that ended before anyone ever looked twice.
He’d assumed the looseness on this team was a West Coast thing, but really, they were just a group of guys who believed that being close to your friends didn’t require an explanation.
He’d spent years assuming everyone else was living like he was, keeping careful distance and making sure casual touches didn’t last long enough to invite a second look.
All this time, he’d told himself it was professionalism and being careful.
But watching Mason sitting there now with his thigh still pressed to Luis’s and more relaxed than before, CJ understood what he’d missed.
He took a drink and swallowed hard. Around the table, the conversation shifted again, and someone flagged down a server to order another round.
Rizzo leaned back in his chair, one arm slung lazily over the back of Noah’s seat, both of them entirely unbothered by the contact.
CJ felt his own shoulders tighten instinctively in a way he’d always thought was normal, and he forced himself to sit with the discomfort.
He wondered how many friendly moments he’d chosen to step away from out of fear.
Had he always been a loner, or had he kept every friendship just shallow enough to stay unseen?
Had he been quiet because that’s who he was, or because he’d convinced himself it was the smarter way to exist?
There was no way this train of thought was going to lead anywhere except to Evan.
Evan with his rigid posture and careful distance from everyone, who never lingered in the clubhouse or leaned too close to others in the dugout.
Evan who wore control like armor but called it discipline.
If CJ had been living this cautiously for the last seven years, maybe Evan had too.
Maybe even more so, after everything CJ had done.