19. Cj
CJ
He woke before his alarm to the sound of someone moving in his kitchen. For one disorienting second, he thought someone had broken in, then he heard the coffeemaker sputtering to life and the clink of a mug against the counter. A cabinet door closed too loudly and a soft curse followed.
Evan.
It was six-thirty on a Thursday morning at the end of June.
They had a late-afternoon game against Boston later, and CJ should have been annoyed that he’d been woken before he absolutely needed to be.
Instead, he smiled and rolled out of bed, dragged on a pair of shorts, and padded barefoot down the hall.
Evan stood at the counter in gray joggers and an old Chicago Blazers T-shirt that CJ was pretty sure Evan thought was his now because he’d stolen it three weeks ago and never returned it.
His curls were standing up in several directions, and he was glaring down at his coffee mug like it had offended him somehow.
“You know,” CJ said, his voice still rough with sleep. “Most people would just give up trying to make themselves like coffee.”
Evan jumped hard enough to nearly spill the hot liquid. “Jesus Christ.”
CJ grinned. “Morning.”
“I’m getting you a bell.”
“You’re no fun.”
Evan narrowed his eyes and handed him a mug. “Drink your terrible black coffee and shut up.”
CJ took the cup and let his fingers brush Evan’s.
Evan’s gaze flicked up and then away, and CJ took a sip of coffee to keep from sighing.
There were some mornings when he was still skittish in the little moments, and CJ knew he had more work to do to prove that Evan could trust his touch.
This was one of them and, not for the first time, CJ wished he could read Evan’s mind.
He leaned against the counter and eyed Evan over the rim of his mug as he took another sip.
“You spending the night tonight?”
Evan shrugged. “Depends.”
“On?”
“How annoying you are.”
“So you’re definitely leaving early.”
That earned him the ghost of a smile. It wasn’t much, but CJ would take anything Evan gave him now.
The thing neither of them would admit was that Evan had already stayed at CJ’s four nights this week.
And neither would acknowledge that there was a drawer in CJ’s bathroom that held Evan’s toothbrush, deodorant, and a T-shirt Evan claimed he’d left by accident, even as more of his items had quietly appeared there.
The thing neither of them would say aloud was that this had started to feel like something dangerously close to the start of a life.
A hidden, private life, but a life all the same.
They still arrived at the stadium separately, but that was a habit built more from convenience than caution.
They both had pregame routines they refused to stray from.
Evan came in early, when the clubhouse was still quiet and the pregame flurry of activity hadn’t started yet.
CJ usually rolled in later, loudly greeting anyone who crossed his path.
They walked through different doors when they could, took separate routes through the stadium when they had to hit the field, and did their best to avoid giving anyone an easy headline.
But distance became harder to maintain the deeper they got into the season, and sometime over the last month, they had built a careful, public version of friendship.
CJ had spent the better part of the spring trying to get Evan to even look at him, and Evan had barely been able to manage politeness.
Every exchange had been sharp and pointed.
Questions had been answered in clipped syllables, and conversations only happened out of obligation and had ended as soon as humanly possible.
If they’d been assigned to the same drill group, the tension had been visible from across the field, and the rest of the team had learned quickly not to joke about it.
Even players who weren’t aware that CJ and Evan had known each other in college could tell there was some sort of history.
Now, they leaned against the dugout railing together during games and CJ made Evan laugh between innings. Though Evan still took the game too seriously most days, so when it happened, it was still a shock.
Mason had nearly dropped a pouch of sunflower seeds the first time he heard it.
Luis had crossed himself dramatically and declared, “A miracle has occurred.”
And once, during a game, Coach Reyes had looked over to see Evan grinning at something CJ said and muttered, “Well, I guess hell froze over.”
In meetings, they sat together now, and CJ kept up a running commentary under his breath that made Evan almost choke from trying to swallow his laughter.
During batting practices, Evan heckled CJ’s swings with devastating, deadpan precision while CJ returned fire loud enough for half the field to hear.
They gravitated toward the same table at meals too, usually with a rotating cast of teammates who kept everything casual. Deniable.
CJ would slide into the chair across from Evan with his tray, and Evan would barely glance up.
He might grunt in acknowledgment, and once, he shoved the salt across the table to CJ without him asking for it.
Their conversations were very carefully directed at their teammates.
Then, twenty minutes later, they’d be bickering over whether pineapple belonged anywhere near food, arguing over which Star Wars movie was better, or loudly debating which rookie on their team had the worst walk-up song.
To anyone looking, it was nothing more than former college teammates reconnecting and figuring out a new friendship. Nothing to see there at all.
Except CJ noticed how often Evan’s knee would nudge his under the table and then never move away.
He noticed the way Evan would grab an extra fork because it was inevitable that CJ would forget one.
And when the clubhouse was filled with bodies and noise, CJ knew Evan would track him instinctively because some part of him seemed to always be aware of where CJ was.
CJ slid into the seat beside Evan like he did every other day.
Evan didn’t look up right away, his attention focused on the tablet propped against his water bottle, and CJ studied him for a minute.
Moments like this still caught him off guard sometimes.
If someone had told him at the start of spring training that he would be sitting this close to Evan—that Evan would allow him to sit this close—CJ would have laughed in their face.
Now he knew Evan’s lunch routine. He knew that Evan always sat with his back to the wall if he could help it, and that he ate faster when he was annoyed and slower when he was distracted.
And he could tell from across the room when Evan was deep into film study because he gnawed on his bottom lip while his left thumb tapped an offbeat rhythm against the edge of the tablet.
He knew too many things. Like the fact that Evan being distracted was the perfect time to steal some fries from his plate.
Evan frowned at the tablet before rewinding it back to look at the pitcher’s release point, and CJ took the opportunity to reach over and steal a fry. Evan stilled, then slowly turned his head to look at CJ.
“Really?”
CJ shrugged and popped the fry in his mouth. “You didn’t seem like you were gonna eat it.”
“I was,” Evan exclaimed. “It was on my plate.”
“That doesn’t mean you were going to eat it.”
Evan stared at him for another second, then shook his head and turned back to the tablet. “You’re insufferable.”
CJ reached for another fry. This time, Evan smacked the back of his hand without looking, and CJ barked out a laugh that was loud enough to draw a glance from Mason and Luis, who were sitting two tables over. He grinned at them before turning to Evan.
“You hit me.”
“You were stealing.”
“It’s not stealing because we know each other.” The reasoning was sound in CJ’s mind.
Evan’s mouth twitched before he got it under control. “That’s not how theft works.”
“It is in friendship law.”
“There’s no such thing as friendship law.” Evan turned off the tablet with a sigh and turned his full attention to CJ.
“There should be,” CJ said with a serious nod. “I think I’m entitled to shared assets.”
“You’re entitled to getting your own lunch,” Evan retorted.
CJ grinned and settled back in his chair.
He shouldn’t be this happy over snarky banter, but it was ridiculous how much he enjoyed these small exchanges.
To anyone else, it looked like nothing more than two teammates arguing over fries, but to CJ, it was proof that something broken could be rebuilt. Hopefully stronger.
Evan looked at him suspiciously and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you smiling like that?”
“No reason.” CJ smiled innocently.
“That’s never true.”
A chair scraped across the linoleum opposite them, and Rizzo sat down without invitation. He held a chocolate protein shake in one hand and wore the kind of smug expression that CJ had learned meant Rizzo knew something no one else did. CJ’s stomach dropped.
Rizzo was incredibly talented on the field, but his real gift was his ability to read people.
CJ had spent a lifetime hiding pieces of himself, and Rizzo had seen through it all within weeks during spring training.
The thought of Rizzo seeing something they were working so hard to keep hidden sent a familiar wave of defensiveness through CJ before he could stop it.
It was an old instinct he was still learning to fight after years of measuring glances, correcting body language without thinking, and understanding how quickly something private could become public if the wrong person noticed the right detail.
Don’t look guilty. Don’t overreact. Don’t make anything obvious. Don’t give anyone anything that could be used against you. All of that would have been easy advice to follow if Rizzo didn’t look like a man who’d just solved the world’s greatest mystery.