Chapter 11
11
“I have a question for you.” Miles is seated next to me in the dugout, seemingly unbothered by the amount of Dodger Dog I’ve just stuffed into my face.
Upon my arrival, I assumed he’d been anticipating our little publicist-issued “playdate” as one might look forward to traffic school. But to my surprise, and my stomach’s delight, he arranged a picnic of sorts.
You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble were the words that came out of my mouth when I saw the gooey nachos drizzled with jalapenos and world-famous Dodger Dogs wrapped in foil. But if I could hear my eyes, I’m sure they’d have been screaming, Get in me now!
“Growing up, I was taught young to make sure a woman always had food options nearby…if she wants them,” he explained. And want them I did.
“Well, are you going to ask that question?” I ask now, before licking an escaped dollop of mustard from my mouth.
Miles shifts somewhat uncomfortably on the bench. “Do you like what you do?” he asks. “Your career I mean. Do you love it as much as you did when it was just a dream?”
I bristle a bit. Mainly because it’s a heavy topic to delve into while chewing a footlong. Also, because I try my best to avoid thinking about the answer. But something about the novelty of this thing happening with us, how after the video shoot we’ll probably never see or speak to each other again—it breeds a sense of freedom. Like, for once, the stakes here could be low. So this time, instead of thinking, I just speak.
“No.” The truth is out there now, irrevocably so. And suddenly, I’m rushing to catch my next breath—like I’ve taken even myself by surprise. I lock eyes with Miles, a veritable stranger to whom I’ve just confessed a point of deep sadness, and heat flames across the surface of my face. I have the odd sense that I might cry.
“I’m sorry,” he says, inching down the bench, then stopping himself mid-scoot. Probably thinking better of getting closer to me. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No, it’s okay.” I cut him off, figuring now’s a good time to set down the hot dog. Turning away from him to face the lit-up field, I wrap my fingers around the cool edge of the bench. “When I was a kid, I used to go around telling people that music was my first language,” I say, laughing at that little innocent Elladee. “Kids my age were either confused by the statement or they could not care less. Most adults thought it was cute, maybe mildly odd. Eventually, after telling me in no uncertain terms that it was not the case—my first word was ‘Barbie,’ go figure—my parents would just roll their eyes or change the subject.
“Well anyway, I spent so long loving this, this thing that everyone around me seemed mostly ambivalent about. I mean, sure, who doesn’t love music? But for me, it was a first love and a best friend all in one. So I went off to a college on the other side of the country where it seemed every single person around me was the opposite of ambivalent about this thing that I loved. You’d think I’d finally found my place, right?” I glance over now at Miles, who’s watching me so steadily I nearly lose my train of thought. Clearing my throat, I continue. “But it was like a holding pen—so stifling. I just wanted to get back here and do the thing. So I did come back. Then I met Elliot. And, as they say, the rest is history.”
It strikes me now that in a way, falling out of love with Elliot coincided with my falling out of love with being an artist. It also strikes me that I’ve basically just recited chapter one of a memoir to a guy who simply asked me if I like what I do. If it was in question before, it’s clear as day now that I am so not ready to get back out on the dating scene.
“I am… so sorry for dumping all of that on you,” I say, face flaming again. “Scratch all of it. Yes! I love what I do. I am…so…lucky. So…so privileged! Blessed, honestly. Won’t He do it?”
“Ella. Ella.” Miles cuts off my meltdown. “It’s okay. I was aiming for honesty, and that’s what you gave me. Doing what you love for a living has its own way of sucking the joy out of it. I can only imagine what it’s like when that love is tied up in someone else.”
For a second, it appears as if he’s got more to say on that train of thought. But he backs off it.
“I have to imagine it was that way for you to an extent, right?” I ask, feeling a little like I’m out on a ledge. “With your ex?”
“You could say that, I guess,” he says after a beat. “Baseball practically runs through Monica’s blood. Her dad, uncle, brothers…all of them at one point played in the minors or majors. In some ways she seemed more at home in a stadium than I am. But it’s not easy being the wife of a player. So, I can’t pretend it was all a walk in the park for her either.”
Even though I’m sure it’s entirely true—I have seen my share of WAGS episodes after all—to speak this way of the ex-spouse who carried on an affair with your teammate strikes me as…generous, to say the least. Especially after all the punches life threw Miles’s way in the aftermath of the big reveal. But here he is a year later appearing to be—dare I say, healed? And here I am, right in the thick of it, trying to fathom a day in the distant future when I’ll think of the years I spent with Elliot as anything other than stolen time I’ll never get back.
“You’re not angry anymore,” I say. And I’m as shocked that these words have escaped my thoughts as he seems to be, with the way his eyes spark in surprise.
He recovers quickly, though, shrugging it off. “I was never angry for the reasons people seemed to think I was.”
Thankfully, Miles fills the silence. “Can I ask you something kind of personal?”
My shoulders immediately tense. But I like talking to him, so I nod anyway.
“What was that? Onstage, with you and your—” He gets stuck just slightly on the last word, and I glance down, noticing him subtly tapping his leg.
Clearing my throat, I meet his eyes again. “That kiss from Elliot was a performance,” I provide. “He and I are getting a divorce. It’s just a lot of red tape and lawyers and…drama. I’m sure you get it.”
“Maybe a little too much,” he says, seemingly satisfied with my explanation. Then his face clouds over, like the memories of his own lengthy, very public divorce battle still linger too close to the surface. “They’ll tell you it gets easier,” he says. “But what they won’t say is that it gets harder first. This person you, at least at one point, vowed the rest of your life to suddenly starts acting like your enemy. Up is down.”
“But you’re used to that though,” I say. “Facing opponents.”
“You’d think so, yeah,” he replies. “But it’s a whole new ball game when it’s someone you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with. Someone who knows you better than anyone.” He laughs now, but without humor. “And to think for a minute I thought we could make it work.”
This makes me rear back a bit. I swallow my judgment, though, because I can see he’s judged himself enough.
“Foolish. I know.” He pauses, rubbing his forehead. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to make this about me. I just wanted to let you know I’ve been through what you’re about to go through and that you’ll get to the other side.”
For a few seconds I try to picture exactly that— the other side of all of this. But it’s too overwhelming. Because for the first time in a while, sitting here in this dugout, with this Dodger Dog and these fake cheese nachos, I’m not in a rush to be anywhere else.