Chapter 15
Miller
Vai’s torture works.
I’m back on top after two games. Three double plays in the first, and two home runs in the second.
Yas texts me the photo from the grocery store, a link to the SportsCentre highlights from last night, and some article about me setting a new standard for being good on both sides of the ball.
Keep it up and you might be the hottest player of the week—on and off the field.
I hit her with a thumbs-up and ignore the highlights and the article.
Those types of things are usually accompanied by discussions about Matt.
I do check the comments under the photo from the grocery store.
Nothing about Matt. A lot of things about me I’m used to seeing, that I might have gotten a kick out of before. But things about Ren, too.
The usual: Who is she, what a meet cute, internet sleuths identifying her as the collections manager at The Royal, and claims calling paleontology the next big thing.
The unusual: The tightness in my chest that’s usually reserved for the absence of Matt tugging taut when I see comments about how beautiful she is.
She is. No doubting that. Most beautiful woman I’ve seen in real life.
But it’s the way that tightness cracks a rib, breaks it, sharpens the edge, and gets ready to defend her from the anonymous commenters of the internet, because she’s mine.
Even if we’re just friends. She feels private. The first thing I’ve hoped for and looked forward to in a long time.
I look forward to seeing her today, too. Back in the stands for the last game in this series. The idea of playing really, really well in front of her appeals to me in a way that makes me feel a bit like a sixteen-year-old boy again.
That part of me wants to wave to her, manically, like I did when I was ten, and Matty and I were playing on the 13U AAA team, and we’d spot his parents in the stands.
But I try to act like a twenty-seven-year-old and move through my stretches instead of watching like a hawk to see when she sits down.
I’m finishing my lateral lunges when Joel finds me, stretching his throwing arm across his chest.
He grins down at me, a hand above his eyes to block the sun, drawing a shadow across the deep, bronzed brown of his skin. “Girl from the game is here again. They put her on the screen. Sat in your seats with a friend.”
My chest constricts again, and I imagine a weird sort of war for space going on in there.
The absence of Matt being pushed out, made smaller, maybe, by the enormity of having a friend like her.
I cut him a sideways glance, pushing my palm into my thigh to try and deepen my stretch. “She’s got a name.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
I breathe out, leaning further into my lunge before switching sides. Her name comes out rough—entirely unlike the woman who belongs to it. “Ren.”
“Pretty name,” he muses, nodding.
“What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be in the bullpen?” I dig my elbow into my thigh, wincing.
“Just finished warming up. But wanted to come say thanks for the other night. For cleaning up after my shitty pitching.” He cringes, running a hand along the back of his neck.
“I know we talked about it in the team meeting. I know that’s your job.
But I hold myself to a higher standard than that.
And I know we need to look good coming off the World Series .
. . and there are other . . . things I need to live up to. ”
I don’t miss the way his eyes shift to Matt’s retired number, hanging from a banner along the roof of the stadium.
“All good.” I exhale, sidestepping. I talked about Matty with Ren, but I’m not sure I want to talk about him with the guy who has his old job. I walk my feet together, popping up to stand. “Double plays are a pitcher’s best friend. Might as well make use of them when they happen.”
Joel snorts dryly. “That’s what they say, anyway.” He claps my shoulder before tipping his chin towards the stands. “You should go say hi before the first pitch.”
“Shouldn’t you be telling me to focus and get my head in the game?”
“Bit hard when they keep panning to her and everyone seems to be waiting with bated breath to see what happens next.” He points towards the screen, and the magnified version of Ren who sits there, blushing, sinking lower in her seat while she whispers behind her hand to her friend from the museum.
Joel lifts his hand, jogging backwards towards the dugout. “See you in a few. Good game, yeah?”
I nod, tugging on the ends of my hair before I tip my head back up to the screen. When I do, the camera pans to me looking up at her.
Olson should give the production crew a raise.
Everyone in the stands loves it.
They love it even more when I raise my gloved hand in acknowledgement and jog over to the infield wall.
“No hot dogs?” I clap my glove against the top of the wall.
Ren wrinkles her nose through a smile before she shakes her head. “No. I heard a rumour the other night that the best ones in the city were outside the stadium. So, you know, as scientists and researchers”—she waves between her and a wide-eyed Imani—“we had to see if we could substantiate it.”
“And?” A grin tilts up the corners of my mouth, and I tug on the laces of my glove, waiting.
She flashes two fingers, shrugging one shoulder. “Second place, I think.”
“Oh yeah? Where do you get the first-place hot dog in the city?”
Ren lifts a brow. “Heard there are some really great ones outside the Danforth GO.”
My chest swells. “Yeah, heard those were pretty good, too.” My gaze swings to Imani, and I point at her with my glove. “And what did you think? As a scientist.”
“I didn’t drop it.” Imani frowns, fiddling with the frays on her denim shorts. “So, that’s already skewing the experience towards the positive.”
“Sturdier bun, maybe.” Ren flicks up a finger like she’s come up with some ground-breaking hypothesis.
“Great theory.” I point my glove towards the margarita perspiring in the cupholder of Ren’s chair. “Careful with that. You’re wearing my spare jersey.”
Slim fingers pluck at the jersey, right above the emblem.
“Don’t worry. Adults don’t spill.” She cocks her head, hair tumbling down from her shoulder.
“But they do offer good-luck high fives to their adult friends before their big games. Especially when they’re broadcast on the screen for the whole stadium to see. ”
She points towards the screen, but she leans forward in her seat, closer to the infield wall. I don’t check to see that the camera’s still on us. She blinks up at me, and for the first time I notice these flecks of gold and white scattered in her eyes.
Really, really, fucking beautiful, I think, when I hold up my hand and her palm meets mine.
I can’t hear the resounding slap over the screaming of the crowd and this noise of the wildly swinging broken rib and her, taking up more and more space in my chest.
I try not to look at Ren or do anything stupid like I might have in the past. Old Miller would have pointed at her or taken some dumb showboating run up to the wall after flipping his bat in a stupid display that would have probably driven the crowd wild.
But I stay on top during that third game. Another double play, another home run, and we sweep the series.
It’s like that all the next week for the away series, too. And even though she’s nowhere to be found in the seats, it does feel a bit like she’s there in the stadium with me.
Think she’s building walls of a house in my chest, actually. Might even be constructing some sort of shelf or bench where it’s safe for Matty to sit.
She’s definitely on my phone. We text the entire week, trading pictures of fossils and the field. She tells me dumb jokes, and I tell her more and more about Matty. Hurts a bit less, each time I do.
She sends me links to articles and photos about us online, and says she deserves all the credit for me being named the hottest player of the week.
My aunt and uncle try to call me. I don’t answer, I’m not brave enough for that yet, but I do text back. More than I have in months. They ask me about the beautiful redhead from the game, and I’m not sure how to describe Ren to anyone, even myself, so I just send them a picture of the stadium.
Yas forwards me every single positive article from online gossip columns and even the ones from SportsCentre, proclaiming me to be back on top when everyone thought the death of Matt might be the death of my career, too.
It’s nice, if people stay off my back because they think Ren and I are dating.
It’ll be nice if I can leave it all behind, even though that might be the cowardly thing to do. Even though, maybe, there’d be things worth staying for.
Yas calls me the night before we’re set to fly home again to tell me she thinks things are looking promising. That she and Shay talked to Olson, and every day he seems more and more amenable to the idea of trading me. Especially when my value skyrockets with my stats.
That’s nice, too.
But nice isn’t all Ren is.
She’s room to breathe because, maybe, the press have finally untied their noose.
She’s hands brushing down my spine, telling me it’s okay to stand properly, and those same hands catch all the shit that sits so heavy on my shoulders when it starts to fall to the ground, so it doesn’t bury me.
She’s not a distraction or a smoke screen or whatever PR relationship Yas thought she could cook up that could secure a good trade or maybe brand deals and partnerships and all kinds of sponsorship money.
Matt died on the water. It didn’t take him from me, exactly. But I think, it took me from me. That when he went to sleep forever, I slipped under and I did, too.
Until a woman a bit like the sun started shining down and whispered to me that it was safe to swim for the surface.