Chapter 4
Beck wore the black button-down because it was Friday.
He told himself it was because he hadn't worn it yet this week. He told himself that while he ironed it, something he hadn't done to a shirt in three years. He told himself that while he stood in the bathroom of the rental and decided not to put a hat on his hair.
Hudson watched him from the bedroom doorway.
"Don't," Beck said.
Hudson's tail moved once.
"I'm not dressing up. This is just a shirt."
Hudson put his chin on the floor and kept watching.
Beck drove to Sailor Jon's at seven thirty.
The lot was half full. Luke's truck. Brady's truck.
A few others he was starting to recognize.
The string lights on the eaves were on and the windows were warm and the sound from inside was the Friday sound, fuller than Wednesday, the island coming together at the end of the week.
He walked in. No hat. The curls were doing whatever they were going to do and he'd made peace with that.
Luke was in the booth. Brady across from him. Morgan beside Brady, her hand on his arm, telling a story that involved hand gestures and what appeared to be an impression of someone who wasn't present. Addison was tucked against Luke's side, a margarita in front of her, salt on the rim.
Beck scanned the bar.
Jon was behind it. Khaki shorts, Hawaiian shirt, pouring a draft with the easy rhythm of a man who'd been pouring drafts since before Beck was born. A younger guy Beck didn't recognize was running food from the kitchen.
Kirstin wasn't there.
He scanned the rail. The well. The back hallway toward the kitchen. The tables. She wasn't there.
"Beck!" Luke raised a hand. "Get over here."
Beck crossed the room. Slid into the booth next to Luke. Addison leaned forward and studied him with an expression that said she'd noticed every detail of his appearance and would be discussing them with Morgan later.
"You ironed that shirt," she said.
"No I didn't."
"You absolutely ironed that shirt."
"It came like this."
"Luke, he ironed a shirt."
"I can see that," Luke said.
Beck picked up the menu. "What's good tonight?"
"The shrimp," Brady said. "Always the shrimp."
"And the grouper," Morgan said. "But you're not here for the grouper."
Morgan waited. He could feel her waiting, a pitch already in the wind-up.
"She's not here," Morgan said.
"Who?"
Morgan glanced at Addison. Addison studied her margarita. Brady took a drink of his Diet Mountain Dew.
"Okay," Beck said.
"She took the night off," Morgan said.
"That's fine."
"Is it?"
"It's a free country. People take nights off."
"You ironed a shirt."
"I iron all my shirts."
"You wore a hat on Wednesday."
Beck set the menu down. "Can I order food, or is this going to continue?"
"It's going to continue," Morgan said. "But you can also order food."
He ordered the shrimp. He drank a Dos Equis. He talked to Luke about the facility and to Brady about the morning's throwing session and to Addison about Riley/Banks and the fall festival Morgan was already planning. He laughed at the right times. He ate. He was fine.
He wasn't fine.
He'd walked into the bar looking for a woman who wasn't there and everyone at the table knew it and he knew they knew it and the Dos Equis was cold and the shrimp was good and Kirstin Green had taken the night off on the one night he'd told her he was coming back.
Morgan's phone buzzed at nine fifteen.
She read the text. Her face changed. A shift around the eyes, a tightening at the mouth that was trying not to be something else. She turned to Brady. Brady glanced at her phone. Then at Luke.
"Party's moving," Morgan said. "Everybody up. Let's go."
"Where?" Brady said.
"Pit Stop."
Luke reached for his beer and finished it.
"Oh hell," a voice said from the end of the bar. Brent, standing with Ashley, both of them in the middle of closing their tab. "We're out. Early morning."
"Understood," Luke said.
Brent shook Beck's hand on his way past. Ashley touched his arm once, brief and warm. "Have fun," she said, and her tone suggested she knew exactly what kind of fun was coming and was grateful not to be present for it.
"What's the Pit Stop?" Beck asked.
Luke grinned. "Education."
Addison was already on her phone. "I'm calling Ray. Tell him to bring the van at two."
"Two AM?" Beck said.
"You'll understand when we get there," Brady said.
They took two trucks. Beck rode with Luke and Addison.
Brady and Morgan followed. The drive was three minutes, past the strip, down a side road Beck hadn't noticed, through a stand of palmettos that opened into a gravel lot packed with cars and a building that had started as a warehouse and become something louder.
The bass hit him before he opened the door.
Kirstin was at the bar with a vodka soda and her hair down and the white top she'd bought in Savannah two months ago and hadn't worn yet.
Fitted, thin straps, the kind of thing you put on and stand in front of the mirror for a full minute before you decide yes.
She'd paired it with jeans and heels, which was a decision, because Kirstin Green didn't wear heels unless she meant something by it.
The top was not for Ethan Beck.
The top was for her.
The fact that she'd texted Morgan after putting it on was unrelated.
The Pit Stop was full. Friday full, packed enough that the floor moved and the bar was three deep and the music was loud enough that conversation required proximity and proximity required a decision about how close you wanted to be to whoever you were talking to.
The DJ had been playing island funk and nineties R&B for the last hour and the floor was packed and Kirstin had been here since eight thirty, two vodka sodas in, feeling more like herself than she had all week.
This was her other place. Jon's was work.
The beach was quiet. The Pit Stop was the part of herself that didn't belong behind a bar or on a porch or in a box in the second bedroom closet.
This was the Kirstin who danced. Who dressed up.
Who stayed out until Ray's van came at two and took everyone home.
She saw Luke first. Cap backward, Addison's hand in his.
Then Brady, Morgan beside him, already reading the room.
Then Beck, behind them, stepping through the door in a black button-down with his sleeves pushed up and his hair loose and no hat and an expression that said he'd never been here before and was already enjoying himself.
His eyes landed on hers across the room.
She held her drink and didn't move.
He didn't come to her. He went to the bar with Luke and Brady and ordered a beer and stood there and let the room hit him.
The music, the crowd, the energy of an island bar that wasn't Sailor Jon's, a place where nobody cared about his shoulder or his stat line or his batting average or which pitch to swing at.
He was just tall and dark-haired and present and the black shirt was doing something she wasn't going to think about.
Morgan appeared at her elbow.
"You're wearing the Savannah top."
"I felt like it."
"Uh huh."
"Morgan."
"Third one."
"Third what?"
"Third 'uh huh' this week. I'm keeping count."
Kirstin took a drink. "You brought him."
"I brought everyone. He's part of everyone now."
"Since when?"
"Since his dog picked me over him in a parking lot."
Addison arrived on her other side. Three women at a bar. Addison in black, Morgan in something red that Brady was going to spend the rest of the night being aware of, Kirstin in white. Three women who could stop a room and knew it and didn't care, equally and completely.
"He ironed the shirt," Addison said.
"He told me he didn't," Morgan said.
"He's lying."
"I know."
"Can we stop talking about his shirt?" Kirstin said.
"No," they said together.
Luke came through the crowd with drinks. A beer for himself, a margarita for Addison, a vodka soda he handed to Kirstin.
"From Beck," Luke said.
"I didn't ask for a drink."
"He didn't ask if you wanted one."
She took the glass. Their fingers didn't touch.
Luke was already gone, back into the crowd, finding Brady.
The vodka soda was cold and correct and she hated that he'd gotten the order right because it meant he'd asked someone, probably Morgan, and Morgan had told him, and Morgan telling him was Morgan drawing the play on the whiteboard and letting Beck run it.
She was going to kill her.
Later.
The group pulled together at a high-top near the edge of the floor.
Close enough to the speakers that talking required leaning in.
Beck ended up next to Kirstin because the table was round and Morgan and Addison had taken the other side and there was exactly one open spot and it was beside her and this wasn't an accident.
His arm was next to hers on the table. Not touching. Close.
"You think I was gonna spend a Friday night where I work?" she said.
He turned his head. Close. "I didn't know what to think."
"You thought I was avoiding you."
"Were you?"
"No."
"Then what?"
Her eyes went to the floor. Bodies moving. The DJ had shifted to something slower, a song with weight in the bass line and space in the melody.
"I don't do flings, Beck."
The noise around them kept going. The table kept going. Luke was saying something to Brady. Morgan was laughing at something Addison said. The Pit Stop kept being the Pit Stop. But the space between Beck and Kirstin went quiet.
"Who said anything about a fling?" he said.
"You're here for twelve weeks."
"I'm here for twelve weeks right now. I don't know where I'll be after that."
"Yes you do. You'll be in Atlanta. Or on the road. Or in a broadcast booth. Or wherever baseball players go when they're done pretending they like small towns."
"I'm not pretending."
"You've been here four days."
"I ironed a shirt."
That almost got her. Almost.
"That doesn't mean anything."
"I ironed a shirt I haven't touched in three years.
I drove to a bar where you weren't there.
I came to a place I've never been because a text told me you were here.
I left my dog at home. I didn't wear a hat.
" He leaned a little closer. "You want me to keep going or do you want to tell me what you're actually afraid of? "
She looked at him. Brown eyes, almost black. The five o'clock shadow. The curls falling across his forehead because there was no hat to hold them back. The right shoulder sitting just slightly different from the left, the only part of him that wasn't exactly where he wanted it to be.
"I'm afraid you're going to leave," she said.
The words came out simple. No edge. No comedy. No bar between them.
Beck held her gaze.
"I'm afraid of that too," he said. "But not how you mean."
The DJ changed the song. Something with a guitar and a beat that moved through the floor and into the soles of your shoes.
Morgan stood up. Pulled Brady with her. Luke was already on his feet, Addison's hand in his.
The floor opened up and the music hit the right register and the room shifted from drinking to dancing and the four of them were gone, into it, leaving Beck and Kirstin alone at the table.
"You gonna stand there or you coming to dance?" she said.
"I thought you didn't date baseball players."
"I'm not asking you on a date. I'm asking you to dance."
He stood up. She stood up. The white top and the heels and the hair down and his eyes went to all of it and came back and she saw him do it and she let him see her see him do it.
They walked to the floor.
The music was loud and the bass was deep and the Pit Stop was the Pit Stop and Kirstin Green hadn't danced with anyone in a long time and Ethan Beck hadn't danced with anyone who mattered in longer.
He could move.
She'd expected coordination. He was a professional athlete.
Coordination was in the contract. But Beck didn't move like an athlete on a dance floor.
He moved like a man who loved music and had a body that listened to it.
The center fielder's feet, the ones that covered ground in every direction, the ones that turned on fly balls and closed gaps and made the game look easy.
Those feet knew what to do with a beat. He didn't dance at her. He danced with her.
Kirstin had been dancing at the Pit Stop since she was twenty-one. She knew what she was doing on a floor. She'd never danced with a man who moved like Beck. Fluid. Easy. Aware of where she was without grabbing for her.
They danced.
The floor was full. Luke and Addison were somewhere in it, moving together with the shorthand of two bodies that had memorized each other. Brady and Morgan were somewhere else, Morgan leading, Brady letting her, his hands on her waist while she did whatever she wanted with the rest of herself.
Beck and Kirstin were in the middle. They'd started with distance.
A foot between them, then less, then less.
The music kept going and the distance kept closing and at some point his hand came to her hip and she let it stay and at some point she put her hand on his chest and felt him breathing through the black cotton and at some point the foot between them disappeared and there was no space left and the music was the only thing holding them together and the music was the only thing they needed.
He leaned down. His mouth near her ear.
"I'm not leaving," he said.
She could feel the words against her skin.
She put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him closer and they danced until Ray's van came at two.