19. HOPE
CHAPTER 19
HOPE
A my’s first reaction when I started working for the Orlando Wild was gasping and saying, “Oh my gosh, you’re going to be surrounded by so many hot men all the time! ” Followed by squealing.
What she didn’t know is that the hot men are sweaty all the time . With sweat comes a certain stink that you can’t unlearn, and some of them don’t shower properly so they have some B.O. that clings to them on and off the field. That’s aside from how rank their uniforms and equipment get with use. This one time I made the mistake of cutting through the laundry area, and I haven’t recovered yet.
And oh, guess what, Amy? Some of them fart while exercising. Sometimes a lot. I’m not gonna judge them for that because hey, so do I—so does everyone with intestines—but sometimes they compete over whose fart stinks the worst like middle school children. And sometimes such competitions make it really hard to breathe in here.
Like right now. O’Brian’s face is redder than usual for an elite athlete who is only doing the last stretches for the day before hitting the showers, which very clearly signals him as the culprit.
Lucky Rivera can’t stop coughing beside him because he was probably the receiver of the worst of it, and I never thought I’d feel this bad for the bubbly guy.
“Dude can you just point your gas hole in literally any other direction?” Lucky demands, pointing toward the window.
“Sorry, man. The breakfast burrito must’ve been kinda stale.”
Somehow I find the strength in myself not to gag.
What probably saves me is that I get distracted by one of the younger guys half assing his stretches. I march over to him, thankfully removing myself from the area with the biohazard, and say, “You really need to get that full extension in. Otherwise you’re teaching your muscles to stay tight. Like this.” I sit down on the mat beside him, spreading my legs wide and reach for my big toes with both hands. “And then hold for thirty seconds at least.”
“But…”
Slowly, I ease back up. The fact that he’s avoiding my eyes raises a red flag right away. “Where does it hurt?” I ask with a calm tone.
He jerks his face up, eyes wide. “I—How did you know?”
“It’s what I went to school for.” I grin and it has the effect of relaxing his shoulders.
“I think it’s my hamstring. It started bothering me after the sprint to second in the fifth.”
That’s baseball speak for he ran like the wind to second base in the fifth inning and has been hurting since. I didn’t see him limp to the dugout after that, so hopefully that means it’s nothing major. And I remember the play because it was quite spectacular, it got the crowd going.
“Try to flex your knee for me and tell me how it feels.”
He winces a little but his leg moves pretty fluidly. It’s good news but only leaves me with a basic course of action for now.
“All right, I’m going to go get an ice pack. Can you prop your leg up against that wall while I get it?”
“Okay.” He sighs like this is the end of the world.
I pull myself back to stand and sort through a floor plan covered in men doing various stretching exercises, and trainers watching out precisely for things like this. Even as I walk with a clear objective in mind, I make sure that whoever I’m leaving behind is doing his stretching correctly. You’d think that men who have anywhere between ten and twenty years doing this seriously would know better, but you’d also be wrong.
Right as I’m about to walk into the training staff room, I get stopped by a hand around my wrist. I don’t even have to wonder who it is anymore.
“Starr.” I turn to glance over my shoulder.
The man himself holds my arm prisoner in his grip, and my eyes catch on the protruding veins traveling up his perfect arm. Perfect because he’s not a dramatically bulky guy, but has the definition and volume every gym rat dreams of.
I guess it’s not just his arm. He’s in a short-sleeved compression shirt in Wild pruple that outlines every nook and cranny of his muscle fibers. I jerk my eyes up to his face, flushed from exercise, damp hair curled over his forehead, droplets of sweat tricking down his nose and chin.
“Garcia,” he says in greeting. “Can you wait for me in the parking lot after we’re done here? We need to talk about something.”
My pulse goes from one hundred to a thousand.
It’s never a casual topic when people say we need to talk , yet can’t say whatever it is outright. But for the life of me, I can’t think of anything bad that the cowboy might have to say, other than a variation of: you’re too pathetic to consider dating anyone, so I’m quitting as your coach.
And I desperately need that to not be the case. I don’t want to keep feeling like a failure forever.
Swallowing hard twice, I manage to say, “Sure. Not a problem. See you there. At my car. Or I mean, at the parking lot.”
He seems to not find my twisted tongue any weird because he nods, drops my hand, and turns back to his spot to keep stretching his shoulders with a medicine ball. I watch him for a second, the muscles in his back working through the motions and rippling and tensing beneath the fabric. I shake my head hard at myself and continue into the staff room.
There, I collapse against a wall.
What the heck was that? His aren’t the only pretty muscles in this building. I slap my cheeks hard enough to center myself back in reality.
After picking up the correct ice pack and my iPad, I return to the floor to take care of the hamstring situation. After fitting the young guy with the ice pack—and fortunately not getting farted in my face—I step aside to log this incidence in his file so we can monitor him. Steve will hold a team debrief while the players hit the shower, and then I’ll be able to…
Go and wait for Cade Starr in the parking lot.
I keep my eyes fixed everywhere but on him, yet the thought of The Talk—whatever it may be—keeps my heart rate at one thousand. Or okay, I exaggerate, at nine hundred.
Once I’m finished for the day, I trod out of the building along with my coworkers and get in my Jeep to wait. My leg bounces as I watch Steve drive off through the rearview mirror, and then other staff one by one. This all happens in the span of maybe one minute, and yet none of the players are walking out yet. Maybe they’re also getting a debrief from Beau and the coaching staff.
I open my door and climb out, pacing back and forth just to let off some steam. I’m on lap fourteen across the sidewalk when some of the players start appearing. Freaking Starr is not among them.
Did he forget? Should I text him? No, he has a right to be as slow as he wants. He could be legitimately busy, like if Beau has held him back to talk about tomorrow’s game against Logan Kim’s brother. What do I know.
“Finally,” I mutter when his pretty head pops out of the building followed by the rest of him, this time clad in jeans and a sweatshirt that don’t openly show all his guns. I sigh in relief—except it shouldn’t matter. But it does. I am legitimately glad that I can’t distinguish his body.
While I have that existential crisis, he waves Rivera off and veers toward me. He checks his phone for a moment but after pocketing it, his freaky blue eyes find mine and pin me in place. I don’t have to check my Apple watch to know that my heart rate is skyrocketing the more he approaches.
When he’s maybe ten paces from me, he opens his mouth and I cut right in.
“What? What is it? My anxiety is killing me!”
Starr halts, his eyebrows rising. “You have anxiety?”
“Not until you said the words we need to talk . Do you understand how stressful that phrase is?”
How dare his lips twitch.
“It’s no big deal.” He sets his duffel bag on the sidewalk and stands back up. “Hmm, or maybe it is.”
“Starr, don’t make me maim you,” I say through gritted teeth.
He full-on grins now. “Wow, I don’t think those are words that should come out of an athletic trainer’s mouth.” I raise my fist and he backs one step, chuckling. “Hold your horses, darlin’. This is about the dating stuff.”
“You’re not quitting, are you?”
“No. I just have a different idea.”
I empty my lungs in relief and let my shoulders slouch. It feels nice compared to how tense they were. “Do you, now?”
He folds one arm, his hand holding the crook of his opposite elbow, and with the free hand rubs his chin like he does when he’s pondering. Those all-seeing blue eyes of his grow more serious too.
“Hear me out. I really don’t think the dating app scene is for you.”
Like a child, I kick at an invisible pebble. “I know. I categorically suck at it but what else can I do?”
“You’re not the one who sucks, the weirdoes you’ve dated do.” That stumps me, but if he notices that, he ignores it and continues, “So the whole mess last night gave me an idea. What if I arrange a blind date for you?”
My jaw drops. Eyes bulge. Heart trips.
“W—Whoa— What? ”
His eyes trace every one of my physical reactions and a corner of his lips tilts. “What if I found you the perfect date? And also helped you get ready for it?”
“I—I... I don’t know what to say.”
“The answers you’re looking for are either yes or no.” He bends down to pick up his duffel bag and shrugs it on. “Anyway, think about it and let me know. Have a good night, darlin’.” He tips his head, even though he’s not wearing a hat, and walks by me, leaving a waft of clean man that makes me shudder.
I look at the back of his head, at the strong column of his neck, wondering how much force would take to wring it. Honestly, I’m not even this murderous with my brother, but there’s something about Starr that makes me want to… to… do something. I don’t know.
I stomp a few steps back to climb into my Jeep, waiting until he drives off in his black pickup to start my drive home.
*
Unfortunately, I’m not faring any better once I’m home. Even the comfort of clean clothes, our plush couch, and a fluffy blanket haven’t gotten me out of the funky mood.
“What’s your deal?” Rose asks, sitting beside me with a massive bowl of popcorn that I guess is her dinner for tonight.
“I don’t know, I’ve asked her like three times and she hasn’t spilled a word,” says Audrey from the reclining armchair that’s usually hers. She has the uncanny ability of multitasking like no one else I’ve seen, which right now features her reading something on her iPad while minding us two unruly children.
“I was waiting for full quorum to talk,” I admit and unfold my legs from beneath me. “I need advice. Boy advice.”
“Oh.” Rose’s eyes light up. “That’s my favorite subject.”
Meanwhile, Audrey groans. “Can we literally talk about anything else? All we do at work is talk about or to men. A girl is tired.”
“But she needs advice, we can’t be bad friends.” Rose chuckles.
Sighing, I say, “Trust me, I too wish to be thinking about anything else but the male species. The problem is that they’re so. Freaking. Annoying.”
“Drop ‘em truth bombs.”
“You’re not wrong about that.”
After we’ve recovered from our grimaces, I explain, “As we’re all fully aware, my dating endeavors have been truly a disaster. So Starr has come up?—”
“Wait.” Audrey tilts her head. “You still call him by his last name?”
I do a double take at the topic change. “Uh, yeah. It’s either that or Cowboy.”
“Does he call you Garcia too?”
“That or darling in that Texan accent of his. Why?”
“I’d have thought that with all the time you spend together you’d have become friendlier.”
While munching, Rose chimes in, “He calls me princess.”
“Apparently I’m sugar.” Audrey points at herself.
I clamp my mouth, my eyebrows tightening. I guess he has a cutesy southern nickname for every woman in his life.
“Whatever.” I wave my hand. “For the record, I’m also hanging out with Rivera and Kim a lot and we’re all still on a last name basis.” I lean back on the couch. “Except maybe Rivera and Starr because they’re besties. But anyway, this isn’t the point.”
“Sorry, you were saying?”
“Starr has a new idea that is pretty out there.” They both lean closer in anticipation. I take a deep breath and blurt out, “He wants to set me up on a blind date.”
Instead of garnering the gasps and outrage I expected, Rose reacts to ask, “With whom?”
Audrey’s eyebrows go up. “Is it with himself?”
“No!” I shout and turn to Rose. “And I don’t know! I have no idea. He just sprang this on me like an hour ago. What do I do?”
“First I’d ask with whom,” suggests roomie one, the popcorn monster.
“But that would defeat the purpose,” surmises roomie two, the armchair hoarder.
“I should say no, right?” I glance from one to the other. “Right?”
Audrey sets her iPad on her lap and steeples her fingers. “But what if—and I know it feels like a big one—what if he legit finds someone awesome? Like, he’s not the kind of guy who’d pull a prank about this.”
“Haa, I hadn’t even thought about that.” I shake my head. “You’re right, though. He’s a pretty trustworthy guy in that regard at least. But what if he finds someone weird?”
“Weirder than men on dating apps?” Rose asks without any malice, pure conjecture alone.
“Oof, yeah, no.”
“The question is… What if he’s the one who shows up to the date?” Audrey asks.
Wait.
Wait .
Why does it feel like someone snatched the couch and I’m falling into a void? I have to grab fistfuls of my fluffy blanket to make sure I’m still sitting in place and not experiencing real vertigo.
“He wouldn’t,” I say firmly.
“Why not?” asks roomie two.
I blow a raspberry so hard that I’m pretty sure she won’t need to water the living room plants anymore. “Look, we’ve all seen baseball boys flirting at bars. They have the subtlety of bulls. Especially him. Like, if he was into me in any way shape or form he’d let me know, Rivera style.”
Audrey snorts and Rose chuckles. This is the post-Rivera club, we’ve all been asked out by him at one point or another.
“Cade’s more subtle,” Rose says, reaching for another handful of popped kernels and we both turn to her. “In fact, he rarely initiates. Women are usually the ones who do.”
“Oh?”
She shrugs. “What? You’re not the only one who sometimes travels with the team.”
“True.” I fold my arms. “But anyway, it’s not him. Maybe he wouldn’t be as overt as his buddy, but Starr knows I spook easily and he wouldn’t spook me.”
Audrey gives me A Look. “So you trust him enough to know that but still can’t call him by his first name?”
“It’s just weird, okay?” I frown.
“My thought is,” Rose continues all by herself, “You don’t have anything to lose by trying. In fact, it sounds less scary than meeting a total stranger from the internet.”
We all mumble at that. The most terrifying aspect of dating someone you’ve only met on an app isn’t that he might not show up or reject you in your face—like it’s happened to me time and again. But that he may hurt you.
Thankfully that has never happened, but Rose is right. I really doubt Starr would pair me with some freak when he himself came up with two pitch calls meant to bail me out of the crappy date.
I roll forward, letting the cushions swallow me. “Should I say yes?”
“It’s up to you.” Rose chews on popcorn for a moment before adding, “But I’d definitely say yes.”
“I wouldn’t,” Audrey cuts in with a deadpanned tone. “But that’s because I’m done with men forever.”
Staring at the ceiling, I’ll say, “Well, I have an ex to show up so… I guess I’m in.”
Later, after we’ve settled down and headed to our rooms for the night, I tuck myself in bed with my cellphone. After several deep breaths and much staring at a certain pitcher’s name on the screen, I send a response that may or may not change my life.