Chapter 13
[Ruthie]
As I have a job to do, I go to the game with Tulane.
However, sitting in the lawn section, Tulane and I both bare foot in the grass, my position doesn’t feel like work.
I’d thought the lawn area would be easier with a toddler versus the stadium seats, but the hill imitating the Anchors’s home bleacher section is steep and I constantly keep my eyes and hands on Tulane to prevent her from tipping down the slope.
We are seated next to an older Hispanic couple with three young girls under the age of ten, and they are a great source of entertainment for Tulane, who can’t possibly concentrate on a baseball game.
Somewhere around the third inning, though, another person joins their party.
A woman wearing a worn Chicago Anchors ball cap pulled low over her face.
She also has Aviator sunglasses perched on her nose to cover her eyes.
The girls instantly recognize her, and I swear one of them calls the newcomer Cadence, a world renowned country music singer I adore. However, it doesn’t seem possible someone of such fame and acclaim would be among the superfans on the lawn.
When the centerfielder, Ford Sylver, hits a homerun, the three girls cheer extra loud, and I quickly learn they are his daughters. Because of our continued interaction with the girls named Zelle, Winnie, and June, I take the liberty to introduce myself.
“Hi. I’m Ruthie Av—” I stumble, then correct myself.
“Uh. Ruthie Adler.” The name feels foreign on my tongue.
I’ve been Ruthie Avery all my life despite being married to Clifton Jacobson.
Cliff’s father thought it was best to use my maiden name in the office so people wouldn’t think he was playing favorites, although everyone knew who I was and how I was related to him.
He also didn’t want the last name of Jacobson to infer nepotism.
The irony is in the significance of my last name remaining Avery.
“Nice to meet you, Ruthie,” the woman in the ball cap states without introducing herself. Eventually, I learn the names of the couple are Ruby and Javier.
Tulane and I continue to interact with them as strangers do when you share a common interest. We’re here for the game, but more importantly, two specific men who play for the Chicago Anchors.
When Bolan hits a double in the fifth inning, I jostle Tulane on my lap, forcing her hands together to clap. “Yay, Daddy!”
The cheer tingles on my tongue. Daddy. How I’d yearned to call Clifton such a term. Longed to be a mother hearing a small voice call me Mommy. To my dismay, it never happened.
Momentary thoughts of Cliff bring back Bolan’s request to load his phone with the calendar I’d designed for him and my surprise at how easily he handed over the device. Clifton didn’t let me near his phone, knowing what I’d undoubtedly find. The device was conveniently lost upon his death.
Beneath the bright sunshine of an Arizona afternoon, I chase away the memory and focus on the little redhead in my lap. Tulane hardly wants to sit still and begins to get fussier and fussier. We’ve interrupted what should be her nap time, but I don’t want to leave the game quite yet.
Unfortunately, the Anchors lose.
As fans file out of the spring training stadium, I follow the crowd until Ruby speaks to me in a thick accent. “Do you know where to meet the players?”
“I didn’t know we could.” I assumed Bolan had been too busy focusing on the game to notice us in the lawn section, which I’m certain was a blur of people.
It never occurred to me to seek him out afterward, especially as I don’t hold a special pass as his assistant or any identification that I’m his wife.
“You follow us,” her husband, Javier says, as the ball cap-disguised woman, whom I’m pretty certain is Cadence, carries the youngest Sylver girl on her hip.
Ruby and Javier each hold a hand of one of the other girls and I follow their lead out the side of the stadium to a walkway that leads through a practice field that currently doubles as a parking lot.
The pathway ends at a second building on the property.
I easily find Bolan in the crowd of players and families, and he rushes toward us.
“Flower. Tulip. You came.” Excitement and surprise etch the roundness of his face. His dimple is like an extra ray of sunshine shooting from the corner of his wide grin.
“Hey,” I awkwardly reply. “Great game.”
“Hey, baby girl.” Bolan runs a hand up Tulane’s back and she shifts to lean toward her father. Bolan easily takes her from me, kissing her nose before squeezing her to his chest. “Did you see my hit?”
Uncertain if he’s speaking to me or Tulane, I answer. “Yeah. It was great.” One would think I could find better descriptors in my vocabulary, but I’m addle-minded by Bolan’s appearance.
Up close, I can better appreciate him in his uniform.
The fit of his jersey. The hint of that woven black strap around his neck.
The strength of his arms, and the snug curve of his baseball pants over his backside when he twists to thank someone passing by and congratulating his efforts.
Add in the backward baseball cap on his head and . . .
I dig my teeth into my lower lip in appreciation of his body which I’m already acquainted with but would like to know better.
When he spins back to face me, I’m caught ogling him.
But he’s looking at me like he might ravish me right here on the sidewalk.
Those moss-colored eyes are nearly solid gold in the brightness of the late afternoon.
Something hungry, almost savage, in them as his gaze roams from my face to my breasts and down to my toes.
I’m wearing sandals that expose my bright red toenail polish. It felt good to run my toes through the grass in the stadium earlier. I’m also wearing denim shorts, and I slip my hands into my back pockets as Bolan takes in my shirt. The Chicago Anchor emblem is over my left breast.
“Whose shirt you got on, flower?” His voice is grizzly, like the appetite in his eyes is rumbling in his throat.
I bite the corner of my lip because I’m unsure with how he’s going to respond when I twist to show him my back.
“No.” Bolan gasps, the no almost an echo. “Fuck no.” He states louder. “No, no, no, Ruthie.”
Valdez is printed across my back, arching over the shortstop’s number 6.
My shoulders fall, not appreciating Bolan’s chastising tone, even if I’d been expecting this reaction.
“It was the only shirt they had at Target.” With a quick trip before the game, Romero Valdez’s shirts were the only ones on the shelf. When I arrived at the stadium, I went into the Anchor Shop, but Bolan is too new to the team to have a T-shirt there yet.
“I don’t fucking care.” His irritated voice doesn’t express anger at me, but he’s definitely upset with the shirt.
As he glares at me, two dark haired girls rush to Bolan’s sides forcing me to take a step back. They jump up and down excitedly, startling Tulane, whom Bolan squeezes between the two women to hand back to me.
The women separate only enough to allow Tulane to be passed over and then close in again like giant castle doors, shutting out anyone else, narrowing in on their focus.
“Adler,” one cries out in a thick Asian accent.
His face goes ashen as he looks at the first one.
“We come all the way from Japan.” The other breaks into giggles, covering her mouth, pleased by the surprise they’ve sprung on him.
Both women are beautiful. Exotic with perfect pale faces and gorgeous large eyes. Their hair is sleek and midnight black with faint highlights of neon blue. And they are clearly smitten with Bolan.
His head swivels side to side, taking in each woman with stunned confusion before his eyes take on a wild, caged look.
“Um . . . hey . . . girls.”
Are they girls? They look young but not too young to have crossed an ocean to see Bolan Adler.
The Scottsdale, Arizona area is a mecca for baseball fan enthusiasts in late February and early March, luring many families and college kids on spring breaks to the desert.
“You remember us?” Number One Girl’s voice rises, like she’s both happily shocked and pleasantly relieved that Bolan might recall their names.
The look on his face says he’s drawing a blank and those once heated eyes glance up at me in panic.
I’m of no help. And I’m not liking how close they stand to him, one taking the liberty to clutch his forearm while she continues to bounce on her toes, bringing her pert, little breasts a little too close to him.
The other one really flips the switch for me, though, when she says, “You go boom-boom with us, again. Yes?”
My gaze snaps up to Bolan’s face. His eyes are practically the size of baseballs. The liquid gold drains from the green which swirls like a windstorm as he stares back at me.
“No. No boom-boom.” He swallows thickly and I cannot decipher if his distressed tone is because I’m standing here witnessing this moment. Or disappointment that he can’t leave with them and boom-boom. With. Both. Of them.
Bolan promised faithfulness, and it’s evident the vow is a struggle. And I feel sick.
Jealousy hits me like a giant gong. A warning blare that a man who so easily had sex with a stranger-to-him woman in an empty ballroom, and then a second time on a secluded balcony, would definitely have sex with two women.
At once. He’d want to do it again. He’d miss the opportunity to do it again.
“I’m going to-to take Tulane home,” I stammer, pulling her closer to me, like I don’t want her to be a witness to Bolan’s infidelity. A crime he has not committed, but once burned, forever branded, and Clifton permanently scarred me. My father had been no better.
“Tulane needs a nap.” I spin with her tight to my chest and take off on quick feet. The slap of my flat sandals is like imaginary puffs of air, emphasizing my haste to get away from him.