Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The heat hit him on the tarmac. It wasn’t the gradual easing-in of a Wisconsin spring. This was immediate, full-contact. The sun pressed down on his shoulders through his T-shirt. The air smelled like jet fuel and something dry underneath it, mineral and clean.
Asher shouldered his carry-on and followed the jet bridge crowd toward baggage claim, his legs stiff from the three-hour commercial flight out of Milwaukee.
The major league pitchers and catchers had reported to the Mavericks’ big-league camp two days ago.
The Fireflies’ spring training was still weeks out, but the invitation to work out with the big club had come in December, and Asher hadn’t waited for it to come twice.
He grabbed his checked bag off the carousel and ordered a ride.
His parents’ house was forty minutes from the airport.
He watched the Mavericks’ spring training complex pass from the back seat, its white facade and practice diamonds visible from the highway.
Three more miles into the subdivision where his parents had kept a place since before he was born.
His dads had bought it the year they got together—somewhere warm for the offseason and spring training, a place that was theirs instead of the team’s.
After they adopted Asher, it became the house where winter didn’t exist.
The house was single-story stucco with a terracotta roof and a gravel yard with a cactus garden Pops had planted and Dad had been instructed not to touch.
Asher punched the code on the keypad and let himself in, dropped his bags in the guest room.
The house smelled like lavender—Pops put the same plug-in in every room he owned, and the housekeeper had been through recently enough that the floors were clean and the counters wiped down.
He opened the back sliders to let air in. The pool was covered and the patio furniture stacked. A text from Pops had come in while he was landing.
Pops
Wish you were here.
Attached was a photo of the front steps of the Milwaukee house buried under a snowdrift.
And below that, a message from Patrick sent forty minutes ago.
Patrick
How’s the desert?
He took a photo through the kitchen window, the yard and the mountains and the sky so blue it looked digital.
Dry and bright and approximately 9,000 degrees.
He unpacked while he waited, tossing clothes into the guest room dresser without folding them.
Patrick
It’s -10 and snowing.
Fahrenheit or Celsius?
I’m Canadian.
Asher grinned at the screen because he could picture it: Patrick in the parking garage after practice with his breath fogging and the collar of his jacket pulled up.
Sounds like you need better weather.
He sent it before the sentence could become anything more loaded than it already was.
Patrick’s response was a photo of the parking garage, concrete and fluorescent, a puddle of gray slush near the tire of what Asher assumed was his car. No caption, just the image.
The Mavericks’ complex was a private facility, not the shared four-field setup where Triple-A and Double-A guys fought over cage time.
Two full-size diamonds, six batting tunnels, an indoor facility with artificial turf and a climate-controlled weight room.
The clubhouse had his name on a locker, printed on a strip of tape instead of engraved on a nameplate, which told him everything he needed to know about how permanent this was.
Morning conditioning started at seven. The roster guys already knew where everything was—which cage was theirs, which trainer taped them up, which corner of the weight room they claimed.
Asher fell in with the other invitees: two outfield prospects, a left-hander from Double-A, and a utility infielder who’d been in the organization longer than Asher and looked like he knew this was his last shot.
Behind the plate, the difference was velocity.
The arms at this level threw harder, spotted better, and recovered faster between sessions.
Asher crouched and called pitches for a twenty-eight-year-old reliever whose slider broke six inches later than anything in the Fireflies’ rotation.
He blocked a curveball in the dirt that would have gotten past him two years ago.
He threw out a runner in a live BP situation with a pop time that made the catching coordinator look up from his clipboard.
“Tucker.” That was Braun, the Mavericks’ manager, passing behind the backstop with a coffee and a pair of Oakley sunglasses pushed up on his forehead.
He was compact and sharp-jawed, looked like he managed in his sleep and woke up with a lineup card already written.
“You’re receiving well, but keep your target up on the fastball because Henley likes to see it early. ”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t call me sir. I’m not your father,” Braun said without looking back, already moving toward the next cage.
“My father would’ve said the same thing.” Braun walked away without responding, which Asher had already learned was his version of approval.
The dynamic of being Sean Tucker’s kid at the Mavericks’ camp was exactly what Asher had expected: unavoidable, occasionally useful, and something he’d have to outperform before anyone stopped mentioning it.
A few of the coaches had played with Sean, and the hitting coordinator had been a rookie when Sean was in his last season.
Asher caught their eyes tracking him with curiosity that had nothing to do with his stats, measuring how much of Sean was in there and how much was something else.
He knew where he stood. Non-roster invitee, not on the forty-man, close in the way that close had defined his career so far.
The Mavericks’ starting catcher was Eddie Navarro, a steady veteran on the wrong side of thirty-four, whose wrist had been a question mark since August. The conversations had started in the offseason—not with Braun, but with the roving catching instructor, who’d spent extra time on Asher’s framing during the fall league.
The org had made it clear, in the indirect way front offices communicated with minor leaguers, that Asher was next in line.
The invitation to big-league camp said the rest.
He showered and grabbed dinner with a couple of the other invitees at a taco place off the highway, the kind with plastic chairs and a salsa bar and a TV in the corner playing college basketball.
By the time he got back to the house, his legs were heavy and his arm was sore from the throwing sessions.
He dropped onto the couch and checked his phone.
Two messages from Patrick. The first was a link to a hockey analytics article about defensive impact metrics, a follow-up to a conversation they’d been threading for three days about how both their sports undervalued the positions they played. The second was a stand-alone sentence.
The Syndicate won. I blocked four shots. “Fine” per your standards.
Asher grinned at the ceiling.
Four shots?? Were you playing defense or volunteering as a target?
Same thing with different branding.
Asher started texting Patrick about a disastrous intrasquad game, a pitcher who’d hit three batters in two innings, a second baseman who’d thrown to the wrong base twice, and a foul tip off Asher’s forearm that was already bruising purple.
The story was getting too long for text, so he hit the video button instead.
That was easier than admitting he FaceTimed because he missed seeing Patrick’s face.
Patrick answered with the phone propped against something, his face lit by the screen in a room otherwise dark.
He was in bed, and Asher could see the edge of a pillowcase, the shadow of a headboard, Patrick’s face in the blue-white light stripped of the composed expression he wore in daylight.
His hair was pushed back and loose, showing the scar across his cheekbone.
“Show me the bruise,” Patrick said instead of hello.
Asher held up his forearm. The bruise was a plum-colored oval, vivid against his skin. Patrick leaned closer to the screen. Something that looked like concern surfaced before Patrick could compose his face over it.
“You should ice that.”
“I did ice it. Now it’s a different color of angry.”
“Wrap it. Compression. Keep it elevated.” Patrick’s voice carried the clipped authority of someone used to giving injury instructions, and Asher wondered how many times he’d talked himself through the same list.
“Are you a hockey player or a nurse?”
“In this sport? Both.”
Asher laughed and settled into the couch.
Patrick’s face on the screen was steady, close, more present than he’d been in any of their phone calls.
On the phone, Asher could imagine whatever expression he wanted.
On video, he watched Patrick’s eyes track across the screen, caught the way Patrick’s gaze dropped to Asher’s mouth when Asher was talking and came back up when he stopped.
“How was the game?” Asher asked, and Patrick’s jaw shifted slightly before he answered.
“We won. I told you.”
“You told me the score, and I’m asking how it was.”
Patrick sorted through which version of the answer to give. “Physical. Their top line runs everything through the left side, and I spent most of the night angling their winger into the boards.”
“Is that the shot-blocking part or the target-practice part?”
“Both.” The corner of his mouth moved and went still. “Their power play is predictable though. Same entry, same one-timer setup off the left circle, and I jumped the passing lane three times.”
“So you were good.”
“I was effective.” Asher could practically see him shrug it off through the screen—the same guy who’d blocked four shots and called it “fine.”
“Patrick, were you good?”
The pause was longer this time. Something that might have been surprise at being pushed.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was good.”
“Was that so hard to admit?”
“A little, yeah.”