Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Six weeks of FaceTime had not prepared Asher for Patrick in person.
He’d had the face, the voice, the way Patrick went quiet before he answered.
He had not had the shoulders, broader than the screen let on, thicker through the chest. Patrick stood at the counter in a T-shirt that wasn’t doing Asher’s concentration any favors.
Patrick handed him a coffee, black, no sugar. He hadn’t asked how Asher took it, and Asher didn’t say. Again. The coffee was bitter and too hot. It was the best he’d had in weeks.
The Fireflies’ season opened in four days.
He’d driven down from Appleton that morning, the truck’s heater finally kicking in somewhere past Milwaukee, and the distance of it kept catching him off guard.
Patrick had been fifteen hundred miles away in February, and now he was right here, across a counter, two steps and a bad decision away.
“Your apartment is exactly the same,” Asher said.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Last time I was here, you said you were still settling in.” He looked around. “I figured that meant signs of life eventually. A plant, a poster, something. Not a model unit.”
Patrick looked at him over the rim of his mug. It was the same flat face he gave everyone, except the eyes weren’t flat, hadn’t been since Asher walked in. They were warmer than the gala, warmer than the screen.
“There’s a new book,” Patrick said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Patrick didn’t ask what he meant. He held Asher’s eyes over the rim of the mug and didn’t look away. Asher’s pulse picked it up before his brain did. Six weeks over a phone had made him good at riding this out. Three feet away, there was nothing to ride.
Asher set his mug down and crossed to him. For six weeks, Patrick had been a face on a screen, something Asher could set on the nightstand and turn off. Now he was right there, warm, close enough to touch, the scar, the stubble, the steady eyes, all of it real again.
Patrick didn’t step back, didn’t reach for his coffee or the counter, none of the small ways people bought themselves an inch of distance. He let Asher stay there, close.
“Hi,” Asher said. It came out quieter than he meant.
“Hi.”
It went straight through him.
Patrick’s gaze moved over him slowly, and Asher held still under it. The back of his neck went warm. He was used to being the one who looked. He didn’t have anything ready for being looked at like that.
“You’re tan,” Patrick said.
“Arizona.”
“I know.” Patrick looked at him a second longer than he had to. “It looks good on you.”
Patrick didn’t trade in compliments. He’d just handed one over without being pushed for it, plain, no joke to take the weight off. Asher looked away to keep his face in order.
He carried his coffee to the living room and dropped onto the couch, arm along the back, legs stretched out, doing his best to look like a guy who wasn’t rattled. Patrick followed and sat at the far end, feet on the floor, mug balanced on his knee. One cushion between them. Asher counted it.
“How’s the knee?” Patrick asked.
“Fine. PT cleared me. It only complains when it’s cold, which in Appleton is—”
“Always.”
“Almost always.” He turned the mug in his hands. He hadn’t planned to get into this. “Delgado told me before I left Arizona that the org’s been talking about me. Not the development stuff. It sounds like there’s a real shot I’ll get some time in Milwaukee if Navarro needs a break.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s just speculation. Navarro’s a vet with shot knees, grinding to prove he’s not done.
A guy like that doesn’t hand over the job.
Somebody has to take it from him.” But Delgado had also said the rest of it, and Asher wanted to say that part too, wanted to say it to the one person who wouldn’t turn it into a pep talk.
“He said my numbers this spring were the best he’s seen from a catcher at this level.
And the Mavericks had me come down and work out with the big-league staff, catch their bullpens.
I’m trying not to get ahead of myself. But you don’t get those reps unless somebody upstairs is paying attention. ”
Patrick almost smiled. Asher caught the corner of his mouth lift and pull back, half a second, the pull slower than it used to be.
A cushion away, he could feel the heat off Patrick’s skin, hear him breathe, watch the give of the couch when he shifted his weight. Asher set his hand on the cushion between them, palm down, fingers a few inches from Patrick’s leg. He left it there a second, then picked up his coffee.
“I watched your last game before I flew home,” he said. “The stream was garbage. I got it in five-second chunks.”
“We won.”
“I know you won.” Asher set his coffee down. “Wasn’t really watching the game though.”
“No?”
“You. The whole time.” He let his gaze go where it had wanted to go since Patrick handed him the coffee. “You took a hit in the second, and your jersey rode up, and I’ve been thinking about that strip of you ever since. Sue me.”
Patrick went still. It wasn’t the closed-off still.
“It’s a bruise,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of them.”
“Show me.”
It came out lower than Asher meant it, and he left it there. None of it was about the bruise, and they both knew it. He watched Patrick decide, watched his face do the thing it did right before he gave something up.
Patrick reached back and pulled his shirt off by the collar. Stomach, chest, shoulders, the shirt landing on the cushion beside him.
Whatever Asher had been about to say went quiet in his mouth. There was a bruise low on Patrick’s right side, yellow-green and healing, and he barely clocked it. Six weeks of a screen, and here was the rest of him, close enough to touch, and Asher had run clean out of reasons not to.
He laid his hand flat against Patrick’s side, careful, fingers spread. Patrick’s stomach pulled tight under his palm. Neither of them moved.
“That hurt?” His voice had dropped without his permission.
“No.”
His thumb slowly moved over the warm skin below Patrick’s ribs, nothing to do with the bruise now.
Patrick’s breath caught and came out of him long and uneven.
Asher could feel the heat building under his palm, could feel what it was costing Patrick to sit there and let it happen.
He was in real trouble, the good kind, the kind he had no plan for.
He spread his fingers. Patrick’s hand came up and caught him by the wrist.
He wasn’t pushing it away. He was holding it there, like he hadn’t worked out yet which way he wanted this to go.
So Asher leaned in. He couldn’t have said when he started moving, only that the cushion between them was gone, his free hand on the warm line of Patrick’s jaw, Patrick not stopping him.
They were close enough now to feel each other’s breath go ragged, close enough that one more inch would end the argument they’d been having since February without a word of it spoken.
Patrick’s gaze dropped to his mouth. His grip on Asher’s wrist tightened.
For one second, Asher had him. He knew it the way he knew a pitch was coming before the wind-up, knew it in his hands. Patrick was a half-breath from giving in, his control down to the last thread.
And just like when the pitcher stumbled at the last minute, Patrick leaned back and the moment was gone.
Patrick reached for his shirt and pulled it on. The room stayed charged. Neither of them trusted the couch after that. Patrick stood and reached for his jacket. Asher was already up. Nobody said why.
They walked the lakefront. It was cold and gray, the wind coming off the water hard enough to make Asher’s eyes sting. He was glad for it. It was easier to say things into a wind that was already making your eyes water.
“Delgado’s got me starting opening day,” he said. “Which should feel like something. Except I started last year too, and the year before.”
“You want the call-up.”
“I want to stop being the guy with potential. Four years. At some point, potential is just a polite word for hasn’t done it yet.
” He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets.
The wind went straight through the denim.
“The reports are right, that’s the thing.
Strong arm, good instincts, inconsistent bat.
I go a month where everything clicks and then two weeks where I can’t catch up to a fastball.
” He kicked a stone off the path. “And then there’s the name. ”
“Tucker.”
“Tucker-Atley, depending which dad they’re pulling stats for.” He watched the stone vanish into the gray chop. “Dad threw a no-hitter. Pops made All-Star teams. And I’m twenty-three in Triple-A, and every scouting report opens with their numbers before it gets around to mine.”
He’d told this story before, to teammates, always with a joke on the end so nobody had to do anything with it.
This time he left the joke off. Patrick walked close enough that their arms brushed through the jackets and stayed there.
He didn’t say a word about it being fine.
With Patrick, Asher didn’t have to fake fine. He could just say it.
“I don’t want it handed to me. I want to earn it. I want somebody to call my name and mean me, not my last name.” He pushed a breath out through his teeth. “And I’m scared the potential’s all there is. That I top out as a guy people had high hopes for.”
Patrick was quiet a while, then asked, “What’s between you and it?”
“Just Navarro. Good hands, bad knees, on the downhill slide but not washed up yet. I’m next up, which means the best season of my life might not matter unless his body quits on him.
” He watched the water ripple with the wind.
“And some nights I catch myself hoping it does. Hoping a guy I’ve never had a problem with gets hurt so I can have his job. ”