Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Savannah
July
On paper, the flight from San Diego is supposed to take four hours, but we hit wind coming over the Rocky Mountains that pushes us there faster. I might be the only person on the flight who wants it to slow down.
I’ve spent the last two days packing. After the semester ended, I bounced around: I finally ended up at Victoria’s stepfather’s house, checking in on him as he recovered from heart surgery. (Mostly, we just heckled CNBC stock shows together.)
Turns out, packing is easy if you never really unpacked, so I arranged for shipping using the debit card Brayden gave me to cover expenses, grabbed my two biggest suitcases, and hopped on a cross-country flight east.
I spend the last hour of the flight watching the sunlight refract through the large yellow stone of my ring. What am I doing? I think for the thousandth time. There’s no turning back. With our marriage certificate came an even more important document: a health insurance card.
People get married for a lot of different reasons.
My dad married my mother for love, and his next wife to help close an acquisition of a rival company, and his wife after that because they were seated together at the same table on a weeklong cruise to Alaska.
Business sometimes makes strange bedfellows, he likes to say.
I just hope Brayden has a second bed because I’m definitely not sharing with him.
When we get to Atlanta, I disembark, claim my baggage from the carousel, and haul it onto a rented luggage cart with a stiff back wheel that squeaks as I push it through the airport.
Somehow, I’d envisioned Brayden here, carrying my bags, maybe even kissing my cheek.
Convincing people we’re actually together would be easier if we were actually together.
The only thing from him is a text message that comes in as soon as I take my phone off airplane mode to tell him that I landed.
You’re meeting my family tonight.
Said like there isn’t any other option.
My iced coffee sloshes in my stomach as I push the cart.
Around me, half the stores are selling Peaches jerseys, black or white with pink and green lettering.
Many have Forsyth stitched on the back…but not with Brayden’s number.
People here must really miss Blake. People, except seemingly for Brayden.
I round a corner and come face to face with Brayden—not him, but a decal of him stretching up one wall.
Brayden, leaping through the air to make a spectacular catch, back thumping against the outfield fence.
Only they clearly didn’t measure correctly when they put up the picture, because they ran out of space.
Half his body is cut off, his face peering out through one large gray eye before it ends abruptly in a clean white line of the intersecting wall.
Still, I take a picture and send it to him.
Me: You’re bigger than I remember
Brayden: That’s what everyone says
I roll my eyes. Everyone. How many everyones has he been with since we got fake-engaged? I have no right to be jealous. I’m not jealous. Just…how am I supposed to improve his image if he doesn’t stop doing the things that damaged it in the first place?
A group of tourists walks by me, splitting like a stream around my luggage cart.
One of them smells like he just took a bath—in a bottle of cologne.
My head gives a throb. Please no. Please no.
Ever since I stopped working at the hospital, my migraines have been less frequent.
I’ll be fine—I don’t really have another option, since I’m meeting Brayden’s parents tonight. I just need to clear my head.
Outside, the air hits me like a solid wall. Heat, exhaust, humidity. How can air possibly be this heavy? My makeup starts melting. My hair started to frizz. So much for my blowout.
I push the cart over to the cab and limo line. Brayden sent me the address: a house too new to be listed on Streetview. The sooner I get into a rideshare, the sooner I can be in air conditioning, which we only rarely turned on in San Diego, but now seems like an absolute necessity.
I stand under one of the mounted metal box fans above the cab line, but it really just stirs the hot air around.
A queue of people stretches in front of me, most of whom look like they’re happy to be on their way somewhere else.
A few women are holding little portable fans and gently blowing sweat off themselves.
Clearly, I needed to do more research before moving here.
For now, I settle for pulling the waist band of my sweatpants—emphasis on sweat—out from my side to introduce a slight breeze. I can already feel thigh chafe coming on. This is not going well.
The cab line moves slowly. People greet each driver like old friends and make chitchat as they get their luggage settled in the trunk of the taxi. Southern hospitality doesn’t seem so hospitable in this inhospitable heat.
Then a long dark town car pulls up. A driver gets out holding a printed sign that says Pickup for…Under which Atlanta Peaches is written in neat handwriting.
Oh, thank god, Brayden did send someone after all. Maybe he doesn’t care about me, but he cares about appearances, and right now, that’s good enough.
I rush out of the rideshare line and wave to the driver, an older gentleman with white hair and a deeply lined face who looks like he should be driving an old-fashioned horse and buggy. “Hi, I think you’re here for me,” I say.
He glances down at the sign in slight confusion. “Are you sure, ma’am?”
“Savannah Burke. Well, now Savannah Forsyth. My husband plays for the Peaches.” I sound breathless—I am breathless from having pushed the luggage cart through the airport, from being in this heat—and he must take pity on me, because he unlatches the door of the town car and ushers me in.
A cold blast of A/C greets me. I’m never going to take mild weather for granted again.
The car suspension bounces slightly as he loads each of my suitcases into the trunk.
This is familiar: riding in the backseat of a luxury car with tinted windows.
Letting someone else do the literal heavy lifting for me.
A bottle of smartwater sits in the cupholder. I unscrew the cap and take a long, grateful sip. I’m in the process of pulling out my phone to tell the driver Brayden’s address when the back door opens again.
This time, it’s not the driver.
It’s a man who’s staring at me in surprise.
“This seat’s taken,” I say.
“You’re in the wrong place.” He doesn’t tack on a ma’am.
I reach for the door handle—someone’s in the wrong place, but it isn’t me—when he interjects himself between the door and the car, preventing me from closing it. “If you’re not with the Atlanta Peaches, then you need to find another ride,” I say in my haughtiest tone.
“Good thing I am.” He climbs in, ignoring my squawk of outrage, and it’s then I notice he’s in a shirt that reads Squirrel Hill Baseball.
Other than that, he doesn’t look much like a ballplayer: tall and lean with tanned olive skin and a mess of dark brown hair.
He’d be almost pretty except for the very faint scar bisecting one of his eyebrows.
“You gonna shove over or what?” he asks when I don’t move.
“Fine, but I think there’s been some sort of mix-up.”
“Yeah, you’re not supposed to be here.”
“My husband plays for the Peaches.” My voice only catches a little on husband, even if that’s who Brayden actually, legally is.
“So do I as of about twelve hours ago.” He settles into the seat next to me, long legs splayed out so that one of his knees almost brushes mine. I flinch back.
“So you are…?” he says.
“Savannah Burke. Or Savannah Forsyth.” Even if I’m not planning to legally change my name.
For some reason, he laughs. “Which is it?”
“Mrs. Savannah Forsyth,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Well, Mrs. Savannah Forsyth, I’m Mister Asher Adler.
I just got traded here from Chicago.” He offers his hand, and I shake it briefly.
Like Brayden, his palm is lined with calluses.
He also doesn’t immediately let my hand go.
He turns it over and examines the large yellow diamond on my finger. “You just got married?”
“Is it that obvious?”
Asher’s mouth twitches. I can’t tell if he’s laughing at me or with me. “No tan line.” Then he drops my hand. “Forsyth didn’t come to pick you up?”
I don’t bother to answer because it’s obvious Brayden didn’t. He just left me to navigate a new city on my own without doing more than telling me not to be late. If I say any of that, he’ll look like what he is: a bad husband. No, I mentally correct, a fake husband.
“It’s nice of you to share the car,” I say.
“I didn’t actually say we were sharing.” Asher’s lips twitch again, and I should really stop looking at his mouth or any of the rest of him. But when the driver gets in and asks where we’re going, Asher says, “Mrs. Forsyth’s house, then the ballpark.”
I give the driver the address—my new address—and we lurch forward into traffic.
“So,” I say, midway through the ride. Asher has spent most of the drive staring at his phone.
That’s fine. We don’t need to make polite small talk.
Hell, I’m not sure Asher does polite anything.
Besides, it gave me time to finish today’s crossword puzzle and to stalk through Asher’s Wikipedia page looking for information about him.
It’s barely a page—just that he’s Jewish and from Pittsburgh, where his mother is some kind of local reporter, and that he played for a Chicago team up until yesterday.
He’s Brayden’s teammate now. Growing up, it was my job to charm my father’s business associates, even when he was stabbing them in the back.
I should do the same thing now: try out my role of a sweet, Southern wife.
I turn toward Asher as much as my seatbelt allows.
“How do you feel about being traded from Chicago?”
“I take it you don’t follow baseball,” he says.