Chapter 8 #2
What the fuck could Adler possibly be doing that’s that interesting?
I’ve never met the guy—when we played Chicago early in the season, he was on the injured list—but he’s got…
a reputation. For being a complete fucking weirdo.
I don’t really care what he’s doing, because he’s already doing something that pisses me off: playing first base for the Peaches when that was supposed to be what Blake did for the rest of his career.
But Blake’s in Boston with that girlfriend of his and I’m here and LeBlanc is still fucking giggling. I get up. LeBlanc practically crows as he follows me down the tunnel that leads from the clubhouse out to the field. At least the sunlight burns off the rest of my fatigue.
So I am totally alert and sober when I spot what has LeBlanc howling. A figure out on the field on the grass between first base and right field, standing atop a black rubber mat. Doing yoga. Shirtless.
I climb out of the dugout, blinking like my eyes are deceiving me.
Adler’s still there. He transitions cleanly from one pose to another, folding himself in half with his ass up in the air.
Fucking shameless. He clearly does this a lot because, unlike the rest of us who have some degree of baseball farmer’s tan, there’s not much gradient between the darker olive skin of his arms and the paler skin of his chest. Maybe he’ll get a sunburn.
He deserves one for pulling whatever this is.
LeBlanc claps me a few times on the arm in delight. “See, I told you, see. Coach is gonna explode.”
LeBlanc is right—Coach is old-school. He’s going to absolutely fucking hate Adler. Good.
I need to see the expression on Adler’s face when it happens, so I station myself on the right field line, far enough away from where he’s doing his little stretches so that he doesn’t do something like speak to me.
Turns out that’s close enough to see the flex of muscles in his back.
Adler is tall and lean. His dark hair sticks to his neck.
The muscles at the back of his knees flex as he bends further into his stretch.
A tattoo I can only make out part of snakes around his collarbone and shoulders.
We’re baseball players. Most of us have muscles and tattoos. He’s not special.
He unfurls himself and reaches up with open fingers as if grabbing handfuls of sky.
The way he grabbed Blake’s position. I shouldn’t be resentful, but fuck that.
Adler’s here and Blake isn’t, and Blake wouldn’t be the kind of showy asshole to do on-field yoga in shorts with a ridiculously small inseam.
Adler must feel me glaring a hole in his back, because he turns to say something just as Coach comes out on the field.
Coach is dressed in a neat team-branded polo tucked into ironed slacks cinched with a braided leather belt. His ballcap is weathered but not fraying, his gray hair squared up. He does not approve of certain things: lazy fielding, what he terms “carousing,” or anyone who puts themselves over team.
Adler’s gonna absolutely get it now. And I have a front-row seat to watch.
“Adler!” Coach barks. “Great to see you out here early.” He marches over to Adler just as Adler drops out of his pose. He shakes Coach’s hand, once, twice, while Coach claps his hand over his approvingly as if Adler isn’t half-naked and dripping in yoga-related sweat.
What the hell?
“Hope you don’t mind me—” Adler gestures to the mat and the field like that’s any explanation.
“Just be careful in this heat,” Coach says. “The sun’s a might more intense than you were used to in Chicago, I expect, and we need your bat in the lineup.”
Adler doesn’t smile exactly, but the side of his mouth ticks up as if he’s considering it. “The whole city is free hot yoga.”
And Coach actually laughs at that. “My daughter’s always on me to try that stuff. Too woo for me. I know trades can be difficult, but it sounds like you’re already settling in. You need anything, you let me know, son.”
Son. I grind my fingernail into my palm.
Coach notices me standing there. “You need something, Forsyth?” Not son but better than Blake.
“No, sir, just taking in the weather.”
For that I get a skeptical look.
“Gonna go get my work in.” I bite back what I really want to say: that I’m here just as early as Adler.
That I do plenty of work to maintain my flexibility, none of which I do shirtless in the middle of the goddamn ballfield.
That my first day on the team, all I got was a lecture about not being as much of a fuck up as Coach and Blake and my parents and probably Savannah think I am.
Certainly not an approving handshake or encouragement to come to the team with my problems. If anything, the team made it very clear I was to take my problems—not that I have any—elsewhere.
“See that you do,” Coach says, then strides off.
I’m about to go get my actual work in when I catch Adler looking at me. He’s done doing dog posture or tree pose or whatever, but his chest is still gleaming from a mix of sweat and humidity. He’s also looking at me with dark eyes like he’s seeing something he shouldn’t.
I cough at him, a mind your fucking business cough. “Adler.” I don’t bother with an it’s nice to meet you because it isn’t.
“You’re Savannah’s husband.” He doesn’t say it like a question.
That should be funny. All my life I’ve been Brad’s son or Blake’s brother, and now I’m Savannah’s husband. I should be annoyed—she’s my wife in name only—but somehow, I’m not bothered by the title. Just by who’s saying it. “Yeah.”
He flicks an eye over me. “Huh.” As if I should be embarrassed by standing here. As if he’s not the one in tiny little shorts or with the vestiges of an earring in one ear.
I did that briefly: paid someone at a tattoo place to put a bar through my ear cartilage, just to piss off Brad, who threatened to unscrew the damn thing while I was sleeping.
How is your mother supposed to explain that?
But the piercing was hell in a batting helmet, so I took it out.
You lack commitment, Brad said, as he dragged me out to take fielding practice at five a.m.
“I gave her a ride home from the airport, you know,” Adler adds.
Sav said she’d ridden home with one of my teammates but wasn’t specific as to who. That it was Adler makes a muscle in my jaw jump. “I thought the team sent a car.”
Adler sniffs. “You didn’t.”
“I sent her money for a cab.” I blurt it out before I can help myself. None of this is any of Adler’s business and yet he’s standing here making it—my wife—his business. “Savannah’s independent.”
“Sure.” Adler shrugs. “Sounds like she has to be.”
That’s it. I march up to him and poke him with exactly one finger, right on the glistening arc of his shoulder. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
That gets that same cocksure smirk that makes me want to grab him—to shut him up. “Noted,” he says, as if he’s noting something, but I’m not quite sure what.
I ball my hand into a fist just to scare him, even if he’s apparently not the type to scare easy.
Then a cool breeze—possibly the only cool breeze in the entire city—blows in the small gap between us.
A reminder of where we are. Someone might be watching.
Hell, Coach is probably lurking in the dugout, waiting for me to screw up.
So I draw back to all of two feet away, close enough to see each curl of Adler’s chest hair, the sarcastic curve of his unchapped lips. I bet he uses a shit ton of Chapstick. I bet he’s vain about it.
“You know what, Adler?” I say, “I’m going to do you a solid. No matter what Coach just said about doing your little stretches or whatever—”
“Do you not know what yoga is?” Adler interrupts. He sounds like he doubts I know what reading is.
“Like I said—it’s not really the team culture to be this…” I scan the length of his body, searching for a derisive enough word.
“Sexy?” Adler supplies.
“Showy.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t want to be showy while playing a game in a stadium.”
So he’s not just showy. He’s stubborn. “Fine. Keep doing that. See how it works out for you.”
“I’m the one they traded for, remember?”
But they drafted me. Something that every commentator now seems to regret. “I’ve been on this team longer than you have.”
Which gets me a snort. He mumbles something that sounds like we’ll see about that.
My back goes stiff. That muscle jumps in my jaw again. Somehow, my fatigue returns, head throbbing. “Didn’t catch that,” I snap.
“I said—”
Whatever he’s about to say, I stop listening when my phone buzzes. I pull it from my zippered shorts pocket, glance at Asher to tell him to take his yoga mat and clear out.
He doesn’t move. Of course.
Whatever, it’s just a text.
Savannah: Your mom just got here. She has a binder of wedding party things we need to pick from.
I don’t really have any opinions about wedding stuff or patience at all with Barb’s binders.
Blake did, or he used to. He’d sit next to her and listen, and she’d call him a fine young man he was—always with the implication that I wasn’t.
That was until Brad started calling him mama’s boy, then Blake got shipped off to whatever baseball camp would toughen him up the most.
Me: Do whatever makes you happy
There’s a pause as Savannah types more. Adler is finally, finally moving, rolling up his yoga mat. I absolutely don’t watch his obliques ripple in his sides. Someone should tell him that having a little meat on you is good for playing baseball.
Savannah: Great, a Frozen-themed wedding it is
She attaches several pictures. There are illuminated ice sculptures and a shit ton of glitter. So she doesn’t have patience for my mother’s binders either, but she’s putting up with them anyway. Because you’re paying her to.
Me: Barb’ll hate it
Me: It’s perfect
Savannah: (halo emoji)
When I look up from my phone, Adler has his mat scrolled under one arm. He’s staring at me again.
Savannah: Your mom says to invite the whole team to the party
Savannah: Well, she said it like I don’t have any friends or family
Fuck, should I offer to fly Savannah’s friends out here? Who knows how any of this stuff is supposed to work?
Me: Do you want your friends to come?
Savannah: It’s kinda last minute. And they’ll be able to tell that we’re…you know…
She actually types that. You know like she doesn’t want to put it in text.
Fake. Or worse than fake. Convenient. Using each other.
I’m a bank account and she’s a smile for the public.
That’s all we are to each other—at least until she gets her smart-person degree and does the smart thing and leaves me behind.
Savannah: Invite the team so I don’t have to.
Savannah: Oh and tell Asher thanks again for the ride.
Asher. I didn’t realize they’d gotten friendly over the course of a drive.
Fine, he can come to a party—there’ll be more than a hundred people there and an open bar.
We don’t have to interact. I can be the bigger person because, clearly, he can’t.
Even if I’m not going to say shit to him about Savannah, not about the ride.
And I definitely won’t let it bother me that she’s been in Atlanta for all of a day and she’s already found someone she’d rather talk to than me.