Chapter 20
Sophie
“Oh, you're still letting that hot-as-fuck baseball player steal your bases,” Andy says the moment I reach her and Liv outside the de Young.
I try to look confused by her innuendo, but I know my blush gives me away.
“I knew it,” Andy chirps as we buy our tickets. “I have excellent just-got-railed radar. I didn’t say anything at coffee in case it was a one-time get-it-out-of-our-systems fuck, but this clearly is a thing.”
“It’s not a thing,” I say.
“Oh, it’s a thing. I can tell by your glowy skin. Korean ten-step skincare can’t hold a candle to regularly getting your banana peeled.”
No matter how hard I try to hold back, a laugh still manages to escape.
“Don’t encourage her,” Liv says, smiling. “But if it’s true, spill the details.”
“I bet he fucks like he plays baseball,” Andy muses as we enter the first exhibit. “Like he knows how to slide headfirst into home base.”
Both Liv and I shush her, but we’re all giggling like it’s a middle school slumber party.
Maybe it’s been a while since I had girlfriends, because I spill all the details—quietly—as we walk around the museum.
I tell them about the first night, when he said he wanted to watch me come, to a few nights ago when he bent me over the couch so we could both still watch the Survivor finale.
I hold off telling them about the fight we just had.
“I can’t believe you have a sex contract with your brother’s best friend,” Liv says, taking a sip from her iced coffee from the museum’s cafe.
“It’s not a sex contract. We just agreed to, you know, blow off some steam together. It doesn’t mean anything.”
But even as I say this, there’s an ache behind my ribs.
If this thing with Liam doesn’t mean anything, would I care that he isn’t going to volunteer at some youth center?
If I didn’t care, I would have slapped him when he said we were both stuck.
But instead, I wanted to curl up in his lap and kiss away the doubt.
Fuck. This was supposed to be friends with benefits, not some Hallmark special: Washed-up baseball player and burned-out artist show each other the true meaning of love. This was just sex. Liam has become a friend I care about, but this isn’t a relationship, and it certainly isn’t love.
I push those thoughts aside as we finish our coffees and head into the main exhibit: Luna Margulies, the whole reason for this trip.
Despite his harsh outburst, Liam was right. My commissioned canvas was still blank in the corner of the living room. I had accepted Senator Langford’s proposal and the hefty price tag that came with it, but I had tried to start every day since then…and I just couldn’t.
Luna Margulies was my idol. The subject of the critical paper I never finished in grad school.
I built my entire final semester around her.
I wrote about her, painted like her, tried to channel her.
When I saw she had an exhibit at the de Young, I thought her work could unlock whatever had me frozen.
I clear my throat and gesture toward the oversized canvas before us.
“Her work is known for its visceral emotion and bold use of negative space,” I say, sounding exactly like the paper I once tried to write. Liv nods, looking between me and the massive piece of art, like I make any damn sense. I don’t even believe what I’m saying.
The truth is, I already tried this in grad school. I used to stare at her work for hours, trying to decode it—thinking if I could just crack the formula, I’d unlock something in myself.
But I couldn’t. So I quit.
“The art is supposed to make you feel…” I trail off, staring at the individual brush strokes like I’m waiting for the feeling to find me. But it doesn’t. And maybe that’s the problem. This art doesn’t make me feel…anything.
My thoughts drift to Liam. About the way he methodically works through his training routine every morning, keeping his body in peak condition for the game he loves.
I think about the way he rattled off stats for every Cubs player since 1987 over three nights at Bar None—not like some cliché sports bro, but like a true student of the game, dissecting the numbers, explaining the strategy, the probabilities behind each play.
I remember one time in college when he came home with Cal for Thanksgiving and spent hours on the couch, rewinding the same clip of his swing over and over, analyzing the position of his elbows, his hips, his weight transfer.
That spring, he broke the conference record for consecutive hits.
He loved baseball. He still loves it.
I art-docent my way through the rest of the exhibit, explaining the cliché color theory and emotional contrast to Liv and Andy, who nod solemnly and even gasp at all the appropriate moments.
Being here was supposed to remind me of what I wanted to do with my life. I thought that maybe since I’d started painting again, I just needed a little more inspiration. But standing here, I feel nothing. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m just not cut out for this world.
Liam’s eyes light up when he talks about baseball, even after being cut. I don’t feel that way about any of this anymore.
I don’t know if I ever really did.