Chapter Forty
For weeks, Daphne had checked her Instagram DMs every day, waiting to see if Chris had responded to her message. But not only had he not responded—he apparently hadn’t even checked it, because the little grayed-out Sent never changed to Seen.
There had seemed something fitting about returning back to the original communication method they’d used. More important, she’d thought a DM had less of a chance of waking him up in the middle of the night than a text, gave him the opportunity to consciously check the message instead of being surprised by it at some point when maybe he wouldn’t want to receive it.
The only problem was now she didn’t know what to do. Should she delete the message, hope he never saw it? Should she resend it as a text instead? What if he was ignoring her on purpose, though—what if he’d seen the message come in and had left it to sit in his inbox, unread?
She tried to gauge his attitude toward her in person, but he was impossible to read. Sometimes she thought he’d softened toward her. Once, she tripped a bit on a wire stretched across the field, and he’d reached out to steady her even though she’d been in no danger of falling. Another time, she’d been laughing at something Beau Bummer had said after an interview and she’d looked up to catch Chris watching her, a momentary bleakness around the eyes until he blinked it away.
But for the most part, he treated her exactly the way he’d said he would that last day in his condo. He answered her baseball questions on camera, and other than that he had no interaction with her at all.
So she stopped checking her messages. And then eventually, she deleted the app from her phone entirely, sick of that twist in her gut every time she saw its icon on her phone screen.
It was mid-September when Layla went into labor. Daphne got the phone call from Donovan two hours before a game was supposed to start, and she’d anxiously filled Greg and the rest of the production team in on what was going on, saying why she wouldn’t be able to do the broadcast that night. She didn’t even know if she’d fully made sense, but they seemed to understand enough to tell her not to worry about it, to go be with her brother, to give their best to Layla. She drove faster than she ever had before to get to the hospital and barely had time to freak out about how stressful it was to have to cross four lanes of traffic to make a last-minute turn.
“You know these things take hours,” Donovan said once she got there. He was watching the game on his phone, casually eating a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and then frowning down at the cheese dust he was getting all over the phone screen.
Even Layla looked calm and unbothered. “Epidural,” she explained. “I can’t feel anything below my waist and I don’t want to. Who’s filling in for you?”
“That guy Preston,” Daphne said.
Layla made a face. “Ugh, I hate him,” she said. “He talks like he has marbles in his mouth. And is it just me, or is his neck weirdly saggy for him being so small?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed his neck.” Daphne looked at her brother for help, but he was pumping his fist.
“Kepler with a two-RBI double,” he said. “Man, I actually think they could do it. Cleveland is also fighting for a Wild Card spot but their ace pitcher just went out with an oblique strain.”
The energy around the team had been pretty electric in the last few weeks. Against all odds, they’d had an amazing August when a couple other teams in their division had started to slide, setting the Battery up with a viable shot at making the playoffs.
“He’s had a great couple months,” Layla said. “I told you it was the right decision not to tell him.”
Daphne cut her gaze over to her brother. She’d never known for sure if Layla had told him everything that went down with Chris Kepler. On the one hand, they were married, which brought with it its own code. She couldn’t blame her sister-in-law if she did tell Donovan. On the other, the only thing more embarrassing than Donovan finding out she’d been hooking up with a baseball player would be Donovan finding out that she’d been dumped by the same baseball player for catfishing him.
Layla seemed to catch Daphne’s look, and waved her hand. “Of course he knows,” she said. “And he told me I was out of line for my Theranos comment. What you did was not the same as defrauding investors out of millions of dollars and average citizens out of accurate and safely obtained medical data. And you’re not the Yoko Ono of the Battery.”
“You…never called me that,” Daphne said.
“Oh,” Layla said, her tan skin coloring slightly. “Well, good.”
At least not to myface, Daphne should’ve clarified. But whatever. It was over. “Yoko Ono wasn’t even the Yoko Ono of the Beatles,” she said. “If you’re meaning it the way I think you are. We love to say John Lennon is a genius until apparently when it comes time to making his own decisions about—”
“I like that ‘Imagine’ song,” Donovan cut in. “That’s the Beatles, right?”
“I’m just saying,” Layla said, blatantly talking over her husband. “It was obviously the right call not to tell him. Look at how well he’s been doing.”
Daphne should just let that go. She didn’t want to air her dirty laundry now, here in a hospital room with the imminent (or not-so-imminent, apparently) arrival of her nephew. And what did it matter, if Layla was right or wrong or if all of it had spiraled into some gray area where Daphne didn’t even know what was right or wrong anymore.
But.
“He found out, actually,” Daphne said. “It really sucked and everything exploded and I guess you could say we broke up if you could even have said we were together in the first place, and now I get to ask him questions after the game about how awesome it is now that his batting average is up and pretend I don’t want to cry.”
Donovan looked up from his phone, his mouth open in slack-jawed shock. Layla popped a handful of ice chips, crunching them noisily with her teeth until eventually she swallowed.
“Well,” she said. “I did not know that.”
In the corner, there was a stack of luggage that Layla had referred to as her baby bag. When Donovan had pointed out that it was singular for a reason, Layla had said that she had three separate birth plans and she needed to bring different items for each potential eventuality and if other people were as prepared as her, they’d have an entire luggage set, too. It was wild to Daphne, to think that in a couple of days her brother and sister-in-law would be going home with a baby, an actual human they’d take care of and who would bond them together for the rest of their lives.
“I didn’t want you to know,” Daphne said. “I couldn’t believe that there I was, barely a year after splitting with Justin, fucking up yet another relationship. And I really didn’t want you to know.”
Donovan pointed at his chest, like he was playing to the back-of-house in a school play. “Me? Why me?”
“You already think I’m such a failure for not making it work with Justin,” she said. “I know you took his side, and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Donovan put the phone down and wiped his hands on his jeans before he held them up like he was actually trying to stop her words from hitting him. “I didn’t take Justin’s side. I mean, he’s my friend, yeah, but—”
“I know he’s your friend,” Daphne said. “And I don’t want to have ruined that, too. Believe me. But you’ve always taken his side. When you guys would hog the video game controllers. When you laughed at me the night of my prom. When I wanted to go on a honeymoon and Justin said we could use the money to buy into that flex Panthers tickets scheme and go to four home games as our honeymoon.”
“That was a good deal,” Donovan said. “And technically, four weekends in Charlotte instead of just one week somewhere else.”
Daphne shrugged, like see. He was still doing it.
“And laughed at you the night of your prom?” Donovan said. “I don’t remember that…”
But she could see the moment when he did remember the way he and Justin had reacted when she came out in her dress and makeup. It was oddly satisfying, having that validation that it had really happened, that it wasn’t just something she’d made into a bigger deal over the years.
“I had no idea,” he said finally. “I didn’t know that was how you saw it. I’m sorry, Daphne.”
She was conscious suddenly of the setting, of the fact that they were sitting in a hospital room where Layla was hooked up to all kinds of monitors that beeped and spiked, and nurses kept coming and going outside the hallway. It wasn’t the time or place to adjudicate all her past insecurities. She could let Donovan off the hook.
“It’s fine,” she said.
“No,” he said. Donovan looked genuinely stricken. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to make you feel that way. When we were younger…sure, I was probably a dick sometimes. I saw it as typical big-brother stuff, just giving you a hard time. He was my friend and you were the annoying little sister, you know?”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sure I was annoying, always wanting to be underfoot. And it had to be painfully obvious what a crush I had on Justin.”
“Well, yeah,” Donovan said. “And if you want the truth, I didn’t like it at first. Not because I didn’t think you were good enough for him, but because I knew damn well that he wasn’t good enough for you. But once you guys got together, it seemed to make you both happy, so I had to make my peace with it. You’re your own person, you know? You can make your own decisions. And you’d decided you wanted him.”
“For better or worse,” Daphne muttered.
Donovan leaned forward on his chair, pressing his hands together almost like he was praying, like he was pleading with Daphne to hear him. “I was so close to saying something on your wedding day. Justin was such a prick at the bachelor party”—here Layla made a face and nodded, as if it was important that she confirm that Justin was, in fact, a prick—“and I could just tell that you were having second thoughts about it that morning. But you looked so beautiful in your dress, and there was that whole thing where they got the flowers wrong, and I couldn’t. When you told me you were getting a divorce, my first thought was thank god. But I felt disloyal, because Justin is still my best friend, for all his faults as a brother-in-law, and you’re my sister and I want you to be happy and you seemed miserable. So yeah, I tried to encourage you to get back together because I didn’t know what you wanted and I never wanted to be the one who was standing in the way of it.”
That was maybe the most Daphne had ever heard her brother say to her at once. He wasn’t the touchy-feely type, generally—if he signed a birthday card to her, he’d write Love, Your Big Brother, but he wasn’t big on saying I love you per se. But somehow that speech, the part where he’d said she looked beautiful in her wedding dress. It had felt damn close.
“Why is he still your best friend if he’s such a prick?” She realized that was the question she most wanted the answer to.
Donovan sighed. “I don’t know. It’s hard to make friends as an adult.”
“Well, join a book club or something. Take up archery.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Donovan said, brightening. Then, to make sure she understood: “The archery one, I mean.”
Daphne rolled her eyes. “I don’t know if you can be trusted with a bow and arrow. But I’d pay money to see you at a book club. A Nicholas Sparks one, maybe.”
“That reminds me,” Layla said from the bed. “What are your plans after the season, when you’re done with this sideline reporter gig?”
Briefly, Daphne thought back to a time when Chris had asked her the same question. When she’d thought he was asking because he saw a future with her in it, and he was trying to see if she saw it the same way. It hadn’t even occurred to her then to consider moving to take a similar job with another team, but who knew. Maybe that would be the best option for her. “I’m open to whatever,” she said. “Why? Do you know a similar job in another market that might take me?”
“What?” Layla said, so sharply Daphne briefly thought she must’ve said something wildly out of line. Like of course she wasn’t just going to land the equivalent of Layla’s job somewhere else. That was a lot of hubris after she’d only been doing half duty for the past four months. She started to backpedal, say something about how she was only kidding, but just then a nurse came in.
“Hello!” she said in a chirpy voice that Daphne immediately knew Layla was inwardly flinching from. “Just here to check Mom’s dilation.”
It was weird to Daphne, to hear Layla referred to as “Mom,” but she guessed she’d have to get used to it.
“Should I—” she started to say, sure she didn’t need to be present for this part.
“You’re not going to another market,” Layla said. “We’re about to have a baby and we’re not looking to have his aunt move thousands of miles away. I was going to ask if you would want to be involved with the Battery on its charitable foundation side. They’ve been wanting to put something together for a while to do with books or reading or something like that, and I know that’s kinda your thing.”
Daphne’s first thought was that it sounded incredible. Even without any more details, she was already really excited about the idea.
But her second thought was that she didn’t know if she’d want to be involved with the team, even doing something like this, where she doubted she’d have much reason to run into Chris at all. Maybe it would be better to have a clean break.
“Can I think about it?” she asked.
“Of course,” Layla said as the nurse put her surgical gloves on. “Now could you both please get the fuck out of here so I can have some privacy? I know birth is a beautiful natural part of life but I don’t need an audience when there’s a stranger’s hand in my cervix.”
It was practically a race to the door to see whether Donovan or Daphne could get out of there faster, and they stood out in the hallway, close enough to know when to go back in but far enough away that Layla couldn’t accuse them of trying to eavesdrop on her cervix check or whatever.
“You know,” Donovan said. “I bet I would make a great best friend for Chris Kepler. Maybe that’s how you get him back.”
Daphne shot him a sharp look. The sad truth was, he probably would make a great friend for Chris. She could picture it. Except she knew that, if anything, it would be Chris making Donovan give her a turn at a video game she was admittedly terrible at, while Donovan whined about how she was wrecking his stats. And then Chris would’ve let her play on his profile instead, and he’d try to coach her through but she’d be hopeless, except he wouldn’t care about how much she was fucking up his stats, he’d just be laughing and then he’d squeeze the back of her neck in the way that let her know he was thinking about what he’d do to her later that night when they were alone.
She could get through whole hours without having these kinds of thoughts now, which was an improvement over a couple months ago. But they still haunted her, especially when she couldn’t sleep.
“I’m sorry,” Donovan said. “I was trying to make a joke, but too soon, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“The thing with Kepler, it was serious?”
Daphne had had this conversation with herself a thousand times, too, about how it hadn’t been serious and that was the whole point, she really had no right to feel this way. But she was only trying to fool herself, and there was no fooling herself anymore. The way she felt about Chris was different from the way she’d felt about anyone else; the way it had ended had wrecked her more than anything else. Even her divorce.
“Yeah,” she said.
The nurse poked her head out of the door, beaming. “Get ready, Dad,” she said. “We’re about to have a baby.”