Chapter 10
Night Four
Zeke
They’d agreed to meet at Zeke’s apartment since Betty had taken the overnight shift off to get settled there.
Zeke was nervous as shit. One, because he’d probably gotten a little over his skis at inviting Betty to move in, and two, he hadn’t hosted anyone other than his sister and parents in the four years that he’d lived here.
His agent, Timothy, made a habit of showing up unannounced, but he didn’t care about impressing Timothy, who bought his beach house thanks to Zeke’s last Nike contract.
He’d asked his assistant to order some platters from Zabar’s, and now it looked like he was hosting a wedding in his kitchen. He surveyed the spread and moved too quickly, forgetting for a moment that his elbow had split in two. Jolts of sharp pain radiated up to his shoulder.
“Motherfucker!” he yelped, his voice bouncing off his cabinetry and reverberating back to him.
The kitchen was the size of some New York City one-bedroom apartments, and he’d had the entire place soundproofed anyway, so it’s not as if Betty could hear him.
And he didn’t even really know her well enough to expect her to come running.
He opened the fridge with his good arm, grabbed a can of Bud Light (he was sponsored so they sent it by the case), popped it open one-handed and leaned against the wall to try to steady himself. His fucking eyelid spasmed again.
The truth was that Zeke well knew that he was good at only one thing in life, and it wasn’t making new friends, as he was feigning with Betty, and it wasn’t being an excellent group thinker, like he was feigning with the others.
He was good at throwing a ball. That was it.
If he died—and he thought more and more about this when he couldn’t sleep—his entire obituary would be about his arm, about his velocity, about the no-hitter he threw two years ago to clinch the playoffs.
“Hello?” Julian’s baritone cut through the hall into the kitchen. Zeke stitched himself back up.
“Julian!” Zeke sauntered through the maze of his apartment and found Julian standing in the foyer, his hands tucked into his black jeans.
It had been less than a week since they’d last gotten together, but there was something different about him, Zeke thought.
Maybe he looked a little thinner? Maybe his exhaustion was just catching up to him?
He was delirious with his own insomnia, and he’d never been particularly intuitive, so he’d ask Sybil. Sybil would see it. Sybil would know.
“You live here all by yourself?” Julian asked, his eyes roaming the space, his incredulity obvious.
“Well, not anymore,” Zeke said. “Betty lives here now.”
The door swung open behind him, and there was Sybil.
She also looked a little different, though again, Zeke was terrible at these things.
At details. At keeping track of the details.
It wasn’t that he was dumb—he did well in high school, though he had to work harder at it than Lani.
Besides, he was the anomaly who got called up to the majors right out of senior year, so his grades didn’t matter anyway.
But details, unless it was memorizing every single thing about a batting lineup or the feel of the leather or the rotation of his arm, none of the rest of it was his thing.
Still, though, Sybil looked nice tonight. Pretty.
“What have I missed?” she said.
“All-Star lives like a goddamn king,” Julian said.
“Well, that’s not really accurate,” Zeke answered.
“Want to swap with me? Live in my two-bedroom walk-up?” Julian said. “Anyway, where’s Betty?”
“Unpacking. I haven’t wanted to bother her,” Zeke said, then used his left hand to wave them into the kitchen. “Come on, I have midnight snacks though.”
“I’ll grab her first. She should join us, right?” Julian peered down the hallway, then another. Zeke hated that he thought Julian was judging him for his extravagance. He was just a normal guy from Oklahoma, he wanted to tell him.
“Third door on the left. The hallway to the right,” Zeke said.
Then he and Sybil found themselves alone in the kitchen, staring at the platters that could serve a party of thirty and strand him with leftovers for days.
Because he could barely train right now, he had to be careful with what he ate.
As it was, it would take a miracle to get him back on the mound for spring training.
The platter of black-and-white cookies and little gooey brownies felt like an offense.
“I’d say that we shouldn’t eat the sugar because it will keep us up all night but, well,” Sybil said.
“It can’t be sugar,” Zeke said. “I never have it, not on my training regimen.”
“I should cut it out,” Sybil said. “But honestly…” She sighed. Didn’t have to explain. When you stopped sleeping, so many of life’s pleasures were dimmed. If you wanted a cookie, you gave yourself a cookie.
“Can I get you a drink? Would you like a tour? Are you hungry? Want to sit?” Zeke gestured toward the breakfast nook with six chairs, none of which were ever occupied because no one ever came over.
“You sit,” Sybil said. “I can take care of myself.”
She moved past him and found a Bud Light in the fridge, examined it like he imagined she did a patient back in medical school, her lips pursed, her brow furrowed, and then popped it open.
Zeke wanted to tell her that it was just a sponsorship, that he had an entire wine fridge of fancy bottles, but honestly, he didn’t really know one from the other anyway, so.
He started to ask her how she’d been sleeping these past few nights, but he already knew.
They’d been intertwined on text every night since last week.
“So your surgery next month,” Sybil said. “Tell me all about it.”
“It’s boring.”
“Nothing about surgery is boring. The capacity to open up a human, fix them, then sew them back up? The sexiest thing ever. I just spent an hour googling how an alligator digests human flesh and bone, so trust me, all of it is fascinating to me.”
“Do I want to even ask?”
“No, you probably don’t.” She dropped her head, then raised it. “So fill my head with surgical lore, distract me.”
“Why didn’t you see it through?” Zeke didn’t even know Sybil all that well, and he already thought she would have made an excellent surgeon. “The doctor thing?”
“Another story for another time.” She took a long pull of her beer and burped with her mouth closed. Zeke felt something stir in his belly.
“Doesn’t your husband share his surgery stories? To include you? Share the sexiness?”
Sybil made a face like nothing about her husband was sexy, which pleased Zeke immensely.
“Actually, he calls me for help all the time.” She said it with disgust. Zeke was practically levitating. “Though he’s an ER doctor, so less surgery, more emergency.”
“And him calling you…a bad thing? Also, isn’t that a HIPAA violation?”
“No, I mean, yes. Mark isn’t one to abide by rules.
” She didn’t elaborate. “Anyway, he and I both know that I should never have been the one to quit.” She raised and lowered a shoulder, then rotated the same shoulder around in circles a few times.
Zeke fought the urge to reach over and massage it.
“But I did. And that was that. Now tell me all the juicy details about what they intend to do to you.”
“Well, it’s the third surgery. They have to remove the pins—some, all, I’m not sure—see if I can get the rotation back, see if my movement is the same or what my pain threshold is without them. See how much scar tissue is in there, see if the bones healed properly.”
“Hmmm.” Her eyes narrowed. “And if they can’t, if they haven’t?”
And if they can’t? If they haven’t?
He didn’t reply because they heard Julian’s footsteps nearing, and they each swiveled toward him. Which was just as well, his nonreply. Because that was also another story for another time.
“You said she was in her room?” Julian lingered in the doorframe.
“Yeah.” Zeke nodded, relieved for the change of subject.
“Third door on the right?”
Zeke glanced at Sybil, the mother hen, and the lines on her face were all pointed downward.
“Well,” Julian said, “she doesn’t appear to be here.” He paused and something about his tone, his face, his posture shifted. Like Zeke was looking at someone he didn’t recognize. “I think,” Julian said. “I think that she’s gone.”