Chapter 23
Night Eight
Zeke
Zeke hung up with Julian and was thinking about it again, the moment that ruined everything.
His team told him that he was a champion, that he was going to make his way back, but he suspected they were just panicking at the thought of their moneymaker hanging up his glove, and trying to keep him calm so he devoted himself to his physical therapy.
But for the first time in a long time, Zeke was starting to think he was just a specimen, there for everyone else to examine, to put in a bottle and stare at.
He used to love the game, the adrenaline of a perfect pitch, the high of a strikeout, the rush of a pennant series.
But now he’d allowed himself to care about something other than the zip of electricity at the stadium when he took the mound, about the thirst for winning, the thirst for being the best. Now he cared about Sybil. And Julian. And Betty.
Timothy wanted him to start seeing the sports psychologist again.
He’d proposed it earlier that morning under the guise of being altruistic.
They were sitting in Zeke’s kitchen drinking smoothies prescribed by his nutritionist, and Zeke was thinking about Sybil, who occupied the better part of his brain these days, and also if he could tame this motherfucking eyelid spasm before Timothy noticed and insisted on another medical appointment.
He had pressed the top of his eye with his good hand, and Timothy had not said a word.
“Please cut the shit, Timothy,” Zeke had said. “It doesn’t matter if my head is on straight. My arm isn’t.”
“Buddy—”
Zeke suddenly realized how much he hated being called buddy.
He and Timothy weren’t buddies. Timothy worked for him.
Timothy profited from him. This didn’t mean that Timothy wasn’t on his side.
Most of the time he was. But they weren’t friends.
Timothy’s retirement was fully paid for thanks to Zeke’s last contract deal.
There were strings attached; there were conflicting interests.
“I don’t want to meet with a psychologist,” Zeke said. “I don’t think anything’s wrong with me.”
“No one said anything is wrong with you. That’s not what she’s there for.”
“I don’t even know if I want to go back, Timothy. Okay? Forget if I can. I don’t know if I want to.”
The blood had drained from Timothy’s face. Which was precisely how Zeke knew they weren’t buddies.
“Zeke, come on—”
The conversation came to an abrupt end when Betty rounded the corner and screeched at seeing them sitting there.
“Shoot, sorry,” she said once she had settled herself. “I thought I was here alone. Not that I—I mean, it’s your place, of course.” She squinted at Timothy, sizing him up, then made her way to the Nespresso machine.
Timothy bugged his eyes at Zeke like he hadn’t realized he was interrupting a next-morning tryst. It dawned on him just how little Timothy knew about his life.
Not his game life. His life life. Once Timothy was out the door, Zeke apologized to Betty, in case she intuited what Timothy had been implying.
But she had just shrugged and said, “We’re all just projections of what we want to show other people and what they decide to think of us, so it doesn’t really matter.
” Which, Zeke realized later, was just a very fancy way of saying they were all liars.
He didn’t know what Betty was lying about, and he didn’t want to consider what Sybil could be lying about.
He knew he was a liar, but he hadn’t pinned down about just what yet either.
“You’re okay?” he had said to her. He’d noticed she was jumpier, a little more fragile, but he didn’t want to pry. Didn’t actually know how to pry. Zeke had gotten used to everyone asking questions of him but was terribly out of practice in doing it for others.
“Tired,” she had replied. “Just tired.”
But she’d been tired since the day they met, and Zeke was beginning to suspect that maybe Sybil was right about Betty; maybe there was more to her story.
Which he didn’t mind. Didn’t even find all that odd.
But the question that circled around him was: What was so important to Betty that she had to keep up the ruse around him?
He wanted her to trust him. He didn’t want to be to her what Timothy was to him.
Tonight, with Betty at work and Julian having disconnected the FaceTime, he felt an urgent need to convey this to Sybil.
She was already so many steps ahead of him on just about everything, and he wanted to let her know that maybe he couldn’t keep up at her speed, but also, he was trying to keep pace.
That he was a partner, an ally, ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with her in her pursuit of solving and helping Betty.
He tugged his cell phone out of his back pocket with his left hand and texted his car service. Sybil was in the suburbs for the night, so he would just have to go to her.