Chapter 5
The text came Sunday morning.
Beck was on the couch at the rental with Hudson across his legs and a cup of coffee going cold on the table and the sports section of something he'd pulled up on his phone that he wasn't reading.
His shoulder ached from Friday's session.
His head ached from Friday's Pit Stop. The rest of him ached from something else he wasn't going to name at nine in the morning.
Unknown number.
What did you mean you were afraid but not how I mean?
He stared at the screen. Hudson shifted on his lap. Beck typed.
Kirstin?
You out dancing with more than one woman on this island?
He put the coffee down.
No. Of course not.
A pause. The three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.
It means I'm afraid I'll have to leave the game.
He sent it before he could edit it. Before he could soften it or frame it or turn it into something smoother. Just the sentence, flat and bare, sitting on her screen at nine fifteen on a Sunday morning.
The dots came back.
I'll be at the Outpost at one for lunch.
Beck stared at the screen. Hudson shifted on his lap.
"That's not a date," Beck said.
Hudson yawned.
"It's lunch."
Hudson put his head back down.
"I'm not changing my shirt three times."
He changed his shirt twice.
The Outpost sat at the end of the point road, a quarter mile past the lighthouse.
The building had been a fort once, back when the island was something that needed defending.
Stone walls two feet thick. Arched doorways.
A patio that faced the water and caught the breeze off the sound.
Someone had turned it into a restaurant twenty years ago, and the stone had taken to tablecloths and ceiling fans and a menu that leaned heavy on local catch and didn't apologize for the prices.
Beck arrived at twelve forty-five. T-shirt, shorts, hat. He asked for a table on the patio and sat down and looked at the lighthouse and the water and waited.
Kirstin came through the front door at one.
Hair down. Sundress, light blue, simple.
Sandals. No makeup or the kind that was designed to look like no makeup, he couldn't tell and didn't care.
She was carrying a pair of sunglasses she wasn't wearing and she scanned the patio and saw him and came to the table and sat down across from him.
"Take the hat off, Beck."
He took the hat off. Set it on the chair beside him. The curls fell and he let them.
"Better," she said. She picked up the menu.
The waiter came. She ordered a sweet tea and the grilled shrimp salad.
He ordered a water and the grouper sandwich.
The lighthouse threw a shadow across the patio that moved with the sun.
A pelican sat on a piling near the dock and watched the water with the patience of something that had been doing this longer than anyone.
"Tell me about Ocala," she said.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything before SportsCenter."
He leaned back. "That's a lot of years."
"We've got time."
"Small town. Horse farms. Orange groves. Good parents. Played ball."
"That's your answer?"
"That's the summary."
"I didn't ask for a summary. I asked for everything."
He took a drink of his water. "What do you want me to say? I had a good childhood. I played baseball. I got drafted."
"Beck."
"What?"
"I can smell bullshit from behind a bar at forty feet. You think I can't smell it from across a table?"
He set the glass down. Turned it once on the table.
"My dad sold insurance," he said. "Coached my Little League team. Never missed a game through high school, college, minors. When the phone rang on draft day, he answered it, and his hand started shaking. My mom grabbed his arm. I knew before anyone said a word."
He stopped there. She waited.
"He still calls me after every rehab session. Asks how the shoulder feels. I lie. He knows I'm lying. Neither of us says so."
Kirstin held her tea and didn't drink it. The waiter brought the food and neither of them moved toward it for a few seconds.
"How much do you miss being free?" she said.
Beck picked up his fork. He studied the grouper sandwich. He set the fork back down.
The question sat on the table between the plates.
He didn't know how to answer it because he hadn't known the answer was there until she'd asked. Free. The word moved through him and touched something that had been sleeping for a long time. He missed it. He missed it so much the recognition felt physical.
"I think about Ocala sometimes," he said. "About how simple it was."
That wasn't what she'd asked. She knew it. He knew it. She let him have the deflection because she recognized it. She'd made the same one a thousand times when someone asked about law school.
"Do you think you'll make it back?" she asked. "To the game."
"I don't know. I'm looking at it realistically though."
"Beck, I'm sorry," she said. "If I was hard on you Wednesday. I don't expect this is easy."
He laughed and saw it catch her off guard.
"Don't be," he said. "All I've heard is the usual bullshit. People who don't know me telling me how bad they hate it for me." He picked up his glass. "You told the truth." He took a drink. "It was kinda refreshing."
"Have you thought about what you'll do if it's over?"
"Yes. No." He set his glass down. "I don't need money and I don't need attention. So I don't know. Just me and Hudson and whatever happens."
Kirstin turned toward the lighthouse. The sun was moving and the shadow on the patio had shifted and the pelican was gone.
"So," she said. "If you don't play again, you'll be okay?"
He bent down and picked up a shell from the edge of the patio where the stone met the sand. He turned it over in his fingers and his eyes went past the lighthouse and into the water and he was smiling the whole time. Quiet. Easy.
"Kirstin, I got paid life-changing money to play a game I'd play for free for the rest of my life." He turned back to her. "I never took that for granted."
She held her tea. She didn't drink it. She didn't speak.
They finished eating. He paid before she could argue, and she argued, and he paid anyway, and she told him she'd get it next time, and neither of them acknowledged that "next time" was now on the table.
They walked toward the lighthouse. Not planned. The path was there and the water was there and the afternoon was warm and neither of them was ready to walk to a car. Beck was still turning the shell in his fingers. He hadn't put it down.
"Hudson," she said. "That little fella has every woman on this island wrapped around his finger."
"He has that effect."
"Oh," she said. "Now I see. He's a wingman."
He let himself enjoy that for a second. "No. Completely different story."
"Well?"
"Promise you won't make fun of me?"
"No."
He laughed. "Fine," he said. "Three Christmases ago I drew a boy from Gwinnett's name for the Angel Tree. He wrote he just wanted a puppy so he would have a friend."
"Aww. That's so sweet and sad."
"Right," he said. "Here I was opening this in the clubhouse with most of my teammates standing around and I got these tears ready to blow."
"What did you do?"
"Faked a phone call," he said. "Went straight to my vehicle and to the animal shelter.
" He pulled his phone out and showed her a picture of Hudson at seven weeks.
Gold fur, dark eyes, ears too big for his head, sitting on a blanket in the passenger seat of Beck's truck with a look that said he'd already decided this was his life now.
"OH MY GOD."
"Yeah," he said. "I got Zack a puppy and I took Hudson home with me."
Kirstin stopped on the path. She was holding his phone and staring at the photo and her mouth was open and the composure that had been present in every interaction since Wednesday night was gone.
Just gone. Replaced by a woman looking at a picture of a puppy and not caring how she appeared while she did it.
"He was that small?"
"He was that small."
"And Zack got his puppy?"
"Zack got his puppy. I went back to the shelter the same day. The lady at the desk asked if I wanted to see the litter again and I said no, just give me the paperwork for another one." He put his phone away. "I didn't tell anyone at the club. I just showed up to spring training with a dog."
"What did they say?"
"My manager asked if he was a team dog. I said no. He said whose dog is he. I said mine. He said he can't come to the facility. I said okay. Hudson came to the facility every day for three years."
"Of course he did."
They started walking again. The lighthouse was closer now. The path narrowed where the sand met the rocks and the water was right there, twenty feet below, hitting the base of the point.
The air was warm and the salt was in it and the island was quiet. Sunday quiet. Most people on their porches or their boats or their beds, and the few who were out were out because they wanted to be.
"I gotta go," she said. "Gotta get the bar ready for tomorrow."
"I enjoyed this," he said.
She stepped up to him. Close. Closer than the dance floor, closer than the high-top, closer than any of the distances they'd been negotiating since Wednesday. She put one hand on his arm and rose up and kissed him on the cheek.
"You're not so bad, Ethan."
She turned and walked toward her car. Hair moving in the breeze. Sandals on the path. The sundress catching the light.
Beck stood by the lighthouse with a shell in his hand and a kiss on his cheek and his first name in the air.
He watched her car pull out of the lot and disappear behind the palmettos.
He looked at Hudson's puppy photo one more time. Then he put his phone in his pocket and walked to his truck and drove home.
The island was quiet. The sun was low. The rental was empty except for Hudson, who met him at the door and pressed his head against Beck's leg and stayed there.
"She called me Ethan," Beck said.
Hudson's tail moved once.