1. Felix
CHAPTER ONE
Felix
February
“Sir, I understand you’re inconvenienced,” the gate agent says to the man standing two people in front of me in line. “This delay is disruptive to many customers’ travel plans and we very much apologize for having to reschedule.”
The man—who was sitting three barstools down from me at the airport bar, putting away gin with an enthusiasm that I usually reserve for Gatorade—blusters an objection. “I have an important meeting,” he says, as if that will change the weather currently scrolling across the display monitors adorning the terminal. Snow . A late-winter line of it bearing down on the entire northeast.
The gate agent’s red-lipped smile goes a little more fixed. “Sir, I understand?—”
“Don’t understand,” he barks. “Fix it.”
I can’t just stand there any longer, not when the guy takes a sucking inhale like he’s really gonna let her have it. There’s a certain type of guy who enjoys being a jerk to service workers—and a subset of them who really like being jerks to women. This guy’s wearing a suit like we all need to know he’s important.
He’s also sputtering with rage as if that will change the fact that our flight to Florida has just been scrubbed.
No one else steps up to intervene. A few other passengers are staring at their phones like they’re afraid that Suit’s temper will turn toward them. More are muttering annoyedly about the weather and the possibility of booking another flight.
With any luck, I’ll get to the front of this line before all the seats are gone. My job isn’t more important than anyone else’s here, but I really do need to get to Florida.
“ Now ,” Suit snaps, for good measure, and the gate agent’s customer-service mask slips briefly as her eyes widen.
“Buddy,” I call to him, “we’re all trying to get somewhere. Stop giving her a hard time.”
The man swings around. His face is blotched red. His hands tighten by his sides like he’s ready to scrap in his polished black shoes. Until he sees me. I might be a little bigger than he is. He’s built like a gym bro, but I’m built like a first basemen-slash-designated hitter: six-four with twenty extra pounds of weight I spent the offseason packing on.
His fists curl like he might try to fight me anyway. Guys’ll try that too. I guess they figure the bigger they are, the harder they fall. That’s an expression better left to trees—I’ve felled trees and it’s harder work than you might think. At least the gate agent’s shoulders sag in relief…for all of five seconds. Then she casts a look around the seating area and goes ashen.
I don’t want to turn my back on Suit-with-MMA-Delusions, so I crane my neck to see what’s up. Great, people have their phones out like they’re anticipating a fight.
Another airline employee already has a beige courtesy phone cradled between her ear and neck. She’s whispering something I only catch pieces of. “Security…”
So this got out of hand quickly.
Suit studies me, then his eyebrows shoot up in recognition. “Aren’t you Felix Paquette?”
Well, that was probably inevitable in Boston. Say what you will about the city, they do love their baseball. “Yeah.”
“Wow, man, you look”—I wait for the inevitable bigger in person —“like shit.”
What is it with people in this town? Yeah, my beard is overgrown. Yeah, my hat has salt residue from sweat. But at least he isn’t huffing and puffing at the gate agent anymore.
Maybe this situation is easier to defuse than I think. “You want me to sign something?” I didn’t stick a pen in my jeans pocket, but I probably have one in my bag. I dig around for it. Sure enough, a pen sits in the elastic loop attached to my stargazing journal. “You have a piece of paper or whatever?”
Suit plunges his hand into his pocket and emerges with a crumpled bar napkin that smells like gin. Hell, I’ve signed worse. I scrawl out my signature and annotate it with an XL .
“Because you’re big?” the guy asks skeptically.
Because I wear number 40. “Something like that.”
He stares at my hand when I give him the napkin, then points to the black smudge sitting on my left thumbnail. “Is that grease?”
Nail polish . “Something like that.” I’m sure he’ll tell all his little sports bro friends I could barely string three words together, but giving people a common target for contempt is sometimes the nicest thing you can do for them. And the way I played last season made me a very common target for contempt.
At least the guy says, “Thanks, bro,” as he takes out his phone and snaps a picture of the napkin like he’s about to text his friends. Hopefully, that’s the end of this and I can rebook my flight. Except he adds, “If this sells on eBay, I can finally recoup some of the money you cost me last year.”
Of course this guy is a sports betting bro, taxonomically the worst kind of baseball fan. I put on my meanest grin. “Thanks for watching.”
“Have you tried picking your feet up when you field balls at first base?”
Have you tried fucking off into the sun? But if I’m about to go to Florida to beg to keep my job, I probably can’t be involved in a scuffle. “Thank you so much for the honest and direct feedback.”
“Didn’t think you’d be on the team this season,” Suit says. “You going down to spring training?”
Supposedly . “Yeah.”
“Pretty sure all the flights are cancelled.”
“I think there’s one tomorrow with available seats.” A flight I have cued up on my phone, ready for the gate agent to put me on it. I’d just do it myself, but the last time I did that the Monsters’ travel secretary chewed me out for altering the team’s reservations. Right now, I need as many front office employees on my side as possible, down to the guy who passes out room keys and meal vouchers.
Around me, travelers are lowering their phones. Conversations resume, the strained chatter of people united in mutual inconvenience. Great. Fight defused. Situation normal.
Until I refresh tomorrow’s flight information on my phone. Fuck . Every available seat has been taken.
Travelers are beginning to pick up their carry-ons and unplug their chargers from the outlets. Even Suit has relaxed from tomato-red to a more reasonable gin-flush pink. “Thanks, buddy.” He holds his phone up, displaying a ticket.
And he laughs at me as he leaves.
This can’t be happening. I refresh my airline app. No seats available. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not the day after. It looks like the soonest I could get to Florida is four days from now…which would make me a day late to spring training.
This cannot be happening.
I need this job—I really need the money that comes from being a big leaguer. There’s only about an hour between the Monsters’ stadium in Boston and the smaller minor-league park in Worcester I played at in triple-A. An hour and an infinite difference in salary.
I’m gearing up to compose an apologetic text to the team when a message comes through on the team group chat.
Unknown Number: Anyone else stuck at Logan Airport?
We’re not required to live in Boston in the offseason. Most guys have the sense to go somewhere warm rather than sticking around. I made it as far back as my family’s dairy farm in Vermont. Compared to that, the city is practically tropical. Who else would be brave-slash-foolish enough to endure a New England winter?
It must be someone new if I don’t have his number saved…
And my stomach drops at who it could be.
Me: Yeah, looks like there’s a storm coming in. My flight got banged too.
Banged . The baseball term for when games end prematurely due to weather. An understatement for how the entire terminal is clearing out—travelers preparing to go home or to hunker in airport hotels to await tomorrow’s flights. A handful of people are still arguing with gate agents as if that will make available seats suddenly appear.
If there’s another player here, he should be easy to spot. Ballplayers all have that look—wider than most civilians, and like we’d wear a hat and shower shoes to any occasion but our own weddings.
I might be wearing a hat—not a Monsters branded one, but an old one with the Lake Champlain monster on the front—but at least I wore boots for the flight. That’s practically formal wear.
Unknown Number: All the flights are canceled.
Me: yeah
Unknown Number: I’m going to drive if you want to come
My eyes widen involuntarily at my phone. Drive. To Florida. From Boston. I Google Maps it quickly. It’s a twenty-one-hour haul if we drive straight through and if traffic is kind. Two big if s. Still, that should put me at spring training on time. Hauling down to Florida would show the team I’m serious about playing in Boston this season. Maybe, just maybe, the team will feel the same way.
Me: Sure, I’m in. Let’s meet by the baggage claim.
Only after I send the text do I realize I don’t know who I’m looking for. I could be signing up to drive to Florida with a new bench player or minor leaguer: guys who are probably just grateful to be invited to spring training—who understand what it’s like to be clinging to edge of a team’s roster. Hopefully, whoever it is doesn’t mind driving for ten hours a day. I don’t. The thing about growing up in the country is that you get used to long drives.
Yeah, it’s probably someone like that. I imagine an easy trip to Florida: we split gas money, we take turns driving, and we get to Florida in plenty of time, nice and simple.
No matter who it is, there’s also no gracious way to bow out of this—some guys take that stuff personally. Besides, I really do need to get to Florida.
So I just write back See you in a minute , gather my duffel, and head down to retrieve my suitcase.
I’m standing by the baggage claim, peering around to make it clear I’m looking for someone, when I spot a guy swaggering toward me.
Not just any guy.
It takes a second for his face to resolve from the crowd. Fuck… I usually don’t have this kind of bad luck. But no, it’s exactly who I feared. My heart starts beating double-time against my chest. Sweat springs up on the back of my neck.
Because the guy walking toward me is Blake Forsyth . He’s grinning at the people who are momentarily interrupted from having a terrible travel day to elbow each other and go, “Is that…?” as he strolls past.
There can’t be more than a few seconds between when I spot him and when he ambles up to me, but time does that thing where it stretches like in a horror movie.
I don’t know him, but I know of him. Everyone in baseball knows of him. He just signed a three-year eighty-million-dollar contract with the Monsters—a surprise three-year eighty-million-dollar contract, because everyone thought he’d be with the Atlanta Hammers ballclub for life.
So now he’s coming up to Boston to be our new first baseman. The only problem? We already have one of those. Me.
And of course I just agreed to drive to Florida with him.
In person, Forsyth looks like he does on TV, only about a thousand times better, as if he stepped off a poster to play professional baseball, with not a blond hair out of place. He’s smiling like he’s being photographed—which he is—a flash of even white teeth. He looks like who he is: a three-time All-Star. Someone who deserves my job because he’s earned it.
I run my fingers over my beard like that’s going to fix it while trying not to blurt something like teach me to field better or you took my fucking spot in the lineup .
Last June, my triple-A manager called me into his office. Shook my hand. Congratulated me on my promotion. After I called my sister and texted my friends, I went to the florist. Asked for a bouquet with irises and calla lilies, bound up in a purple ribbon.
Now I imagine that conversation in reverse. The Monsters’ manager gruffly shaking my hand, wishing me best of luck as they send me back to Worcester or trade me someplace far from Vermont.
I’m so wrapped up in imagining my inevitable demotion that I almost don’t notice the woman striding behind Forsyth.
Her glossy dark hair has slipped from its ponytail during her hustle. A few strands of it frame her heart-shaped face. She’s either wearing no makeup or the amount of makeup women use when they want to look like they aren’t wearing any. Her eyes are framed in thick dark lashes. Her lips are a natural pink.
Even in thick platform sneakers, she’s short. No, petite would be more accurate. She’s also pushing her way through the crowd with a certain ferocity. Forsyth turns back and says something to her. She smiles at him, candy-sweet, like she hasn’t been parting the crowd like a sea.
He also gestures to the heavy duffel slung on her shoulder.
She shakes her head like she’s refusing his offer to carry her bag. Just take it from her, you jerk. I don’t know if I’m talking to myself or to Forsyth.
And I’m so busy thinking about that—how perfect Blake Forsyth isn’t carrying his girlfriend’s bag—that I almost don’t recognize her.
Then something clicks.
Melody .
What is Melody doing here?
Closer, she looks more like if Melody had a twin sister. Her hair is pulled back. A gold pendant rests in the dip of her clavicle. Her nails are short, not the long coffin set she used to rock. A term I only know because I’d Venmo her money to get them done.
I must be staring. No, I’m definitely staring, because Melody looks up and catches my gaze. Her brown eyes widen in panic.
I’m still sporting my dusty farm beard. Having facial hair in Vermont in the winter just makes sense—but it’s definitely not how I wanted to look when I saw Melody again. I—literally—bite my tongue to keep myself from saying something like, I haven’t seen you in eight months.
Meanwhile, Forsyth clears his throat like he’s waiting for me to stop gawking and introduce myself. I do, sticking out a hand that encompasses his as we shake. Even if we play the same position, he’s built like more a third baseman—a few inches shorter than I am and naturally lean. Shaved and trimmed and shiny. He glances at my hand—at the few chips of black polish remaining on my thumbnail—and his lips part vaguely in surprise.
“Felix Paquette,” I say, before he can comment on that.
“Hey, nice to meet you, man. I’m Blake.” Said like I don’t already know. I resolve right then to call him Forsyth if only to make it clear we’re not going to be friends.
Melody is staring at me, her olive skin gone pale like she’s seen a ghost. I need to say something. All I can manage is, “Too bad about the flights.”
Forsyth snorts amiably. “I tried to charter a plane, but everything was grounded.”
Without thinking, I shoot Melody a Can you believe this guy? look the way I would sometimes if a club patron was being particularly obnoxious.
Normally she’d laugh and say, It’s a business in that accent of hers.
Now she just tugs the cropped hoodie she’s wearing closer to the waistband of her joggers like she doesn’t want me to see even that little strip of tanned skin. A reminder I’ve seen her in less clothing—much less.
It’s possible Forsyth is the jealous type. Even if he’s not, I shouldn’t be looking at her. Not at the point of her chin, the soft pout of her lips. I try to find someplace on her that won’t evoke that same feeling I had in June, but I can’t pull my eyes away. The strap from her bag left a small red mark on her neck. I focus on that, on how, in the right light, it looks like stubble burn.
Of course, Forsyth must see me staring and swoops in. “Here, let me take that, sweetheart,” he says to her.
“Oh.” She says it like she’s surprised to find the bag on her shoulder. “It’s not heavy.”
“It’s the least I can do given the flight situation.” As if he’s manfully shouldering the blame for the weather along with her bag.
Hey, asshole, she can hold her entire body weight upside down on a pole .
For a second, I expect the full volcano of her temper—Melody was always quick with an opinion, quick to laugh. Quick to breathe something incendiary in my ear that left me aching.
“Um, I guess, if it’s not too much trouble.” She hoists the bag and lets him peel it from her. A process only slowed by him kissing the tip of her nose.
Of course he would. Of course he’d be showy and perfect, as if he was built in a lab that produced baseball players. Handsome as a model. Or a Ken doll .
And better than you. At everything .
I clear my throat, trying not to sound impatient.
If it bothers Forsyth, it doesn’t show, and I hate him for that as much as anything else.
“Oh, sorry,” Forsyth says. “Shira, this is Felix Paquette.” And he says it through a slight Georgia drawl, like packet and not pah- khet , the way it’s actually pronounced. “Paquette, this is Shira.”
Shira . Right. Of course she was using a different name at the club. I guess I don’t have much room to criticize. It’s not like I told her my real name either.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say.
Melody— Shira —doesn’t offer her hand. She presses her teeth to her bottom lip. In the months we’ve been apart, I somehow forgot she did that—as if she’s trying to bite back something she shouldn’t say. How that always made me feel like we were in on a secret together.
“It’s nice to meet you too, Felix,” she says quietly.
Who are you and what have you done with Melody? As if she took her personality off along with her makeup. “Looks like we’re driving to Florida,” I say. It comes out loud, like I’m shouting over the crowd at the club. My face starts to burn above the straggles of my beard. Shira takes a fraction of a step back.
Fortunately, Forsyth doesn’t seem like he’s picked up on any awkwardness. “Looks like.”
“That’s a pretty long drive,” Shira agrees.
“You’re not coming with us?” The question slips out before I can stop it, but I’m still reeling: she appeared like an apparition—and she might vanish just as quickly.
Shira shakes her head, a swish of her glossy dark hair. Sometimes my fingers would brush the ends of it, and I’d go home thinking about that, and the thrill of her on my lap, and that was enough to get me through the next day at the ballpark.
“I was just going down there for a few days, but have fun driving.” She says the latter skeptically—like she doubts that’s something Forsyth and I can have together. Doubts I share.
Forsyth pulls her to him and kisses her again, this time on her cheek. My stomach churns jealously at the easy affection he gets and I never did. “The second the weather clears, you should come down and visit,” he says to her.
“What, you’ll miss me?” Shira says it teasingly, even if her eyes have the slightest hint of skepticism as if she doesn’t entirely believe him.
“I would.” He kisses her again, then pulls out his phone and begins scrolling through something. I crane my neck to see what’s on the screen—maybe he’s the type of guy to hop on dating apps the second he’s left alone. But no, a flash of car listings rolls by. He catches me staring and holds up his phone. “Drive should take about two days.”
Two days . Put it that way, and this shouldn’t be that hard to get through. All I need to do is keep my cool until we hit Florida. And what about the rest of the season?
I thought Shira was just committed to being independent when she—nicely, sweetly—rejected me. What’d the other girls call me? A plaid whale . A big spender. Some sour part of me wonders if she was just waiting for a larger, more lucrative whale.
I touch my own teeth to my lower lip. A reminder of all the things I want to say to her and shouldn’t. Not here. Not now. Not with the words perched on the tip of my tongue.
How much I missed her.
How I was in love with her and thought she felt the same way about me.
How much I want her to be mine—still.
None of which I can say, so I settle for turning to Forsyth, who’s still scrolling through his phone. “Where’s your car?” I ask.
Forsyth shakes his head. “Georgia. I’ve been leasing here and I just turned it in. All the rentals are sold out—looks like everyone else is driving too. Where’s yours?”
“Back on the farm.”
Forsyth gives me a once-over like he’s seeing me for the first time: my work boots, my salt-crusted hat, my shirt that’s just on the edge of too-tight around my chest. “Huh,” he says, “guess we’ll just have to tell the team we’ll be late.”
Because of course he just assumes the team will understand. That’s what being an All-Star gets you. “No,” I say. Snap . A second later, I relent. “We could take the bus.”
“You want to take a bus—to Florida?” Forsyth says it like it’s a question when it’s really not.
“Why not?” I press. “We took them in the minor leagues.” And I took one this morning, a shuttle in from Dartmouth. Not that I’ll admit that to Forsyth.
The tiniest muscle jumps in Forsyth’s jaw. “Well, if that’s what you want to do, don’t let me stop you.” He adjusts Shira’s bag on his shoulder and if I didn’t know better, I’d think the muscle in his jaw jumped again.
“How’ll you get to Florida?” I ask.
Forsyth shrugs. “I’m in the market for a new car anyway. Might as well check that off the list.” Said matter of fact. He has money. Money will solve this problem.
I snort. “Not sure you can buy your way out of a snowstorm.”
Forsyth’s smile goes hard at the edges. “I bet I could try.”
“Is that right?” I step toward Forsyth, not like we’re gonna tussle right here, but to remind him that just because he’s taking my job doesn’t mean he can push me around. I must do it too forcefully, because Shira slides between us, a subtle barrier that nevertheless makes Forsyth and me both freeze.
“I have a car,” she declares.
“You do?” For whatever reason, Forsyth looks confused. She’s your girlfriend and you don’t even know that? “You want to lend us your car?”
“Sure.” Even if Shira doesn’t look sure.
I turn to her. “Won’t that leave you without one?”
“I can get Ubers.” Though she says it through clenched teeth.
“By the time we get there,” Forsyth says, “it could take almost a month to ship your car back to you. Of course, I could send you something for a rental…”
“No!” Shira shakes her head emphatically. “I mean, I’ll be okay.”
“There is another option…” Forsyth says. “Way I see it, we can drive with Shira to Florida. Then Shira can take the auto train back north with her car. It’ll leave you around DC, so you’ll still have to drive some but seems like the easiest thing.”
I don’t trust whatever my face is doing but can’t help a glance at her. “Seems like a lot of trouble to put M—Shira through.”
Forsyth wraps an arm around her waist, draws her tight, and kisses her cheek. “Do you mind?” he asks her.
She gives the tiniest gulp as if she’s avoiding her real answer. As if she knows, like I do, that this is a terrible idea. “Could be fun.”
I almost, almost succeed at not throwing her a look of What are we doing? “All right, sounds like a good plan.” Which it does, but that’s not what I mean.
Because Forsyth is rich, handsome, famous. Better . All I have is myself. I can only hope that’s enough. Before, I was going to Florida to beg for my job. Now I have a different mission: I have two days to convince Melody— Shira —she should leave him for me.