Chapter 15
Katie
The baseball game was . . . basebally. I’d been to a thousand of these things—had sat in better seats than these with agents,
with reporters from ESPN or Sports Illustrated, my dad practically salivating.
And, for a flash, during warm-ups, I swore I saw my brother on the mound.
Michael Caruso, a muffled radio announcer would’ve said.
Hometown boy. Six-foot-four right-hander out of Stonyport, New York.
First-round pick, second overall, straight out of high school.
Turned down Vanderbilt, SMU, just about everywhere
else you can think of for a chance to play ball with his childhood team. I erased the mirage with a swig of canned margarita and chased that by asking Danny to explain the difference between a ball
and a strike.
Tyler showed up in the middle of the third inning with a beat-up Mets cap on his head and a leggy blonde—she was a literal
model, I recognized her from the Lulu’s website, kill me now—hanging off his shoulder. Danny stood up to shake his hand at
once.
“Hey, man. Thanks for coming out.”
Tyler scratched his neck, then extended his palm. The model was holding a bag of peanuts and looking around suspiciously,
which, fair.
“Thanks,” he said. “This is . . . this is great. I’m Tyler. And, uh, this is Naomi. Naomi, this is—”
“You’re so pretty,” I said. Tyler’s head jerked back.
“It’s my job,” she said, deadpan, and with the slightest flip of her hair.
“Oh, I just—I didn’t mean . . .”
Danny put his hand on the small of my back. “Anyone else need a drink?”
Tyler shook his head no, then whispered something into Naomi’s ear.
Probably something like, Be nice. She really likes sparkly things.
She’s like a toddler begging for a sequin backpack at a suburban Target.
Naomi laughed, squeezed his biceps, and said, “A drink sounds great,” and then she and Danny disappeared, and it was just
Tyler, me, and the two blue plastic seats between us as the summer sky began to dim.
“She seems nice,” I said.
“I think she gets tired of everyone commenting on how pretty she is.”
“Wow. That must be so hard for her. Is she okay? Is she seeking help? Should we set up a GoFundMe, or—”
“Fine,” he said. “She’s awful. But it was short notice, okay? I told you, I don’t really take girls out. And all of the friendly
models I know were busy.”
“Wait, what? There are more? How? Where do you even find them?”
His cheeks turned the slightest bit pink.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“Mm. Not nothing. Tell me where you find them.”
“It’s . . .”
“Now, Tyler. We’re friends, remember? This is part of the deal. I ask, you tell.”
He rolled his eyes. “So, I guess there’s a modeling agency in this building around the corner from me? And, I don’t know,
sometimes I like to work at the coffee shop next door.”
“And you just . . . talk to them?”
He shook his head no.
“They just . . . talk to you?”
“They ask me about my tattoos, Katie. They touch them.”
“No! Oh my god! How!? Act it out! Show me!”
He scooted a seat closer, then pretended to type. “I’m working on a manuscript,” he explained, his hands still floating over
imaginary keys. A batter was announced, and the crowd booed.
“Right,” I said.
“Now, you walk in, looking very serious and tousled and better than everyone else.”
“As I am wont to do.”
He nodded. “As you are wont to do.”
“And then what?”
“And then, while you’re in line, you catch my eye. Just for a second. It’s quick.”
I tucked my hair behind my ears, sucked in my cheeks, and glanced at him for a blink. Just before I looked away, he stared
right at me, kind of smiled ever so slightly, then glanced back into his pretend laptop.
“Like that?” I said.
“Just like that.” He typed for a beat. “Now, you walk past me.”
“Is that a logical route?”
“No,” he said. “But you’re a model, remember? The rules don’t apply.”
“Right,” I said. “So I walk past you, holding my coffee cup, and I say . . .”
“You say, ‘I like your tattoos.’ ”
I raised an eyebrow and said, “I like your tattoos.”
He bit his bottom lip and said, “Thank you.”
I said, “Can I see them?”
He bit his lip again and said, “All right,” then whispered to me, “Now you sit down, Katie.”
I whispered back, “I’m already seated,” and tapped the base of my chair.
He shook his head and said, “Closer.”
I scooted one seat over, and he—so slowly, stop it, this wasn’t real—began to roll his sleeves up past his elbows, running
his fingers over his forearms. He was explaining every piece to me, where he’d gotten it, when he got it, what the artist
was like, how long it took, whether he added on to it, whether it was part of a story or just for fun, and then he was taking
my hand, which was trembling, and running it along the tendons and muscles and ink so tentatively, and I remembered everything.
The storm, the press of his hips, the brush of his lips, the way he took soft, slow bites of my rain-slicked skin, and then,
all of a sudden, I realized people were cheering. They were hooting. They were hollering. We were—I shit you not—on the Jumbotron.
We were on the kiss cam.
I pulled my hand back at once.
Tyler swallowed, then dropped his arms to his side.
We turned away from each other, then began to cross our arms, to flail our hands broadly, to mouth no, no, no.
After about ten infinite seconds, the camera operator gave up on us—the crowd booed, they were not pleased, people love love—and then it was over, it was done.
My cheeks were burning, and Tyler looked at me and said, “That’s gotta be another
one of your tropes, right?” and I laughed, catching my breath, assuring him that yes, it was, and then, goddamnit, we were
back on the Jumbotron because it was a big joke now, because everyone at the ballpark was in on it. We continued our flailing,
our mouthing of defenses, our you’ve-got-this-all-wrong body language, and then, out of nowhere, Danny was pushing Tyler aside.
He had a beer in one hand and a new Mets cap in the other—that was for me, it was pale pink, he was literally crowning me,
I was Mrs. Met now, he thought I didn’t own a Mets cap, my god—and he kissed me hard. The crowd went wild.
When it was over, Danny leaned back into his chair and said to Tyler, who was suddenly very busy studying the promotional
calendar magnet he was handed upon entry, “Well, one of us had to do it eventually, right?”
Tyler’s mouth twitched a little, and then he laughed, wiped his hands on his jeans, and started explaining Bobby Bonilla Day
to Naomi, who, apparently, could not listen to a story about the deferred payment schedule that had come to define the dumbfuckery
of the Bernie Madoff–era Mets without sitting in someone else’s lap.
Without touching someone else’s face.