CHAPTER 19 DANNY
I postponed a few media obligations when I headed out of town for the Hush project, but I’m making up for it now.
Apparently when you win the World Series, you’re not allowed time off—not that filming a commercial is time off, exactly, but the time spent with Alexis is exactly how I want to spend my offseason.
I’ve never been interested in acting, but the thought that I might get a few days with her has me hoping my phone will ring with a call from the director.
It’s stupid…but it’s one way for us to spend time together.
I’m assuming her father has no idea. Furthermore, I’m assuming he doesn’t know I was one of the celebrities involved with Hush. I guess their NDA made everyone on set…hush.
Alexis has been busy running lines the last couple days, but we touch base when we can. Hearing her voice is always the serotonin boost I need. Texts just don’t cut it, but they’re better than nothing, I suppose.
Sunday the entire team will head down to DC to meet the president, and we come back Monday evening after the event. She starts filming Wednesday, and from what I understand, she’ll have long days at the studio—mainly because she’s the leading actress.
So I made plans to hit the bar with Rush and AJ this weekend. Cooper said he’ll come out for a while, and Duke and Johnny said they’ll come, too. So it’ll be a decent size group of ballplayers out on the prowl. Except…Cooper and this guy won’t be prowling, and only Coop and Rush will know why.
Though I haven’t spoken to Cooper about Alexis since the night they invited me to dinner at their house. I’m sure Gabby has pressed him to find out more, but we were focused on winning games, not on gossiping in the clubhouse.
I head to Rush’s place first to pre-party. He and AJ live with Duke and Johnny, our right and center fielders, and it’s been quite the party palace since they decided to share a place.
I decided to purchase a place of my own when I first got the offer from Troy. I love my teammates, but at the time, I also loved a variety of pussy and wanted to ensure my privacy. If I wanted to fuck a lady on my kitchen counter, I wanted to do it without the threat of a roommate barging in on us.
I guess now I just want to fuck Alexis on said kitchen counter—something I haven’t had the pleasure of doing yet.
I will.
Someday.
Hopefully soon.
When I get to Rush's place, the party is already in full swing—or so it seems from the loud music I can hear from outside the front door.
The four men who share this house have obviously been drinking for a few hours already, and part of me misses the bond of living with a teammate.
The laughs, the inside jokes, the memories.
It's kind of a lonely existence when you give all that up, trading it in for the peace and privacy of living alone.
AJ opens the door and ushers me into the kitchen where Rush is ready to get me caught up, a cold beer already in hand as he passes it over.
I glance at the counter and spot a variety of bottles of whiskey, and against my better judgment, decide to forgo the beer in favor of something a little harder, a little quicker.
It's that twinge of an ache from the separation but also from the unknown.
I love her, I told her I love her, and I have no idea when I'm going to see her again. And that's hard. Harder than I expected it to be.
I nod toward the bottle of whiskey, and Rush gives me the go ahead with a nod back.
He grabs a glass from the cabinet and slides it across the countertop to me.
I fill it, and I'm pretty sure my buddies were expecting me to pour the standard two fingers, but fuck all that because I'm down to get drunk tonight.
I chug the whiskey, admittedly not my smartest move ever, and wait for the buzz to hit.
The car Duke called up for us arrives, and the buzz just starts to hit as I climb into the back.
We're laughing, and I'm part of these inside jokes as we talk about our favorite moments from the season.
We get to the bar and spot Cooper waiting for us in our usual booth.
We make our way over to him, a feat that's not as easy as it sounds on a Saturday night at a crowded bar as five ball players from the team who won the World Series less than a week ago parade through to the table on the far side of the place.
We’re stopped multiple times, hugged and grabbed, and in general, assaulted as phones are whipped out for videos and photographs and selfies. I play the role and realize I'm probably a better actor than I give myself credit for since there's only one place I want to be right now, and it ain’t here.
Some chick with very little inhibitions presses her mouth squarely to mine, and if I hadn't chugged that whiskey that’s now dulling my reflexes, I’d probably be able to fend her off quicker.
But I'm not very quick, and I have a sinking feeling someone caught a photo of that and it'll be blasted all over tomorrow's headlines.
I slide into the booth next to Cooper, who's laughing at me, and a waitress immediately comes over to take our order. I go with a double whiskey for now.
“Hitting the hard stuff?” Cooper asks.
“You know it.”
“What's been going on with you?” he asks.
He's on the inside of the booth, and it's loud enough in here that I can turn his direction and talk to him without anybody else overhearing.
I find I want to confide in him. He’s a good friend of mine, but I also look up to him, and he might be able to give me the kind of advice I could use right now.
“Not much,” I hedge.
“Come on, man. It's me.”
“We ended up on the same commercial shoot for two days this past week and…” I trail off as I shake my head.
“And?”
“We spent two entire days together. I think I'm in love with her.”
His brow shoots up. “You had the night.”
“The night? What night?” The waitress swings by to drop off our drinks.
“Everybody knows in any relationship, there's always a night,” he tells me. “You know, the one where you feel more connected to a person than you've ever felt before. The one where you just…you know.”
“And you had that with Gabby?” I ask. I take a sip of the whiskey, moving a little slower this round after chugging down way too much back at the house.
“The night I met Gabby was the night I had that with Gabby. And every experience that came after that only proved it.”
“Except when you found out Troy was her dad,” I say flatly.
“Well, yeah. Except for that. But even when it drew us apart, my gut told me that it wasn't forever. It couldn't be when I knew she was my forever.”
Is that what I'm feeling for Alexis?
You’re goddamn right it is.
“Yeah. Then I guess we had the night,” I admit.
“So what are you going to do now that she's engaged?”
I shake my head. “I don't know. It's for some merger. Media-driven. Her dad set it all up, and she doesn't know if he's going to make her actually go through with the wedding.”
“You really keep your head out of those tabloids, don't you?”
“Why?”
“Gabby told me she read something about how the wedding plans are being made.
Everyone's trying to guess the date, but they think they've got the location nailed down.” He presses his lips together, and I feel like shit...not to mention no part of me feels like I’m in the partying kind of mood anymore.
I chug down what’s left in my glass.
Every time I think we’re getting somewhere, something like this comes out and presses on every single one of my insecurities. How can I say I'm in love with her when the rest of the world thinks she's planning her wedding to someone else?
There’s nothing right about it, and I hate how it makes me feel.
I hate the fear that we could be caught and I’d be the other man.
But my feelings when we’re together will keep me here despite all that.
“Who’s ready for hunting season?” AJ poses to the table, his very unsubtle code for going lady-hunting, and Johnny and Duke are in.
“I’m going to talk to these two for a minute,” Rush says.
I crinkle my brow.
Rush is…staying to talk with Cooper and me?
He’s not on the prowl?
It feels like I’ve entered some sort of alternate universe.
“Suit yourself, dickwad,” AJ says to him, and the three get lost in the sea of bodies fairly quickly.
“Anything new with you?” Rush asks me carefully, and he glances meaningfully over at Cooper.
“He knows,” I tell Cooper.
“What do I know?” Rush asks, leaning forward across the table toward us.
“About Lex,” I say.
“Right. And how are things going?”
“We had the night,” I say, using Cooper’s word.
Cooper chuckles beside me. “You didn’t even know what the night was until about twelve seconds ago, man.”
“Well now I know, thanks to you, Professor Know-It-All.” I roll my eyes, and I lean forward toward Rush. “If I’m being honest, though, we had two nights. And a couple mornings.” I wiggle my eyebrows.
“Jesus Christ. You snag the coach’s daughter,” he says, nodding to Cooper, “and you score the world’s biggest pop star. What the fuck am I doing with my life?”
I laugh. “Fucking whatever nice young lady catches your eye? Look, man, there’s a time and a place.”
“Yeah,” he mutters, and I get the sense he didn’t stay behind just to talk to me.
“What’s going on?” I press.
He studies me a long beat, and then he shakes his head. “Nothing.” He tips his beer to his lips so he doesn’t have to talk anymore, but I can tell…something’s going on.
And if I cared enough, I’d get to the bottom of it. But that second glass of whiskey hit me, and a third is on its way, and the ache is starting to numb against the alcohol.
I float in the buzz, and somehow I end up at home with regret as my alarm wakes me early on Sunday.
Okay, not early exactly, and not my alarm but the ringing of my phone.
Why is my phone always waking me up when I’m hungover as fuck, and worse…why is it always Brad?
“The fuck do you want?” I answer.
“What is this shit in the headlines today?” he asks.
“You woke me up out of hangover sleep and expect me to know what the fuck you’re talking about?”
“Baseball’s Bad Boy at it Again,” he reads to me.
“At what again? I didn’t do anything. I sat in a booth, drank whiskey with Cooper and Rush, and somehow made it home alive to tell about it.” My voice is hoarse, and my mouth feels like cotton.
“There’s a photo of you kissing some girl, and the article says it’s from last night. I thought you were laying low after the Kiss Seen Round the World with Alexis Bodega,” he says.
“Fuck.” I sit up straight. Big mistake. “There’s a photo of me with some girl?” I remember the moment I walked in and some chick assaulted me with her mouth.
Drunk girls have no limits, I swear. And in another lifetime, also known as six months ago, I would’ve appreciated the fuck out of that.
But now that I’m seeing Alexis, well…I don’t.
And I don’t have time to correct this with her because I don’t get to see her.
It’s not just that I’m hopping on a plane to meet the president with my teammates. It’s the fact that we’re hiding this from her agent father, her fake fiancé manager, and her bodyguard. The people who have tight security on her twenty-four seven.
I can’t run over to her place and explain it in person because of them.
This is all so fucked.
How are we ever going to make this work?