Hardball (12 page)

And I am very turned on

Vivian

“You look tired.” Francine poked our slice of apple pie.

Pie was the new thing, replacing macaroons, which had replaced cupcakes as the most stylish way to end up with a closet full of clothes that didn’t fit.

“I was up all night texting with Dash.”

“Mr. Winter? Really?” She’d dubbed him Mr. Winter because he’d slated the relationship to end in spring. “Were you texting about how many times he was going to fuck you before he split?”

“
Shh
!” I glanced around the coffee shop.

Everyone must have heard her. They were just being polite. Thank God. She pushed the pie to me, and I speared an apple.

She fiddled with the white pom-pom on her pink hat. We were both dressed in jeans, but hers were original Sergio Valenti’s, and mine were Gap. She was one of seven stylists in Los Angeles making money. I thought I should try to let her dress me one day. If she saw my mother’s closet, she’d explode.

“What were you texting about then?”

“Books. Until three in the morning. He is—I mean, I can’t believe I’m texting
Dash Wallace.
I feel like I won the lottery.”

“You should fuck him¸” she said, dropping her voice on the word
fuck
as if that kept anyone from hearing. “And quit this lottery talk. He’s just a guy.”

I flashed on feeling the rock hardness of Dash’s dick between my legs. His hands gripping my arms to keep me up. His knees pressing my legs open. I’d brought myself to orgasm twice thinking of him and the things he’d texted. After the discussion of
The Story of O
and whether or not it turned me on, we moved to safer subjects, but I’d throbbed for him all through it.

I flushed hot pink. “We’re friends. We agreed.”

“It’s been years, Vivian. Years.”

“I can’t sleep with him until spring training and just stop.”

“Do it.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re practically a virgin. Come on! He’s so cute. And I bet he moves like a champ. Please. You’ve slept with one guy your whole life. Just a few weeks. For fun!”

I rolled my latte between my hands, letting the warmth spread over my skin. “I’m not that way. I’m not judging. Everyone has to do what makes them happy. But I’m not in the market for a fling. I like serious relationships.”

“Like the one you had with Carl, you mean?”

“Shut up. I just… it’s not like I want to marry the guy. I don’t even know him. But I don’t want to make it cheap.”

“Who said anything about cheap? Make him take you out,” she said.

“See what I mean?”

“What I’m saying is, how do you know you won’t like a fling? You’ve never tried it. And if you start having ‘feelings,’ you just end it before they’re too much.”

I put my cup down and blew on the surface of the latte until the foam was a white crescent against the edge. Francine sounded logical and right. What could it hurt?

“I saw Carl the other night,” I said.

“I know,” she replied, sitting back.

Carl and Larry were still friends. We hadn’t split our friends in the breakup. We just kept all the hurt feelings away from friends we shared. Except Francine. She was a vault.

“How did you feel about it?” she asked.

She was a vault for Carl as well. If Carl told Larry anything and Larry shared it with Francine, I’d never know.

“I looked awesome,” I said, meaning every word. I’d even felt beautiful. “He did too. He was with this girl. Woman. Big tits and lips.”

I didn’t have big tits. Mine were great, perfect for me, but not Ds. And my lips were also fine, but not Angelina Jolie pillow pets. Was that what Carl had been looking for?

I realized I didn’t care. That was new. I used to use all of my shortcomings as a reason to beat myself up about Carl, and now, in the coffee shop with Francine, I just didn’t care what kind of woman he wanted that I wasn’t.

“What did Jim think?” Francine asked. “Did he paw you to make Carl jealous?”

“He was with Michelle. I was talking to Dash at that point. I have to say, I’ve seen Carl a few times since we split up, and every time it gets easier. He looks more together, and it gets easier anyway.”

She reached across the table and held my wrist. Her hand was warm from her cup of chocolate. “You’re ready.” She tilted her head to make eye contact. “I know you think I’ve always thought you were ready. But I knew you were hurting, and I was looking for a Band-Aid. This is different. I know you don’t believe it. I know it’s hard. But I mean it this time. You’re ready.”

I let her hand stay there. Maybe I was ready to look for a man again. But I wasn’t ready to throw my body around until April. I hadn’t changed that much. “I’m scared.”

“I know,” Francine whispered back. “I know, and that never goes away.”

Vivian

I couldn’t keep my mind on my work. I had a stack of books to get back on the shelves and a bunch of late notices to slip into backpacks. Iris had eaten two apples during recess and four after lunch. Which was fine, but now I had to get more. I had to write requisitions for new books. I had a proposal with the public library pending that would have them send a book for every child off the semester’s reading list. I could do all of it. I wasn’t overwhelmed, necessarily.

You’re ready.

By Wednesday morning, the physical memory of him had faded and been replaced by the plain intellectual excitement of seeing his texts. We were reading
Goalpost
together. I couldn’t keep up with him, but trying was so fun that I’d been up late again on Tuesday night, talking about the characters and making predictions. It wasn’t my usual romance fare, but I didn’t miss the alpha guy getting the girl, losing the girl, getting the girl. A break was nice once in a while.

I got the go-ahead to send an email to all the third-grade parents about the missing glove. By lunch, I was catching up on all the things I’d let slide in my Dash-induced haze when Iris came in with a plastic grocery bag.

“
Lo siento, señorita Foster
.” She apologized, placing the bag on my desk, head hanging like a puppy.

I knew what was in the bag. I asked her why without even opening it. “
¿Por qué?
”

“
El pin era rosa. El color rosa es de niñas
.”

I tried not to laugh. This was serious. She shouldn’t have stolen, even if the glove had a pink pin and pink was for girls. There would be a punishment for sure, but I hoped to keep it gentle. Consequences were important, but Iris could get derailed easily. Her parents were very strict already.

“In English, Iris.”

She screwed up her eyes and made her brain work. Good sport. She never fought hard work. “I was just looking at it.”

“Under the table?”

“
Si
. Yes. I put it on my hand. There was a pink pin. Pink is for girls.”

“So you took it?”

She hung her head, nodding.

I opened the bag and was flooded by a smell I’d forgotten. Dash Wallace. I tried not to groan in front of Iris. Opening the glove, I saw a little hole in the leather but no pin anywhere. I took it out of the bag completely and inspected it.

“Where’s the pin?”

She didn’t say anything. I assumed that was what she’d been talking about when she mentioned the color. She understood English well enough to look at the carpet in shame.

“Iris? There was a princess pin
.
”

“My brother flushed it down the toilet.”

Uh-oh.

Baseball players were notoriously, crazily, famously superstitious, and a third-grade girl with a seventh-grade brother may have just ruined an entire season by flushing a good luck charm.

I escorted little Iris down to the principal’s office, telling her she didn’t have to cry.

I was sure I didn’t want a short-term fling with Dash Wallace or anyone, but the news was too bad to deliver by phone.

And, yeah, I wanted to see him again.

Dash

I took my run down the hills of the Oaks and up again. I took two a day in the winter, when heatstroke and dehydration weren’t a concern. Everyone in the neighborhood knew me, and the streets I ran were so far off the beaten path I was unlikely to see anyone who wasn’t used to me trotting by all the time.

My knees ached more than usual. I’d had a hard time getting out of bed. She’d kept me up late again.

I’d only fucked women who didn’t keep me up that late. This was exactly why I set limits. During the season, I had lights-out early no matter the time zone. No errors from fatigue. No strikeouts from a lack of sleep. Early dinner. Back to their place. They came three times, I came once at the end, we had a few laughs, and I went back to the hotel. Everyone happy.

The cold burned my lungs, and I tried to focus on my steps, my breath, the rhythm of my body.

Limits and lids. I imposed limits and kept the lid on emotional highs and lows. Five years of it, and I had it down to a science. No media attention on my personal life because it effectively didn’t exist. No distractions from the game because that was all I had to pay attention to. Beautiful women were easy to find, and I could spot one with a dirty mouth who liked getting a pink bottom. We kept it short and sweet. A series in Baltimore where Eva liked to be bound so tight she couldn’t move. A two-week stay at home in Los Angeles, then to Pittsburgh, where Joanna preferred my belt to my palm. All good. Just to relax. Just to maintain the feeling of control I had on the field. When things went off the rails in my personal life, it affected my performance, and I’d worked too hard, given up too much to let another human being fuck with me.

I was sure I was right.

But I liked talking to her.

I felt as if I was bending the rules anyway.

I was at war with myself.

My front door led to the stairs to the house. Opening it, I stepped into an outdoor area that seemed infinite. When I’d been looking for a house, I didn’t like seeing the stadium from the front steps, but eventually I got to like it. I wasn’t seen. I was only seeing.

I turned on the lights. Music. Opened the windows to the cold. I was still coated in sweat and breathing like a runner. My thoughts were disorganized. Unusual after a run.

She had felt safe.

I’d let my guard down with her. She may or may not have intuited that, but I knew it, and it was disruptive. I grabbed a ball and fingered the stitches. I had them all over the house. None had seen a game. I just wore them down with my thumb and fingertips. I juggled them, three, four, five. I had a way of letting things fall through the cracks in favor of new sensory pleasures. I could focus while juggling baseballs, and I had to focus right now on one problem I’d avoided solving.

The glove.

One, two, three balls in the air, and my hands hit a rhythm my thoughts had to follow. I let them flow instead of trying to organize it all. There was a relief in letting go of the pretense that I had to remember any of it.

I had to stop texting Vivian. Cop to wanting to fuck her. Okay, I want to fuck her she’s not going to work out with Youder because he needs to re-up with Los Angeles is not the place for a girl who’s serious and has told you so when she said you shouldn’t finish Cornell, and you should just do what you love because how old are you now? How many years before you break a bone or cartilage or a heart like your own, which is made of tight knots, and spanking an experienced girl who
oohed
and
aahed
was nice, but a buttoned-up librarian begging for my cock in the filthiest terms possible, mouth open, lipstick on my cock, mascara running up and down the hill twenty-five times hold on to everything. No more slipping no more slipping no more slipping she’s not a plaything.

I dropped a ball and caught the other two. Turned one in my right hand. I’d done my signature real big on her ball because I thought she was hot and it was my stupid way of letting her know. So it was my fault from day one.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was a fucking infection.

The look on her face when I’d told her how many times I was going to make her come. Shocked. Scandalized. Aroused. All of it. Saying it and watching her expression had been like plowing new snow or knifing the satin-smooth top of a new jar of peanut butter.

I could fuck her maybe. A few times. Just to crack the label.

Before I’d been diagnosed with ADD, I did crazy shit for the sake of doing it. I broke crayons to hear the snap of the wax. Punched a kid two years older than me because the buildup of energy needed a place to go. Yelled too loudly when I lost and slapped my own face when I struck out. I was a balloon that constantly filled to bursting. I had to release the energy. I had no choice.

The meds started when I was twelve, and the feeling of control was such a relief I almost cried on that first day.

To get her naked in front of me and tie her hands behind her back. To watch her adjust to my control. To accept it as she’d never accepted it from anyone else.

The space between second and third was mine, and nothing got past it. Nothing. My domain. The first season I got control of my fielding, after Daria’s death, that was the year I stopped feeling the eyes on me from the stands because they didn’t matter. Nothing had felt so good as seeing them as a wall instead of people.