Hardball (15 page)

About what happened today

(…)

Yes?

I washed you off my hands. I want it back. Having you on my fingers feels like good luck. I bet I hit .400 with your pussy on my lips

You can wait. You don’t have to hit anything yet

I’m going to open your legs and have a field day on your clit. Just a little with the tip of my tongue. Then I’m going to suck on it. Pull it between my teeth. Do it all over, flicking just a little. I can make you last a long time

(…)

(…)

(…)

Are you touching yourself?

No

Now I am

Are you wet?

Yes

I want you to come

Okay

Just imagine what I’m going to do to you and how much I’m going to love doing it.

(…)

Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry, stray lower where the pleasant fountains lie

(…)

(…)

(…)

(…)

Are you coming?

You quoted Shakespeare. I didn’t have much of a choice

I’ll make a note

I’m so sleepy now

Good night, sweetapple.

Good night, Dashiell.

Dash

The Dodger batting cages were tucked in a warehouse downtown, on the east side of the river. The building was the best kept on the block—unmarked, guarded, with a small parking lot. No one from the street could see the helipad or the world-class training facility inside.

The machine clicked and whooshed. My bat made contact with a
thwock
. Line drive to left. Too low to get over the shortstop. I set up again.
Thwock
. Good for triple A. I had a long way to go here. No worse than I’d been any other winter.

Randy waited by the gate in a Nickelback T-shirt and old Nikes. “What happened to you?” He pointed at a bruise on my forearm.

“Accident on the way back from Joe’s.”

“Fuck.” He shook his head. “No one knows how to drive in the rain here, man.”

Everyone said that, and it meant they thought people drove too slow or too fast, but no one knew what it meant to drive in Ithaca winters.

“I got T-boned,” I said. “It was bad. Car was totaled.”

“And you got a bruise?” He raised his eyebrows in shock. “
That
bruise?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you eat before? Did you have the fucking fish?”

I shook my head but didn’t answer. What was he talking about?

“Eat that every day. I’m telling you, whatever you did to get that luck going, do it every day.” He pulled a bat out of the bin. “The universe just gave you a big heads-up.”

He closed the gate and got ready to bat.

Trust Randy to tell me what I already knew.

Vivian

Mom’s closet had been a disappointment. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but nothing worked. Too formal, too farty, too much my mother’s taste.

Francine put a long pleated skirt up against my waist. It was too
her
.

“No,” I said, getting jostled by a woman with a big tote. The sale section in the back of the store was a wreck at the end of the day, and we’d found nothing. “Too long.”

“You have three hours,” she said, clicking through hangers. “Let’s do this. Tell me your vision when you imagine yourself going on this date.”

“Sexy. Not slutty. But I want to look…” I waved my hands in circles and lowered my voice to call up the only adjective I could muster. “Delicious.”

She raised a perfectly-manicured eyebrow. My cheeks tingled.

“What are you going to do tonight?” she asked.

“I have no idea. He didn’t say.”

“But what do you say?”

“I say we’re going to do fun things. Alone together kinds of fun things.”

She looked at her watch. “We’re in the wrong store.”

She took my hand and pulled me out of the sale section, through the expensive stuff, past the designer cosmetics and shoes, and out to the fake courtyard of the Grotto. The tree was still up next to Santa’s village, but the sparkle had left both in favor of CAUTION tape as they were dismantled. SALE signs were plastered over every store window.

“Where are we going?”

“Do you trust me?” she called back.

“I do. Mostly.”

She didn’t answer as she wove through the crowd, over the stone pavement, past the fountain, the movie theater, the high-end storefronts, and down a small pathway between the mall and the street. A candy store. A custom shoe store. And…

“No way…” I said.

“Yes way.”

“I can’t,” I said when we were outside her destination. “He’ll expect it. I don’t want him to expect it. I can’t wear this.”

“Oh, you can, and you will. Not for him and not for what he thinks. But for you.” She poked me in the chest. “Because there’s nothing wrong with feeling sexy, and this stuff does it.”

She took me by the elbow and pulled me into La Perla. The bustle and rush of the mall was shut out the moment we entered, and we were engulfed in undulating music, dark corners, spotlights, and perfectly formed mannequins in garters and stockings.

I clutched my bag. “I can’t.”

“Can I help you find something?” the salesgirl asked. She wore a man’s shirt opened to the navel, revealing a lace bra with a crystal heart where the cups met.