Hardball (33 page)

“Did you really get an apartment?”

His voice sounded deeper because my head leaned on his bare chest. He’d taken me from behind minutes after we got to the bedroom, and I was sore already. I didn’t have another fuck in me. Not for at least an hour.

I picked my head up so I could make eye contact with him as he sat against the headboard.

“I want to explain.”

“Okay.”

“I love you. But I’ve only ever lived with my father and Carl. I’d like some time in a space of my own.”

He took forever to answer, drawing circles on my cheeks and lines along my jaw. At least three seconds of staring at me as if memorizing me for his next trip.

I swallowed. I didn’t think he’d be angry, but I was afraid of hurting him or shutting him down.

“I understand,” he said. “I don’t have to like it, but I understand.”

I believed he wanted to understand, but I didn’t think he actually understood at all.

Vivian

I ran as fast as I could. Coffee in one hand, sack of apples in the other. Purse over my shoulder, paper bag of used books on my wrist. The bag crinkled, the purse jingled, and the coffee splashed out of the little hole on the top.

I was as sore as I’d ever been. After I’d told Dash I was moving and described the little one-bedroom at the base of the hill, he spanked me and fucked me so hard I thought I would break like a china doll.

It was amazing.

But I’d overslept, and since I had to leave early to make the Friday home game, I had to get to work early. I was almost late. Sixty seconds to get to the library before the bell rang.

I nearly stepped right out of my shoe while getting up the steps, and my lungs burned as much as my pussy. When I crested the top of the stairs, I saw Jim coming from the opposite side of the hall. He stopped at the library door, keys swinging.

“Hey, you made it,” he said.

I didn’t have a full breath to answer. He opened the door just as the bell rang.

I dropped all my stuff behind my desk. Jim didn’t have first period PE class, so he could stand there with his hands in his pockets while I unloaded all my bags and oxygen.

“Thank you,” I said.

“No problem. Leaving early?”

“Yeah. But there’s no class in here, and I can do my paperwork at lunch.”

I dumped my apples in the bowl. The kids were on their way in.

He was still there, bouncing on his heels.

“Yes?” I said.

“I hate to ask, but I was wondering… could you score me some tickets for next week? Michelle’s birthday?”

“Probably. How is everything with her?”

He shrugged. “Same.”

“Breaking up?”

“And making up.” He winked just as a hoard of kids lined up in the hall for first period. He backed up a few steps toward the door. “Let me know about those tickets.”

“Will do.”

I spent the day in a sticky fog. I needed sleep. I needed to stay home. I needed a week without an airplane. I couldn’t focus on the paperwork I’d promised myself I’d do because I kept writing Dash a letter in my head.

It went something like, “Dear Dash. I love you. I’m tired. You did fine before you met me. You’ll do fine again.”

But I couldn’t. When a man told you he needed you, you showed up. I’d learned that from my dad. He’d shown up for my mother even after she was dead.

“Miss Foster?” Iris stood a few steps inside the library, rubbing her eye with the heel of her hand.

I didn’t have a class visiting, so the room was quiet. “Hey, Iris, how are you?”

“I’m tired.”

I waved her in. “Did your mom take you to work last night?”

“No.
Mi abuela
took care of us.”

I looked at her closely. Her eyelids drooped. She was falling asleep standing up.

I felt her forehead. No fever. We didn’t have a nurse on staff, so there wasn’t much I could do. There was only an hour left until dismissal. I called the office and let them know Iris would take science class time to nap on the library couch. She was out before I even got a blanket on her.

Should I send a car for you?

I looked at my watch. If Iris slept for an hour, I could make it to Echo Park in thirty minutes, which was still an hour and a half before anyone sang the national anthem.

I have my gold Volvo. It’s superfast.

Are there any kids around? I want to tell you all the dirty things I’m going to do to your body

He wouldn’t talk dirty when I had kids in the library. I was usually watched by no more than dancing bears and clown cutouts at two, but little Iris, breathing in shallow sleep, counted as a kid.

It’ll have to wait until tonight

Too bad

I’m shutting off the phone at 2:40. Let me know if you need anything before then

He shut off the phone in the stadium to keep his mind on what he was doing, and devices weren’t allowed in the locker room or dugout anyway.

See you later, Slugger

I shall say good night till it be morrow

I left it there and got back to my requisitions. I didn’t notice the time again until three, and I sat straight with a start. I should have been locking up. That extra five minutes on a Friday, with traffic to Echo Park on a game night, was going to count for an extra ten minutes of travel time.

“Iris?”

She’d slept the entire hour.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “
Iris, despiertate chiquita.
Wake up.”

I shook her a little and patted her. She didn’t move, and her breath was so slight I couldn’t detect it right away. I panicked, getting hot and cold at the same time. She looked too relaxed. Nothing was moving. Not her eyelids or her fingers. Nothing. I put my fingers on her cheek. She was alive.

Jesus. My head went crazy sometimes. Of course she was alive.

“Iris? Come on. Time to go.”

She didn’t look good.

That instinct that had freaked me out? The one where I’d thought she was dead? The instinct was right, but the conclusion was wrong.

She was not all right.

I picked her up. She was a complete dead weight.

I left everything at my desk and ran her downstairs.

Dash

She didn’t come for the walk. I sneaked away after batting practice to call her, but she didn’t answer, and the text I sent right after got no response.

Traffic.

Getting into and out of the north side of downtown sucked on game nights. And Fridays were generally bad.

Next time, she had to leave earlier. I couldn’t deal with this.

I tapped each base, pretending she was there, but as we took batting practice, I had an empty mental place I tried to fill. Something I didn’t do. As if I’d forgotten to brush my teeth. I had to go back and do it, but she wasn’t there. Not in her seat above the dugout even during the national anthem.

Forty thousand people in the stands couldn’t distract me the way the absence of one could.

At first, I thought it was traffic. But by the top of the ninth, her absence was assumed, and it turned from an irritation to outright worry. She wouldn’t just no-show unless something had happened.

Yes, bases were loaded with no outs.

Yes, Rodriguez was coming up to bat. I had all that handled, but when I glanced at her seat behind the dugout, she wasn’t there. I got annoyed with myself. I’d been so worried about my performance and the effect my rituals had on my play that I hadn’t worried about her and where she was. I hadn’t trusted her. Hadn’t assumed she had a life that needed me as much as I needed her. She could slump, strike out, make errors.

And where was she? Was she all right?

Rodriguez was three and oh. One out. He was going to swing. He only needed to get it far enough for the sacrifice. Anything in his wheelhouse would be in play.

I hopped right when I saw the catcher’s signal. Moved forward when I saw the batter move his front foot to left field. Back half a step when I caught a glimpse of how the pitcher held the seams of the ball. The crack of the bat reached my ears long after I knew where the ball was going.

And even then, I was off by about eight inches. The difference between catching it and missing. An out or an error. So I pushed off my toes a little harder. Leapt a little higher. Stretched farther. Still, as the millisecond unwound and the ball spun a little higher and I knew the batter was running, I twisted to get another inch out of my arm.

My wrist bent back predictably as the ball landed full force in the web of my glove, and I closed the fold around it. Then, having reached the apex of my leap, I started falling.

I was in an unexpected position, and my reflex was to protect the ball, not my throwing arm which, because of the last twist, had gotten into the space between my body and the ground.

When I fell, my body weight landed on my hand, and my wrist was at an angle I could not have predicted would result in the entire arm bending in a way it wasn’t supposed to.

I didn’t hear a crack or anything else. The entire stadium went silent with the held breath of forty thousand souls, and the vibration and volume of the silence funneled into pain.

But I couldn’t just lie there.

Whitten was running home from third.

I held up my glove and opened my hand. Youder had probably read my mind before I even hit the ground. He skidded to my side, getting dirt on my face, and plucked the ball out of my glove.