Mr. Personality (24 page)

* * *

“I really appreciate you two coming to the game,” Pete Tucker said awkwardly that afternoon, his comment directed to Max and Nicole impartially.

“Jared! Swing at the ball!” a mother sitting next to them called out.

Perched on the bleachers next to Max and his brother, Nicole had to smile at the sight in front of them. The team of pint-sized ball players in red shirts were making an effort at something approximating baseball. In white shirts, the opposing team stood huddled in their dugout, some of them even appearing to listen to their coaches earnest directions. The red-shirt players were scattered over the field, some attending the activity at hand, others throwing and catching their gloves or poking at insects in the grass. The other spectators in the bleachers occasionally called out a kid’s name directing him to pay attention!

Standing behind home plate and heavily obscured by his catcher’s gear, Max’s nephew, Ryan, was a red-shirt player wearing a number seven placed below the Wildcats team name. Not resembling a wild creature of any kind, the six-year old boy did have the same dark hair his father and uncle shared.

“Ryan appreciates your being here, too,” Pete said, nodding toward his oblivious son. “He gets caught up in the game or he’d be out here, probably asking you all kinds of questions. He’s a really curious kid.”

Nicole liked Pete more for the pride she heard in his voice. No matter how dismal the parenting Max and he suffered as children, Pete seemed to be a devoted father.

Just then, an older man behind them on the bleachers stood up and pointed in the direction of first base, “No, Sam! Run toward first! First!”.

Hunkered down beside Nicole, Max, wearing an old baseball hat and sunglasses, responded to his brother’s attempt a conversation. “We’re glad to come. We needed a break anyway. Nicole gets cranky if she spends too much uninterrupted time doing my typing.”

She slanted him a tolerant glance, thinking how much more approachable he looked in his ball cap.

“Well, I’m glad you decided to spend your break here, Nicole.” Pete leaned forward and spoke across his brother with a kind of ponderous gallantry. The look he cast her was both admiring and speculative, as if he were wondering the extent of her relationship with his brother.

In truth, she wasn’t sure of that herself. What were the possibilities if Max did change? She’d pulled back from him after discovering his disconnectedness from others. He’d have to have been fairly out-of-touch with himself to even consider contributing to the problems in his brother’s marriage.

However, it definitely took two to tango. Max couldn’t be held solely responsible for Pete’s divorce. Just his being here and trying to reestablish a relationship with his brother spoke to his earnest desire to make up for his mistakes. Just how long did a man have to pay?

Hearing the direction of her thoughts, Nicole wondered, was she seriously considering possibilities with Max?

“Jared! Stay on the base!” Jared’s mother yelled out desperately. She turned to say to the other spectators, “We’ve practiced and practiced, but he keeps forgetting to stay put!”

Several other parents spoke up comfortingly that Jared was doing fine.

“Ryan’s only been playing ball one season?” Max asked Pete with what appeared to be genuine interest in his nephew.

“Yes,” Ryan’s father replied, “and, in practice this year, he’s doing really well at catcher even though they play all positions. The coach wants them to learn the game before they settle into one spot.”

“That’s a good philosophy,” Max agreed, an appealing hint of vulnerability in his face. “Do you think…Ry remembers me?”

Nicole, hearing the ever-so-faint wistfulness in his voice, reached out, lacing her fingers through Max’s. To hell with what Pete or anyone else thought. To her relief, Max didn’t look at her as if she were insane, his hand merely tightening on hers.

Just then the umpire behind home plate called a time out while a red-shirt coach went to see why one of his outfielders was on the ground crying.

Feeling stupidly anxious, Max climbed down the bleachers and went across to the chain-link backstop. He’d never been particularly good with kids, although he really enjoyed Ruth and David’s boys.

Hell, he struggled with people in general, beyond his small, chosen circle. But the infant Ryan had startled him. From their earliest acquaintance, the boy gravitated to his uncle, seeming happy in his company, climbing over Max like a jungle gym.

Hoping to recapture some of that connection, Max leaned into the fence and said, “Ryan! Hey, buddy. How are you doing?”

The words were inane and disgustingly inadequate, but the small, sturdy-looking kid weighed down with his catcher’s paraphernalia, turned toward his uncle, flinging off his face mask.

“Uncle Max!” He trotted over to the backstop.

“Hey, buddy,” Max said, his voice sounding feeble in his own ears. He couldn’t deny the pitiful eagerness he felt looking down at Ryan’s responsive face.

“Uncle Max, did you see that throw? I throwed the ball just like dad and I practiced.” Unshadowed excitement lit the boy’s eyes.

Max squatted down bringing himself to Ryan’s eye-level, one hand on the chain link backstop separating him from his nephew. “Yea, that was great. You really threw it. You’re a good ball player.”

“No.” An awkward lump clogged Max’s throat. He knew an absurd urge to apologize to the boy, but the words of explanation and confession rising in his brain were all bizarre and futile. The boy would never understand him acknowledging he was part of the reason Ryan’s mother had gone out of his life.

“I’ve missed seeing you,” Max said, clinging to the simplicity of the statement.

“Me, too,” Ryan said, smiling widely.

Ten feet away, Nicole felt the blast of the boy’s smile and found herself grinning, too. Here at least was one person who greeting Max without all the bullshit of his status or fame. Max’s money meant nothing to the little boy.

While nephew and uncle continued to get reacquainted, Pete, cleared his throat and said to her, “So, you…work for Max?”

She smiled at him. “Yes. Just till the end of the summer.”

“James Michael! You quit that crying!” A mother standing behind the backstop a few feet away from Max, yelled out to the boy in the outfield.

“I’m not surprised you’re just doing Max’s typing temporarily,” Pete said, his manner several shades friendlier than she would have expected. “A woman as pretty as you must have lots of job offers.”

Unsure how to respond to this, Nicole said, “Thank you…uh, I teach in a high school in Chicago. I’m just here for the summer.”

“Well, if that brother of mine gets too rough on you,” Pete said, attempting a leer, “you can always come type for me for awhile.”

“Jared! Don’t pick your nose
now!”
his mother wailed.

The rest of the game passed with general conversation between Max and Pete, punctuated by moments of enthusiastic cheering when a kid—anyone’s kid—did something well on the field.

The parting between brothers seemed hesitant and a little awkward, but Nicole felt a beginning had been established. Despite Pete’s obvious attempt to flirt with her, she couldn’t think too badly of him. After all, he didn’t know for sure she and Max were involved—she wasn’t even sure of that herself. And if Pete had succumbed to an impulse to try and give Max back some of his own, however mildly, who could blame him?

They stood in an awkward cluster on the sidewalk, she, Max, Pete and Ryan, as the other parents and kids milled around them after the game.

“And don’t forget to let me know when your next game is,” Max admonished his nephew, putting a hand out to tap affectionately on the bill of his ball hat. Ryan clung to his uncle’s free hand.

She slanted him a tender glance, feeling a thickening of emotion in her chest. He was healing, this man she couldn’t stop caring about.

Leaving the park, they walked back toward Max’s building.

“Does Ryan remind you of his mother?” The words were out of Nicole’s mouth before she even knew she was thinking them. Much to her relief, she didn’t have to wait long for Max’s answer.

“It may seem cold to you,” Max said, his voice quiet as they walked along the street, “but I’m accustomed to women…offering themselves. No strings. No complications. It seems to work best that way.”

“Not in the long run,” Nicole said firmly, hating the idea of him locked in the embrace of one random female after another. None of them loved him or gave a damn how he really felt about anything. “Besides, the situation with Alexa wasn’t uncomplicated.”

“You’re absolutely right.” He felt silent as they came to a traffic signal and waited for the road to clear before crossing. “There’s no excuse for what I let happen, but I can say in my defense that Alexa approached me in the same way a hundred other women have. She made an offer…and I wavered when I shouldn’t have.”

“What about Pete?”

“I hurt him,” Max said roughly. “That one instant with Alexa was almost a mechanical situation. The body gets hungry…and a woman offers relief. Alexa and Pete weren’t really together—I don’t think I’d seen them together in six months before the incident.”

“You thought they were separated?” Nicole asked, confused.

Max’s face was dark with barely-suppressed emotion. “I
didn’t
think, that’s all. You know how I am. I get caught up in the world in my head, the project I’m working on inhabits me and that’s where I live. I simply didn’t think outside of the work.”

“Ruth said you were particularly lonely then,” Nicole said, slanting him a sidelong glance.

“Maybe,” he conceded. “I don’t think about that much. It just seemed like Alexa was always hanging around, doing something to the apartment—she’d called me and begged me to let her re-do that one room—it sounds ugly, but she was just there, Nicole. I was horny and an opportunity presented itself to me. End of story. No strings. No involvement. No current interest. I don’t care about Alexa. I never have.”

“No interest except in Ryan…and Pete,” Nicole inserted, conscious of a feathering of relief along the pit of her stomach. Max hadn’t loved Alexa, hadn’t cared at all. His detachment rang true to form and, in itself, wasn’t a good thing. Max needed to learn that good comes from
attachment,
but she wasn’t stupid enough to deny her relief that he’d had none to his brother’s wife.

As sad as the situation with Max and his brother was, Nicole couldn’t completely blame either one. People made mistakes. It wasn’t the flaws that kept humans apart, it was the clinging to the dysfunctions. And Max, he seemed to be changing, to be reaching out. Making reparations and taking his lumps.

How many people did that without defending themselves and excusing their misdeed away?

She had to give Max credit…as Pete apparently was doing.

Walking next to her, Max seemed so solid and…true. The idea of a perfect man didn’t appeal to Nicole much…but an imperfect man making amends for his mistakes—that kind of guy couldn’t help but win a heart or two. Certainly, Max had won hers.

The silence between them grew as they approached Max’s building. Together they rode the elevator up, the air between them seeming thick and warm. When the car stopped on their floor, they got out and traversed the halls until they stood at his door.

Nicole smiled when their gazes caught and held for a second, an answering glimmer showing on his face. It felt intimate somehow, coming home with him after an afternoon with his family.