He dropped the iPad on Top Hat’s pile and guided me around the room. “I’m not a couple-of-pages-at-a-time kinda guy. Once I’m in, I’m all in.”
“What are you reading now?”
I practically jumped out of my fancy shoes. I was sure he wasn’t reading about Jax the sexy banker and Harriet the waitress as they explored a hundred ways to have sex, but that was okay. I was sure he was reading something that had come across my path, and the thought… oh, the thought that we could talk about books of all things was so exciting I couldn’t contain myself.
“Reaper’s Weekend,” he said.
“Oh! That’s…” I caught myself before I said hard. “Postmodern.”
“The denser and more opaque, the better for me. Slows me down, or I go too fast.”
We ran into Jim. Michelle was on his arm.
“Hey,” Jim said, pointing at me then Dash. “Shortstop. Dodgers. Three Golden Gloves.”
The men shook hands.
“He was with me the whole time you were in the Batmobile,” I said. “You notice now?”
He jerked his thumb toward Michelle. “I was distracted by her beauty.”
She elbowed him playfully. I didn’t know what they’d fought about, but it obviously wasn’t anything a little jealousy couldn’t fix.
Jim turned to Dash. “What’s up with Youder? What are you gonna do when he goes free agent?”
It was a normal question, yet I didn’t know what to expect from Dash since he’d tensed up on me when I asked. He and Youder were great partners. Almost psychically connected. They’d led the league in double plays for three of the last five years, and I just figured if he could do that with Youder, he could do it with anyone.
But no. Dash’s expression was clear. The impending free-agency of his fielding partner bothered him. “I’ll figure it out.”
Youder was a sore spot. Jim hadn’t done anything wrong, but I wanted to pop him.
Michelle nudged Jim, and he said to me, “Meet downstairs when it’s over?”
“Yeah.”
“I can take her home,” Dash said.
My mouth opened. Words came out.
No. Nothing came out. They got caught in a mental bottleneck.
I probably looked like a choking victim.
Sort it out. Fast.
What Dash had intuited was that Jim wanted to go home with Michelle. He was right. Jim didn’t need me dragging him to the west side.
But Gentleman Jim wouldn’t allow me to get in a strange car with a strange man no matter how famous he was.
And what did I want?
“No,” Jim said in the split second it took me to separate the mental wheat from chaff. “I brought her. I’ll get her back.”
Michelle interjected her two cents right after. “Girl, he brought you. He delivers you home. Don’t worry about me.”
“Of course.” Dash nodded.
“I’ll take a Ryde.” I waved away their objections. “I’m fine. Thank you, guys. But I got it.”
“It’s decided.” Dash held his arm out for me.
I slipped my hand in the crook of his elbow. The wool of his jacket was warm to the touch, the arm under it hard with muscle. The moment lasted forever. I was at Dashiell Wallace’s side. Thank God I was wearing Mom’s dress. Even if I wasn’t the most glamorous woman in the world, in that dress, I could pretend I was.
Dash pulled me away from the crowd to a less-populated room housing concept cars from the eighties. A solar car. A one-person car. A three-wheeled car.
“I feel like I haven’t earned this nice treatment,” I said. “I haven’t found your glove yet.”
“You will.”
“I can’t guarantee it. There’s not much time until spring break.” I stopped the stroll around and faced him. “I just want to tell you the odds aren’t great. I can’t search everyone’s house. In the end, it’s just us hoping one of the kids is honest.”
He walked a few steps along the guardrail to the card for the wind-powered car, but his eyes didn’t move with the lines. They locked onto the middle distance. I shouldn’t have broken the moment with stupid pessimism. Now I felt like an interloper in this moment.
It was just a glove.
Right?
“I don’t like losing things,” he said before his gaze flicked to me. “It bothers me.”
“Yeah, I understand. It’s disruptive.”
He tilted his head, blinked, looked through me as if my skin were made of glass. “Yes. That’s exactly right.”
I had about four minutes’ worth of babble in me. The cost of attachment to objects. The time spent looking for the old glove versus the time spent getting used to a new one. I discarded all of it in favor of letting him look at me like that.
“How long did you have that glove?” I finally asked.
He took my hand.
He was touching me. Skin to skin. This whole scenario was impossible.
“Not long.” He led me around the perimeter. “I got a new sponsorship at the beginning of the year, so I switched.”
I would have broken in with a question, but he was still holding my hand. I could barely think, much less gently and subtly question why a new glove would mean a damn thing to him.
“It wasn’t the glove,” he continued.
“No?”
“No.”
He led me to the elevator banks. A few other people in eveningwear waited.
“Where are we going?”