“I’m offline when I’m in Arizona. And after that, I’m hard to get. By November, we will have both moved on.”
His hands out in apology, streetlights brash on his face, and all the warmth of the past minutes gone, I felt the same as when my teenage cousin had shown my eight-year-old self how to play 52 Pickup. I’d begged him for a game of gin rummy, and he’d thrown the cards all over the living room.
Pick them up and put them in order in less than ten minutes.
Make sense of this in three seconds, or you’ll look like an ass.
We both worked nine months out of the year.
But completely different months.
Was he saying he only wanted to have this relationship until spring training?
That wasn’t what I wanted.
He’d be traveling half-to-two-thirds of the time between April and November.
How did people usually do it?
What did I want from him?
“What do you want?” I asked.
He held his coat open by the neck. “Right now, I want to get you warm.”
“I don’t want your jacket. I think this might be a short conversation. What do you want here? With me?”
“I like you.”
“You like me but?” I asked.
“There’s no but. I like you, and I want to spend the next few weeks with you until I have to go to spring training.”
I realized how well I’d gotten over Carl when I felt the air go out of my lungs. After he left me, I’d spent months with a collapsed chest, and the transition back to normal had been so slow I hadn’t noticed it.
Now there I was, freezing my ass off in the street while Dash tried to put a jacket on me, feeling as though someone had squeezed my lungs flat.
I hated feeling like that. I pushed the jacket down. “I’m sorry. I don’t like expiration dates. I’m not saying I want more from you or anything like that, but it’s too risky for me. The whole thing.”
“Promising anything past March—”
“I don’t need a promise.”
“Promise is the wrong word. Attempting. Trying. That’s risky.” He wasn’t committed to putting his jacket back on, and I wasn’t accepting it, so he stood there holding it between us.
“We have opposite ideas of risk,” I said. “Things last until they don’t. I can’t do this your way. Thanks for the lift home.”
I pushed the door open before I could change my mind. The warmth of the house blasted my face, and I stepped away from him. Into the foyer. Turned. He stood there with his jacket over his arm, his posture telling me I could still change my mind.
“Nice running into you too,” I said. “I’m still looking for the glove. I’ll have it sent if we find it.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay. Bye.” I gently closed the door. Click.
I didn’t lock it. I didn’t want him to hear the clack of the deadbolt. It seemed rude.
I watched out the window as he got back into his car, revved the engine, and sped away. I ran into my room, threw off the shoes, and got under the covers. It seemed as though it took forever to get warm.
I regretted that he couldn’t see it my way. I regretted that I’d given him so much of myself while getting pushed against the door, but I didn’t regret saying no to his proposal. I knew the limitations of my heart, and having a relationship with an expiration date would have hurt me more than cutting him off on my front steps.
I didn’t want an expiration date. I wanted to go in with both feet. I wanted to be blind and dumb when my heart was ripped out of me. To go in faithfully, with everything, so when I stood alone again, tears welling up, I could tell myself that he was the asshole. He’d fucked up. He was awful, and my mother was right. Too good-looking, too talented, too rich. How was I supposed to soothe myself if I went in knowing when it would end?
Cynical. The whole idea of it was cynical.
Eventually I fell asleep in my mother’s gold dress, feeling as though I’d dodged a mess of heartache.
nine
Dash
Youder came by to work out. The weeks before spring training were spent making sure we didn’t get our asses kicked in Arizona. We were out of shape, lazy, sloppy. Youder and I had worked out together three times a week from January to March the same way for the past five years.
We took the old stone steps down the hill to the southernmost point of my property and turned right around. The hill looked like a sheer face with bushes and rocks latching onto the dirt to defy gravity. We scrambled back up the hill on well-worn trails, hitching and heaving, working out arms and legs against our own body weight.
Twenty-five laps per session in January.
By the first week in April, we could do a hundred even if it took all afternoon.
He had his foot on the top of the fence separating the patio from the baby fig tree, stretching, and he spoke as if what he was saying wasn’t supposed to mean anything to me. “Trent’s pushing me to move.” He took his leg down and put up the other one.
“That’s how he makes his money.” I twisted at the waist, stretching the sleeping back and shoulder muscles.