Baseball players were notoriously, crazily, famously superstitious, and a third-grade girl with a seventh-grade brother may have just ruined an entire season by flushing a good luck charm.
I escorted little Iris down to the principal’s office, telling her she didn’t have to cry.
I was sure I didn’t want a short-term fling with Dash Wallace or anyone, but the news was too bad to deliver by phone.
And, yeah, I wanted to see him again.
thirteen
Dash
I took my run down the hills of the Oaks and up again. I took two a day in the winter, when heatstroke and dehydration weren’t a concern. Everyone in the neighborhood knew me, and the streets I ran were so far off the beaten path I was unlikely to see anyone who wasn’t used to me trotting by all the time.
My knees ached more than usual. I’d had a hard time getting out of bed. She’d kept me up late again.
I’d only fucked women who didn’t keep me up that late. This was exactly why I set limits. During the season, I had lights-out early no matter the time zone. No errors from fatigue. No strikeouts from a lack of sleep. Early dinner. Back to their place. They came three times, I came once at the end, we had a few laughs, and I went back to the hotel. Everyone happy.
The cold burned my lungs, and I tried to focus on my steps, my breath, the rhythm of my body.
Limits and lids. I imposed limits and kept the lid on emotional highs and lows. Five years of it, and I had it down to a science. No media attention on my personal life because it effectively didn’t exist. No distractions from the game because that was all I had to pay attention to. Beautiful women were easy to find, and I could spot one with a dirty mouth who liked getting a pink bottom. We kept it short and sweet. A series in Baltimore where Eva liked to be bound so tight she couldn’t move. A two-week stay at home in Los Angeles, then to Pittsburgh, where Joanna preferred my belt to my palm. All good. Just to relax. Just to maintain the feeling of control I had on the field. When things went off the rails in my personal life, it affected my performance, and I’d worked too hard, given up too much to let another human being fuck with me.
I was sure I was right.
But I liked talking to her.
I felt as if I was bending the rules anyway.
I was at war with myself.
My front door led to the stairs to the house. Opening it, I stepped into an outdoor area that seemed infinite. When I’d been looking for a house, I didn’t like seeing the stadium from the front steps, but eventually I got to like it. I wasn’t seen. I was only seeing.
I turned on the lights. Music. Opened the windows to the cold. I was still coated in sweat and breathing like a runner. My thoughts were disorganized. Unusual after a run.
She had felt safe.
I’d let my guard down with her. She may or may not have intuited that, but I knew it, and it was disruptive. I grabbed a ball and fingered the stitches. I had them all over the house. None had seen a game. I just wore them down with my thumb and fingertips. I juggled them, three, four, five. I had a way of letting things fall through the cracks in favor of new sensory pleasures. I could focus while juggling baseballs, and I had to focus right now on one problem I’d avoided solving.
The glove.
One, two, three balls in the air, and my hands hit a rhythm my thoughts had to follow. I let them flow instead of trying to organize it all. There was a relief in letting go of the pretense that I had to remember any of it.
I had to stop texting Vivian. Cop to wanting to fuck her. Okay, I want to fuck her she’s not going to work out with Youder because he needs to re-up with Los Angeles is not the place for a girl who’s serious and has told you so when she said you shouldn’t finish Cornell, and you should just do what you love because how old are you now? How many years before you break a bone or cartilage or a heart like your own, which is made of tight knots, and spanking an experienced girl who oohed and aahed was nice, but a buttoned-up librarian begging for my cock in the filthiest terms possible, mouth open, lipstick on my cock, mascara running up and down the hill twenty-five times hold on to everything. No more slipping no more slipping no more slipping she’s not a plaything.
I dropped a ball and caught the other two. Turned one in my right hand. I’d done my signature real big on her ball because I thought she was hot and it was my stupid way of letting her know. So it was my fault from day one.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was a fucking infection.
The look on her face when I’d told her how many times I was going to make her come. Shocked. Scandalized. Aroused. All of it. Saying it and watching her expression had been like plowing new snow or knifing the satin-smooth top of a new jar of peanut butter.