I could fuck her maybe. A few times. Just to crack the label.
Before I’d been diagnosed with ADD, I did crazy shit for the sake of doing it. I broke crayons to hear the snap of the wax. Punched a kid two years older than me because the buildup of energy needed a place to go. Yelled too loudly when I lost and slapped my own face when I struck out. I was a balloon that constantly filled to bursting. I had to release the energy. I had no choice.
The meds started when I was twelve, and the feeling of control was such a relief I almost cried on that first day.
To get her naked in front of me and tie her hands behind her back. To watch her adjust to my control. To accept it as she’d never accepted it from anyone else.
The space between second and third was mine, and nothing got past it. Nothing. My domain. The first season I got control of my fielding, after Daria’s death, that was the year I stopped feeling the eyes on me from the stands because they didn’t matter. Nothing had felt so good as seeing them as a wall instead of people.
Getting a girl like Vivian to kneel when I told her to would be that difficult, and feel that good. But I didn’t have space in my life to be master of two domains. And I wasn’t giving up the field. I’d worked too hard for it.
So she’d have to move on her way. No more texting. I couldn’t give a woman more than a minute’s attention during the playing season because I didn’t have enough attention to give, and she’d need more. She might not be clingy or crazy, but I couldn’t fuck with her. Couldn’t break her in then break up with her. She wasn’t a plaything—that was obvious.
If I could stick with one decision, that would be great.
I was going to start this damn day over.
fourteen
Vivian
I sat in my car and turned the glove over in my hands. I pressed the opening to my face. The place where his hand went. Pure man. Adrenaline and endorphins. Sex.
Going to his house with the glove but not the pin was dangerous. I didn’t know how he’d react. But I parked halfway down the street, where the curb wasn’t red. Engine running, glove in my lap, sun setting over the city at the end of the block, I wondered one thing.
What did I want out of the guy?
I asked myself that question the entire half-a-block walk up to his door. I didn’t even know if he was home. Looking up at the house, I saw all the lights were out. I knocked, confident no one would answer, then emboldened by the silence, I rang the bell.
Nothing.
Relieved and sad at the same time, I waited another second. I couldn’t leave the glove there. The mail slot was too small. I could have it sent. That was the wise thing, of course.
I walked back to the car, staring at the glove. What had the pin looked like in there? How had no one noticed it? Maybe he wore the pin backward?
The impact as I crashed into him yanked the last breath from my lungs. I jumped. He jumped.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“You found it!” Dash held out his hand.
He had on a Dodgers cap, grey sweatpants, and a grey T-shirt even in the cold. His arms were slicked with a sheen of sweat, and his breath came faster than it should have. He’d been taking a run. I’d almost missed him.
Great and not great.
I didn’t give him the glove. “I have something to tell you about it.”
“Okay?”
“The girl who took it, she’s sorry. Her parents are really strict, and they want to offer their apologies. They’re disciplining her.”
“They don’t have to.”
“I’ll tell them you said so.” It didn’t matter what he said. They had their own way, and they didn’t make their poverty an excuse for bad behavior.
“They’re not beating her or anything?”
“No, no. Just no TV. That sort of thing. She’s their only girl. They have big expectations. Dash, I—”
“There’s no pin,” he said when I stalled. “I can see from here.”
I handed the glove over. I couldn’t look at him. “Her brother found a princess pin offensive and flushed it. I’m so sorry.”
He turned the glove around in his hands as if the pin would appear. I wanted to die of shame.
“You know in The Grapes of Wrath, the way the Joads lose everything?” He looked up from the glove at me. “And it’s not all at once, it’s just piece by piece?”
Was I supposed to tell him he wasn’t close to that level of poverty or apologize again?
“Yeah,” was all I could say. I was getting cold, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the warmth of his body against mine.
“This isn’t anything like that,” he said. “But it feels like it, you know?”
“I do. I don’t know how to make it right.” I made some gesture toward my ratty car as if I had to go, which I didn’t. I didn’t have a thing to do after this silly sidewalk conversation, but he probably did, and I didn’t want to keep him in the middle of the street.
“You’re probably busy,” he said.
“Not really.”
“Do you want to come in? I won’t bite unless you ask me to.”