She smelled like pears. When he bent down, gripping the top of her seat, he smelled her hair. It wasn’t intentional; he wasn’t burying his face in her blonde strands, he just got a whiff. A whiff strong enough to stick, to give him another puzzle piece to add to the Tyler Rollins enigma. When she leaned over to say something to her father, he watched her profile through the crack in their chairs. When her seat reclined, he imagined those long legs stretching out. Too bad she was in jeans; he’d noticed that on his walk down the aisle, his glance just brief enough to avoid suspicion, but long enough to see that she was in a Yankee jersey and jeans. A bag on her lap, open, headphones half out, her face turned away, looking out the window. Her hair down, tucked behind her ear. Young. She looked so young. So innocent.
“Like what you see?”
Such a stupid thing to say. To a seventeen-year-old girl, of all people. But he hadn’t known that, hadn’t even considered that. Still, it was done. And now, those words wouldn’t stop taunting him.
25
Detroit
We all had our favorite cities. Detroit wasn’t mine. Especially on days like this, when the rain pelted the field, the tarp doing little to keep the clay dry. I huddled under the west overhang, my uniform cold and clingy, an itchy skin that I couldn’t shed, not for a while. The kid beside me, some Michigan local who’d won his place in some radio station giveaway, looked miserable. I was sure his visions of the day hadn’t included sprinting across a soggy field, sneakers wet and squishy, toes frozen, picking up forgotten balls. Now, with a break in the downpour, I nudged the kid. “Make a run for the dugout.” I nodded right, and he ran—short, chubby legs darting across the grass.
I pulled my cap down low and crossed my hands over my chest, too mature to run, my steps nonetheless quick as I crossed to the far end, taking the back gate and walking down the ramp and toward our visitor locker rooms. I could hear the hum of voices, the men pent up inside, everyone itchy, ready for the game to either be called off or played, the inactivity excruciating.
It’d be an extra late night, the two-hour rain delay pushing back our bedtimes. I shivered in the empty hall and walked faster, rounding the final corner toward the locker room and running smack into someone.
Someone with a hard body.
Tall, the bill of my hat hitting his chest, my hands instinctively coming up and pushing against his stomach, nothing but hard abs felt through dry uniform.
Uniform. My throat went dry; I stumbled back, my wet cleat slipping against the painted concrete, out from under me, and my hand tightened against his uniform, holding on, his body reacting, and suddenly I had his hands on my hips.
His hands were on my hips. I tried to process that thought, the feel of his fingers tightening, his body bent forward, over me, as I tilted back. I frantically moved my feet, my shoes sliding, legs spreading, and I finally came to a halt, one shoe stopped by the wall, his grip tight on me.
“Don’t move,” he ordered, both of us in danger of falling if I continued my leg windmill. My face was tucked into his chest, an intentional move I had made milliseconds earlier because keeping my chin up would have put us in a Hollywood dip of sorts, and that was quite possibly the only thing that would have made this more embarrassing.
His uniform smelled good. Some sort of cologne, unless he rolled out of bed smelling like a medley of forest and ocean. Dad wore Old Spice, which was the most unsexy, spicy scent on the planet. This … I didn’t want to let go. I wanted to yank off his shirt and wrap it around my head, surgically affix it to my face, and smell just that, forever, even if it made me an elephant man freak in the process.
Don’t move, he had said.
I didn’t. I stayed in place until he pulled me up, my feet almost lifting off the ground, and his hands stayed in place until he was certain I was firm on my feet, our bodies parting, my hands releasing their grip on his shirt, nervously moving to adjust my baseball cap into place, to pull at the front of my wet shirt, releasing the cold material from my skin.
“Thank you,” I muttered.
“You should get into dry clothes.”
“I’m fine.”
“Your teeth are chattering.” His hand reached out and was suddenly at my jaw, fingers gentle in their brush over my lips, and I ground my teeth, my eyes moving, shock pushing them up, past his touch, and to his face for the first time.
A mistake. This close, our bodies just a foot apart, his touch soft on my lips … I was unprepared. Unshielded.