29. Jordan

TWENTY-NINE

"I thoughtyou didn't want to play for…" Harold waves his hands. "You know, the grown-up teams."

"Grown-up?" Calla echoes incredulously. "Seriously?"

He rolls his eyes. "What? You're lucky I've gotten this involved in a sport. You can't expect me to know all the terminology, too. But," he turns his expectant gaze back to me, "have your plans changed now?"

I'm the focus of all eyes, and I shrug. "I don't know," I admit. "I always figured no, but… I mean, I love ball. So…" I shrug again, extremely conscious that beside me, Blaise hasn't said anything. "I'd want to graduate first. It seems like a waste not to finish my degree when that was my plan all along. Maybe by then nobody will want me. I'm not even eligible to be drafted for another year, anyway." Even to me, it sounds like I'm making excuses, delaying having to make an actual decision.

Which I am.

"You've got time," Butch agrees, "but does that mean coming out publicly? You said you didn't want to because you weren't going to play pro and it wasn't going to be an issue."

I open my mouth to reply, then stop. Fuck. "Also unknown. But I guess ultimately that's not just my decision." Isn't that how relationships work? I look uncertainly at my boyfriend.

"What? No! I'm not going to be a factor in outing you," he hisses. The skin around his eyes is tense and tight. "That's your call. You get to decide who knows that about you."

"That's not fair to you," I point out.

"You decide who you want to be out to," he insists stubbornly. "And then I decide where I want to go from there. We can talk about this later. You've had great news; let's not spoil it. Congratulations." His lips stretch in what I think is supposed to be a smile. "Um… Excuse me for a second." He pushes back his chair and stalks away while I blink after him in shock, the air in my chest stuck.

"Uhhh," Boyle says. "What the fuck? Did he just…?"

"It's fine," Xera says. "He's… having a bad day. I'm sure he didn't mean it the way it sounded."

"Really?" Polly sounds mad, but his expression is thunderstruck. "Because it sounded like he'll break up with Marks. What the fuck kind of bad day did he have? Wasn't he at the game?"

There's an uncomfortable silence as everyone who's not on the team looks awkwardly away.

"You should go after him," someone says, and I glance around to see who.

It's Phil, leaning across Blaise's chair between us, his face red but his eyes determined.

"Dude," Boyle breathes. "He talked to you!"

Phil ignores him. "Go after him," he repeats. "He's upset."

Okay, I don't know what the fuck happened between Blaise dropping me off on campus this morning and now, but nobody's talking about it. Whatever it is has knocked my guy off-balance, and it's prompted Phil to speak. I get up and follow Blaise through the crowd toward the door.

He's outside, about ten paces down from the entrance, leaning against the wall with his head tipped back and his eyes closed. His face is pure misery, but worse, as I get closer, I hear him mutter, "Get it together. This is good for him. Don't be that guy. Don't ruin it."

Is he talking about me? Because if he is… fuck that shit. Just because I get good news doesn't mean I can't be there for my boyfriend on a bad day.

"Hey," I say softly, and his head jerks around.

"Shit. I'm sorry. I just needed some air. It's…" He trails off and swallows.

"I heard you're having a bad day. Anything you want to talk about?"

His sigh could fill a balloon. "It's fine. I don't want to ruin the mood."

"As far as I'm concerned, you could never ruin anything. Please tell me. I want to help." As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know it was the wrong thing to say. His expression shuts down completely.

"Sometimes you can't fix things, Jordan."

"I know," I say quickly. "I mean… I want to be supportive. You don't have to tell me. Just let me… be with you."

His face softens, and the warm look in his eyes tells me I haven't fucked this up.

"I want that too. I'm sorry, I'm being a dick. And you had such an exciting day." The smile isn't quite genuine, but he's trying. "That's so cool, being scouted."

I brush it off. "You're not being a dick. You had a bad day, and… my news would have been a surprise. I'm not blind to the fact that it could cause problems if I decide I want a career in the pros. You probably didn't need that piled on top of… everything." I don't mean for my voice to rise inquiringly on that last word, but it does.

Scrubbing his hands over his face, he says, "The internship coordinator contacted me, and I told him I wasn't applying this year."

"No." The denial is instinctive and instant, and again, the wrong thing to say. But I can't take it back. "There was still time—and you have so much time to make the extra money before July." I haven't had a chance to talk to my dads about it yet.

"That's wishful thinking."

"It's not. Okay, maybe I'm looking at it through a positive lens, but you do have options. I was thinking?—"

"I'm not borrowing money, Jordan. Not when I don't have a definite way to pay it back."

"I get that." Fuck, there goes idea number one. "But it's not the only possibility. My dads have just moved to LA, and I know they'd let you stay at their place?—"

"Move in with my boyfriend's dads?" His incredulous tone cuts me off. "Are you serious? I've met them once, and we've been dating less than six months!"

Ouch. "I'm just saying, you have options still. And it's not the worst idea," I can't resist adding. "They like you, and they like me being with someone who has career goals and makes me happy. Plus, you and Uncle Luke could carpool to work."

"So then what would happen if we broke up?" he demands. "If I wasn't making you happy anymore? I'd be homeless and scrambling to find somewhere to live in the middle of an intense internship."

"They wouldn't throw you out," I argue. "Not that we're breaking up anyway. Do you want to break up?" Suddenly I feel incredibly vulnerable.

But he's not listening. His eyes have narrowed. "What do you mean, I could carpool to work with your uncle?"

Shit. Shit. "I was just—" I change my mind about lying and meet his gaze squarely. "Uncle Luke works for Joy Inc. So did Grant until he got this new job."

Blaise's jaw drops. "But they lived in Georgia," he says blankly. I see the exact second he realizes. "They worked at Joy Universe?"

"Grant did. Uncle Luke's always worked for the head office, but he had to go to Georgia for a while to do some work at the theme parks and then we decided to stay because—" I see his face and stop. "That's not important. It's a cute story, though."

"I'll be sure to read the book when it comes out," he snipes. "How could you not tell me this? You knew I wanted to apply for the Joy internship—oh my god, you let me talk about it at dinner with your dads! And this whole time… Who else knows? Your friends? Do they know where your dads work? Have they been thinking what an idiot I am this whole time, talking about going for an internship for my boyfriend's dad like it's a big deal for me to get it?"

"It's not like that," I protest. "Nobody thinks you're an idiot."

"Oh, so they just think I'm using you, then."

"No! God, Blaise, you didn't even know, how could you be using me? Uncle Luke has nothing to do with the internship program, and anyway, you already had the coordinator practically begging you to apply a year before we even met. This is all just a dumb coincidence."

He pushes his hands into his hair and turns away from me, then spins back. "I just… I can't believe you wouldn't tell me this when it's so clearly relevant. What the fuck, Jordan? When was I going to find out? When I ran into your dad in the break room?"

I shake my head. "Of course not. At first I didn't mention it because we barely knew each other. People… Look, when I was in grade school, I told all my friends that my uncle worked for Joy Inc. because that's so cool, right? Even though he's a business consultant and I didn't even know what that meant. And one of their moms was a sound engineer for an audiobook company, but she really wanted to get into movies. So she?—"

He holds up a hand. "Stop. I get It. She used you."

"Uncle Luke doesn't have anything to do with that side of it. His job is business processes and troubleshooting. But he knows people all over the company, and he didn't want to make things hard for me at school, so he hooked her up with an interview." I cringe as I remember. "She didn't get the job, and she wouldn't let her kid be friends with me anymore. Since then, I just don't tell random people where my dads work."

"Maybe that explains why you didn't say anything at first, but I didn't think I was a random person anymore," he says sarcastically.

"Don't do that. You know you're not." I take a deep breath. He's being a colossal asshat right now, but I get why. Nothing has gone right for him lately, and today's just been an avalanche of new information for him to deal with. "But when things changed between us, I didn't know how to bring it up. I figured I'd wait until you got the internship and it couldn't be a thing anymore."

"How can it not be a thing? What must your dads think?" His face is pale in the deepening twilight, eyes big.

"They think you're great," I insist, putting as much force into the word as I can. "They think you're dedicated and goal oriented, just like they are. They think you're good for me. And yeah, they know I hadn't told you, but they've seen your work and they like it, Blaise. That wasn't bullshit. They showed it to my uncles, and they…" Fuck. I keep talking myself into corners. "Okay, so, full disclosure."

He moans, but I push on.

"One of the uncles is Jason Phillips."

It takes him a second to make the connection. "The Broadway director? The one who moved to… Joy Universe. And married the head of the theater production company there." He shakes his head hopelessly. "Jesus, Jordan."

"Dimi—the head of the production company—took one look at the photos Uncle Luke showed him and said he'd interview you for a job. That's not a favor," I add hastily. "Dimi doesn't do favors like that, trust me. When it comes to business, he's a piranha."

"Sure," he agrees tiredly, and I sense that I'm losing him.

"Jason would reach out to his contacts if we asked him to. I know he's got friends who transitioned from theater to screen. But my point is, I didn't have to ask any of them to do that, because you already had the internship in the bag! And it's not too late. You can still apply. Call the guy and tell him things have changed."

"Why are you so set on me getting this internship now?" he demands. "Why does it matter so much to you that it's this year and not next year?"

I blink, surprised he can ask me that. "You want it," I say, confused. "I want you to be happy. I want you to achieve your goals."

"Is it that? Or is it just that having a boyfriend in town is inconvenient when you're being scouted by the pros?"

My teeth snap together. "What?" I whisper. I can't believe he just said that.

"Because since we met, you've been so adamant about how you don't want baseball to be your whole life, you want to be able to enjoy it as a hobby. Less than a month ago, you were getting big ideas about ways to coordinate book conventions. Us being together was only going to be a secret until you graduated. But now… now you're thinking about going pro, but you still don't want to come out. Is that why you want me to take the internship? Would it be easier if I was in LA, and long-distance became an excuse for us to drift apart?"