Chapter Eleven

It was strange, being at the ballpark at night when it was almost empty. The game had finished an hour before, the stands had already been cleaned by the yellow-vested staff, and the grounds crew had come out and raked the red clay around the base path. Daphne had been greeted by a guy named Greg, who introduced himself as the executive producer and almost definitely had hair plugs to achieve the early-'00s boy band look of his hair.

"We have you set up in the bullpen," he'd said, leading her to two folding chairs set up across from each other in a little carved-out area to one side of the field. Greg appeared to be gesturing toward one of the chairs, so she started to sit, figuring that was where they wanted her for the interview. But Greg immediately gave a little laugh, grasping her by the elbow to bodily encourage her back up. She was so stunned by the physical contact that for a second she just froze, having no idea how to react.

"Not so fast," he said. "We need to get you miked up first. You can leave your notecards here."

Layla had typed up questions and talking points for her, printing them neatly on cardstock via a printer she'd set up on her nightstand. It had all been a whirlwind—Layla switching from giving her advice to asking her pointed questions (You don't have a lipstick that's brighter?)—and Daphne still wasn't confident that she could pull this off. She was nervous about appearing on camera in general, about looking at her cards too much, not looking at them enough and getting off track.

She was even more nervous just about seeing him.

He'd replied to her last text, about how she thought he could get away with using the Rocky theme, with a simple Thanks. She didn't know whether that was because no further response was required, or because he'd sensed her trying to close down the conversation, or because he wanted to close down the conversation. She was exhausted, trying to keep up with the dynamics at play every single time they texted.

That's your own fault, a voice inside her head whispered as the tech finished securing the small mic to the collar of her dress. If you'd been straight with him from the start…

Maybe there would be a chance to say something today, after the interview. Maybe it would be easier doing it face-to-face, where she could gauge his reaction and rush in with an explanation.

But then she approached the folding chairs again, slowing a little as she saw Chris already seated. He had her notecards in his hands and was staring down at one, spending so long on the question that he couldn't possibly be reading it. The hair at the back of his neck was trimmed with almost military precision, the edge straight and neat.

She knew with a sudden clarity that she wasn't going to say anything about being duckiesbooks.

"Sorry," she said, tucking her hair behind her ears as she took her seat. She'd only meant sorry for any delay on my part, but Greg cut in.

"Save that for once we're rolling," he said. "And we're going to edit this together into an eight-minute segment or so, include game clips, that kind of thing, so don't worry about stopping and starting if you mess up. Just go with the flow, have a conversation, and we can find the best bits to work with later. If we need you to do something again, we'll cut and ask you."

Chris murmured his agreement, even though the directives couldn't possibly be for him—he'd done this before, after all. She found that she couldn't physically make eye contact with him. He was still in his uniform, and she looked at his shoes, the clay streaked on his white pants, anywhere but at his face.

"I thought you didn't play today," she blurted. Layla had told her something to that effect, when they'd discussed the scheduling of the interview.

"Pinch runner," he said. "In the eighth inning."

His voice was even better in person. Not as smooth, maybe, a little more gravelly, like there was some texture that got lost on TV. She had a hard time even focusing on what he was saying for a minute, although she realized that it was more baseball-speak she probably would've missed anyway. Layla had tried to give her a quick primer on some of the terms she'd be dealing with in the interview, but Daphne still felt a little like when she'd had to give presentations in French class back in high school. She could memorize vocabulary words and correct conjugations, but she had to think very carefully about how to construct them together, to the point where they almost became meaningless units of sound.

Greg counted them in, and Daphne tried to smile, keeping her gaze trained somewhere over Chris' left shoulder. "It's not often a heckler has a chance to sit down one-on-one with the object of their a-attention," she started, stuttering a little on the introduction she'd rehearsed with Layla. "Chris, what—"

Greg called "Cut," which wasn't a surprise. She'd already messed up. She was supposed to use another word, not attention, although now she couldn't remember what it was. Abuse? Perhaps it was a fair characterization, but she didn't really want to think of it that way. Chris Kepler was definitely an object of her attention, in a way that hit a little too close to home to use that word, either. Layla had told her to use Chris' name liberally throughout—to build rapport but also to remind the viewer who they're watching, she'd said—but the word had sounded all strangled and unnatural coming out of Daphne's mouth.

"Let's do that again," Greg said. "This time with eye contact."

Daphne gave a self-conscious half laugh, puffing her cheeks out. Then she lifted her gaze to Chris', meeting his eyes for the first time since she'd sat down.

Their color was hard to determine. Green, she might've said if pressed. But there was some steely blue in there, too, some flecks of gold. Hazel, maybe. An entire color palette for a painting of a mountain landscape, all contained in the irises of his eyes. He wasn't wearing his hat or a batting helmet, as he had been most of the times she'd seen him on TV, and having such a clear view of his eyes felt almost uncomfortably intimate. She felt like she could count each individual eyelash at this distance. God, his eyelashes were beautiful.

They said eyes were the window to the soul, and maybe that's why she'd been so scared to look into his. Because for just a second, she felt something click into place. This was the same guy who'd bought a yellow rose corsage for his prom date, who'd lost his brother only a few months ago, who'd asked if she wanted to talk about her divorce and had seemed genuinely open to listen.

She wondered what he saw when he looked back at her. Probably nothing more than his heckler, someone he had to spend the next twenty minutes talking to even though he'd rather be doing anything else in the world.

An unbearable tension was rising in her chest, and she dropped her gaze down, unable to sustain eye contact for another second. She stared at his hands, frowning.

"Um," she said.

"It's not often…" he prompted, like they were in a school play.

"No, uh." She gestured toward his hands. "You have my cards."

"Right. Sorry." He offered them back to her, and it seemed to Daphne that he went out of his way to make sure their fingers didn't touch in the exchange. Or maybe that was just her projecting. For her part, she was careful to grasp them by their farthest corner from where he held on.

Once the cameras were rolling again, she got back on track, getting through the intro and into a few easy questions about his career and his time with the Battery.

"I have to admit," she said, starting to settle in a little. "It's easy as a fan to feel like players are pretty removed from whatever's happening in the stands. How aware are you, down on the field, of what people are doing or saying?"

He made a face, a straight-lipped head bob that seemed to suggest a noncommittal so-so type of response.

Everything that used to be background is turned up so loud, I can't tune it out.

That's what he'd typed to her a few days ago. But now, he said, "We hear when the crowd gets loud, definitely. And sometimes individual comments get through—like yours."

He didn't say the words with any particular animosity, but she felt her face heating nonetheless. "I'm so—" she started, before Greg called cut.

"That's my bad," Greg said. "I should've been clearer at the beginning. We don't want to get too deep into the actual incident here, or the, uh, reaction. This is more about moving forward."

Daphne drew her brows together, trying to mesh that with what Layla had told her. What was the point of them doing this interview? She hadn't planned to bring up exactly what she'd said, and she definitely hadn't wanted to harp on the crying thing the way the rest of the media had for the last week. But if she couldn't talk about it at all, not even to apologize…why bring her here?

She flipped through a couple cards, until she got to some of the "fluff" questions Layla had prepared for her. They were things like What's your favorite postgame snack? or Who on the team is the biggest prankster? But she felt like such a fraud. She couldn't sit here and ask those questions like this was a normal interview.

She glanced back up. She had no idea if the camera was rolling now or not, had lost track of whether they were taking an actual break from filming or just one of those pauses that Greg had told them to push through.

"I'm really sorry," she said, because she was going to get that out, at least once. "I shouldn't have heckled you. I—there's no excuse. I'm mortified that I did it. And Christopher Robin, god, it's just so stupid."

"It's fine," Chris said, but suddenly his gaze didn't seem fully focused on her anymore. The words had come out fast, almost before she was done speaking.

"No, really," she said. "I—"

"No, really," he said, his voice ringing with terse finality. "It's fine."

He stood up then, starting to unwind the microphone wire from around his back. "I actually need to get—" he said, then gave up on the wire, running his hand through his short hair. "I have an appointment. Are we done here?"

Even Greg seemed a little speechless. It was pretty clear that they weren't done—they had maybe two minutes of usable footage, if you took out all the stops-and-starts and bloopers. But it was also clear from Chris' tone of voice and the fact that he was already walking away, a wire still dangling off his belt, that it hadn't really been a question. Maybe Chris legitimately had an appointment, something that had to do with the team—physical therapy or practice or whatever they did when they weren't playing. Maybe he really did get his hair cut every day, and he was running late for his trim.

But even if it weren't highly unlikely that he had an actual appointment at ten o'clock at night, something told Daphne none of those were it. She'd managed to offend Chris Kepler again, only this time she had no idea how.

"We'll be in touch," Greg said, giving her a tight smile.