Chapter Fifteen

It would be fitting if she cried because of something he said. It would be the moment she'd been waiting for, karma truly on her scent like a bounty hunter. But this was her first day on a new job, and Daphne didn't want to embarrass Layla, who she assumed had never cried a day in her life, much less while on the clock.

Luckily, there was a lot more work involved in this assignment than Daphne had even realized, and so she could focus on that instead. Layla had prepared her for today as best as she could, and outlined what the role would look like—Daphne would handle reports during the game about injuries, insights from the coaching staff, that kind of thing, and then do some pre- and postgame interviews with the players. Layla was still doing a lot of the prep work from home and handling the social media side of things. Between that and the fact that Daphne wasn't expected to travel yet, she knew she was only doing half of Layla's usual job.

It was still overwhelming. Daphne was wearing more makeup on her face than she was used to, which felt weird; trying to read PR sheets that she only half understood about various transactions—who'd been sent back down to Triple-A, who'd been recalled, so many names and words she didn't know; and couldn't help but feel a little starstruck when she was standing next to someone she'd been told only moments before was one of the greatest sluggers of his time. The name Gutierrez didn't even mean anything to her, and still she'd gotten flustered when he trained his perfect smile on her and started talking about the home run he'd hit that night.

And to top it all off, she was wearing a borrowed dress from Layla. Her sister-in-law had more of an hourglass shape than she did, so the dress puffed out weirdly around Daphne's chest with extra fabric. She'd followed Layla's advice to use a binder clip in the back to cinch it tighter—On camera, no one will be able to see, Layla had said with a dismissive hand wave—but she'd lost the clip somewhere along the way, and now the dress hung loose and baggy. It was such a small, stupid thing, but it immediately reminded her what an impostor she was. Even her fitted dress had been fake.

She was standing outside one of the employee-only doors, trying to get her bearings before entering, when she heard a voice behind her.

"I think you dropped this," Chris said, holding out her binder clip.

Daphne felt her face flame. Hopefully, he just thought she'd been using it to hold papers together. You know, like a normal person. The fact that she hadn't been holding any papers…

It was impossible for their fingers not to touch in the exchange, no matter how hard she tried. She felt the contact in a jolt, a sudden unwelcome reminder of what he'd said in one of his texts. I like to feel the bat.

She could not think about that right now.

"Thanks," she said stiffly.

He clenched his own fist at his side. "Look," he said. "I'm sorry. It's not about you. It's…" He paused, as if searching for the right words before resigning himself to whatever second-rate ones he could come up with. "I was frustrated, and I shouldn't have said what I did."

"I shouldn't have, either," she said. "That's why we're here in the first place."

He just looked at her, almost like he was working something out in his head. Maybe whether to confirm or deny what she'd said—the latter option would be more courteous, perhaps, but the former option more true.

"I have no illusions about why I'm here," Daphne said now in a low voice. "You're right—I'm hardly qualified. It's ludicrous, really, that they would've offered me the gig at all. But I'm—" She swallowed, thinking better of what she'd been about to say. Best not to get into the whole deal with Layla, how she was hoping to help out her sister-in-law. Better still not to get into the rest of it, how she'd been excited for the chance to make her life look completely different, even if she was scared of what that might mean.

"If you're not comfortable with me being here, I understand," she said. "Just say the word, and I'll quit. Seriously. No hard feelings."

He was staring down at his shoes now, but leaning in, and she knew he was listening closely even though his face betrayed no reaction. The first few buttons of his jersey were undone, revealing a thin gold chain over the athletic shirt he wore underneath. She thought back to that scab she'd seen on the back of his elbow that first fateful day, and had the wildest urge to check if it was still there or if it had completely healed.

"I don't want you to get spit on," she said somberly. "I wouldn't work with that guy."

The barest twitch at the corner of his mouth, so tiny she almost missed it. He dragged his hand over his jaw.

"Ah," he said. "The whistler's the one who really got under my skin. Probably just jealous."

She raised her eyebrows. "You can't whistle?"

He puckered his lips, blowing through them until a small tuneless note came out, more air than sound. He gave her a rueful smile.

"Don't quit," he said. "Not on my account."

And with that, he walked away.

The hours of this new job were going to take some getting used to. Even though it had been an afternoon game, by the time she did everything she had to and met everyone at the stadium, and then grabbed dinner, Daphne didn't get home until after eleven. She was bone-tired but also too keyed up to go right to sleep.

"My poor little Milo," she said, crouching down to pour a cup of food into his empty dish. He was going to have to adjust to this new schedule, too, because he was used to getting his dinnertime meal much earlier. She'd fed him before she'd had to leave for her hair appointment, but already that felt like ages ago. Before she'd texted a picture of Milo over to Chris as Duckie, before she'd overheard him talking about how unqualified she was for this job as Daphne.

It shouldn't hurt, maybe. He wasn't wrong. But it had definitely stung, that reminder that no matter how friendly they were through texts, it still didn't change how he felt about her.

She opened her text messages, hesitating for a second before starting to type.

What walk-up song did you end up going with?

Definitely disingenuous. She'd been at the game, after all—she'd heard the music pumped over the loudspeakers in the stadium. But she couldn't remember hearing anything before he came up to bat, and she didn't know if that's because there was no song or because she'd somehow spaced out and missed it each time. There had been a lot happening on the sidelines, notes to review, people constantly updating her with information or telling her the next cue for a segment. She hadn't been able to pay attention as much as she'd wanted to.

C: Still can't decide. Marv gave me the option of some instrumental track he'd found, or nothing. For now, I'm going with nothing.

C: (Marv's the team manager.)

Daphne knew that, of course. She'd even talked with him briefly today in the middle of the seventh inning, asking him questions about how he felt about the starting pitcher's performance.

D: I have a strategy.

C: Let's hear it.

D: Pick one of those songs that tells people what to do. Like the Cha Cha Slide or the Cupid Shuffle or whatever. Then while the opposing team is distracted—they're all to the left, to the left, walking it by themselves, that sort of thing—bam! You hit it out of the park.

She sat down on her bed, tucking her legs beneath her. She'd already changed into her pajamas and put her hair into a pineapple-looking bun on the top of her head like she usually did before going to sleep, but she knew it would be a bit before she'd even try to settle down.

C: There's only one problem.

It was a corny attempt at humor? And didn't even make any sense, because of course the song ended by the time the at-bat started, and if the pitcher was busy dancing, how could he throw the pitch for Chris to hit, and on and on.

C: Won't I also be afflicted by the Cupid Shuffle?

She grinned down at her phone.

D: I thought you said you don't dance.

C: I don't.

D: Then you should be immune. But I guess there's only one way to find out…

It was wrong, what she was doing here with Chris. It would be extra wrong if she used these texts as a way to glean information as Duckie that he probably wouldn't want Daphne to know. At the same time, what she most wanted to find out was how he really felt about his heckler working with the team, whether he'd meant it when he said he didn't want her to quit.

But just as she was reminding herself that there was no way she could ask, Chris surprised her by opening up the topic himself.

C: You ever say something you really regret?

D: Only every day of my life.

D: Seriously, though, I second-guess half the stuff I say. They always tell you that other people don't think about your words as much as you do, but then I think about how much I overthink EVERYTHING including other people's words so that doesn't always help.

D: And that…was probably not helpful at this exact moment. See, I've done it again.

C: No, that's exactly it. Like in high school they were always telling you that nobody else would notice a pimple on your face, but I always noticed other people's pimples.

D: Oh god. I'd be mortified if we'd gone to high school together. I always used to break out on my forehead, which is why I had bangs for so long.

C: I bet you were cute with bangs. And I don't necessarily mean notice in a bad way. If anything, it was endearing. When someone has a flaw you know they're self-conscious about, but you wish they could see themselves the way you see them.

Something about his words made her sad, but she didn't know why. Maybe it was just the comedown from all the adrenaline of the day.

D: "Chris Kepler finds pimples endearing." I'm adding that to your Wikipedia.

C: Right next to "eschews batting gloves." I sound like a real weirdo.

D: You sound nice.

He did sound nice. And that was the part that was going to get her in trouble, because the pull of these conversations was just too strong, even when she knew that there was no way he'd be saying any of this to her if he knew who she was. Maybe especially if he knew who she was.

C: Well, I said something not very nice tonight. I think I was trying to be funny. Or I wasn't really thinking at all. And then afterward, I felt terrible.

Now that he was actually talking about it, she found that she didn't want him to. He'd already apologized to her in person—it felt wrong to collect his private guilt, too.

D: That's what got me in trouble recently. I thought I was being funny and instead I was just being mean. Maybe we're not funny people?

C: I think you're funny.

If only he knew.

D: And I bet if your joke hurt someone's feelings, they knew you didn't mean it. I'm sure you made it right.

C: We'll see.

Daphne worried at her lower lip, scrolling back up through their conversation before opening up the text box again. She snapped a picture of Milo, who was resting next to her leg, not purring but just providing a solid mass of warmth.

D: Milo thinks it'll be okay.

C: Well, then obviously it will be. Nice dinosaur pajamas, by the way.

They were her oldest, shabbiest pajama pants, lime green with hot pink T. rexes. She'd had them since college.

D: Send me a picture.

She was surprised when it came in. It was of a lanky guy, maybe in his early twenties or so, his hair long under a yellow baseball cap, his arm around a guy holding two thumbs up. It took a minute for her to realize that the guy in the yellow cap was a younger version of Chris, and the guy next to him must be his brother.

D: What's that from?

C: The first game Tim came to see me play in the minors after I'd been drafted. I made one of the stupidest base-running errors of my life—basically, I didn't actually touch second base when I was rounding it for a triple. Little League stuff. So the guy at third tagged me like no big deal, easy out. I was so embarrassed that my brother had seen that, but afterward we went to a diner for late-night pancakes and he just kept laughing, "How'd you miss the fucking bag, buddy?" Not in a harsh way, not how our dad would've said it. Just, "how'd you miss the fucking bag?"

C: For years afterward, he'd randomly say it. Over the most trivial stuff. If I spilled a bit of my drink at dinner. If I got a question wrong on Jeopardy if we were watching it with my dad. That kind of thing. It never failed to make me laugh.

C: I miss that.

He missed Tim. Daphne knew that's what he was saying, and she was suddenly profoundly grateful that he would tell her that story, that he would share that part of himself with her.

D: I love having those kinds of little inside jokes. And I love being brought into other peoples'.

C: Tim was always the funny one.

Daphne sat staring down at that message for a few minutes, just thinking about how hard it was to let go of someone—how impossible, really. How you might forever define yourself in relation to them, even after they were gone, how you might be afraid of losing those parts of your identity the way you'd lost them.

C: How would you feel about a phone call?

Now Daphne stared down at her screen for a very different reason, frozen by his question. She couldn't talk to him using her own human voice! That would be a disaster. At the same time, she couldn't deny the sharp pang of yearning she felt at the very idea, the way it shot right to her toes.

D: It's pretty late. I should get to bed.

C: Oh yeah. I didn't necessarily mean now.

C: (Although now would've been all right by me.)

C: But it's late. Sleep well!

The more she and Chris talked, the more of these threads appeared. The one where she wanted to tell him in person that she knew what he was going through, that she wanted to make his life easier, not harder. The one where she wanted to tell him over text that there was nothing more she craved than to hear his voice in her ear. She wished she could find a way to weave the threads together, but she couldn't. Not without everything falling apart.

D: You, too.