Chapter Two

The first thing Daphne did when she got home was to get disgustingly, violently ill. Since she'd managed to keep it together in Kim's car, she suspected it had less to do with the heat and the amount of alcohol she'd drunk on an empty stomach—although neither helped—and more to do with finally being alone and able to let it all out.

And let it all out is exactly what she did. Afterward, she left her clothes right there on the bathroom floor and turned on the shower, sitting in the tub while the water pulsed over her shoulders until she felt strong enough to stand up and grab the soap.

She could've stayed in the shower forever, except that it was one of the worst places for her thoughts. She couldn't turn them off. They crowded her head, and the white noise of the running water did nothing to drown them out. She got out, fed her cat Milo, and wrapped herself in a thin satin bathrobe before turning on SZA as loud as she could without the neighbor complaining. The walls of her studio duplex unit were paper-thin. Sometimes she could hear when her neighbor had people over and they were chatting at the table she knew he had pushed against the shared wall behind her bed. The reciprocal problem was one Daphne never had to worry about, since she never had anyone over to her tiny matchbox of a place.

She lay on top of her covers, trying not to think about what an absolute ass she'd made of herself at the game. It didn't matter, right? Lots of people got drunk at sporting events and shouted at players. It was practically part of the experience. And sure, okay, normally those players may not be able to hear them…but they got paid millions of dollars to put up with that kind of shit, right?

Except in that moment when their eyes had met, Chris Kepler hadn't looked like an overpaid, untouchable celebrity. He'd looked like a guy. He'd looked upset. Because of what she said.

But he wasn't doing well in general. That's what the toxic grandpa sitting next to her had been ranting about—so maybe it wasn't about Daphne at all. Of course he was upset—his team was losing. She was an egomaniac if she thought anything she could say would have the ability to affect the way he felt.

Daphne rolled to her side, snuggling into her pillow. Chalk it up to a bad day. She'd had one; Chris Kepler had had one; but now it was almost over. And the good news was she didn't have to think about any of this ever again.

A persistent ringing startled Daphne out of her heavy, dreamy sleep. She had no idea how long she'd been out, but the glimpse of sky through her one broken blind was black and the steam from her shower had cleared out of her small space.

She almost just threw her pillow over her head and went back to sleep. But then the ringing came again. Only this time it was even more piercing, if possible, like the person on the other end had turned up some volume button.

"Okay, okay," she muttered, reaching to try to grab the phone off the nightstand without getting up. It was probably Kim. She'd texted after she'd gotten home, just to check in, but Daphne hadn't been in much of a state to say anything other than that she'd be fine as long as she never had to get off the bathroom floor. She could see how that wouldn't sound that encouraging.

It was Donovan. Panic rose in her chest even as she accepted the call, her mind already skipping ahead to whatever this could be about. Their parents were traveling the country by RV right now, living their early-retirement dream. Had something happened? Or was it Layla—was she okay?

But Daphne barely had time to say hello before Donovan launched into it. "Daph, what the fuck?"

"What?"

It came out fluttery and scared. She was only half-awake, and still not sure why her brother was calling. Why he was practically yelling at her.

"Turn on SportsCenter."

"I don't have—" She didn't even know where to start. Her "TV" was a large computer monitor, and she mostly used it to stream Spotify.

She could hear him muttering on the other end, and then her phone lit up with a text. "I just sent you a video. Call me back after you've watched it."

And then he hung up.

Right from the title, Daphne's heart sank. Chris Kepler gets heckled and breaks down, a breakdown. She clicked on the YouTube video, already dreading what she knew she'd see.

The Carolina Battery are playing the Toronto Blue Jays and the Jays are leading six to five in the bottom of the ninth. The Battery have two men on with one out, so they should be looking to tie the game at least, maybe a walk-off, right? Except they call onthis guy.

Between the dry snark and the dramatic pause, she could tell this wasn't going to be good. It was weird, to see footage of the game that she was at earlier that day. Not that she'd had either the baseball knowledge or the sober wherewithal to know what was going on at any given point. But now the video was showing clips of Chris Kepler up at bat, clearly from various games earlier that month, swinging and missing, the ball sailing by him for a final strike, him popping up a foul ball easily caught by the catcher. The whole time, the video guy kept up a running commentary of each different way Chris Kepler had fucked up.

That's right,he said, they called on this guy. The one who'd already cost them one run in the top of the third.

Another clip from the game that day, this one of the ball cracking off a Blue Jay bat, Chris breaking to the right, his glove up, watching…waiting…and then the ball bounced off the edge of his glove, cutting sharply toward the outfield. He turned around, trying to locate it, but one of his teammates was already running to scoop it up, throwing it toward home plate. Not in time. The runner scored.

For a second, Daphne almost forgot the context in which she'd been sent this video, the part she must play in it later. She was impressed that someone had been able to edit this together so fast. It actually made her understand what was happening.

But then the camera turned to her. She was right there, behind the net, a purple can in her hand. If she never saw one of those raspberry beers again, she'd be fine. The older guy was to her right, and she could see Kim's leg to her left, the rest of her friend off camera.

This fan knows what's up,the video guy said. She's not having it. She yells something at Kepler—his body is blocking our view here, so I can't read her lips for you. Probably something like, hey, hit the ball, buddy! And he's like, yeah, yeah, I'm trying. Maybe she's like, hey, remember hitting home runs? That was nice.

The commentary was making the moment seem much bigger than it had been. Right? She'd shouted one stupid Winnie the Pooh reference, which would make her more the target of ridicule in this video if he'd been able to figure that out, and then the player hadn't said anything. It was over in thirty seconds.

But the moment had felt pretty big, even as it was happening. Daphne's stomach twisted as she remembered that look on his face, like he was…haunted. By the words she'd said. Milo watched her from the floor, his tail twitching, like even he could sense that there was something going on.

No big deal, right? Fans heckle, it's what we do. I've shouted at a few jabronis in my time. It's all part of the game. But wait—this guy's not so great at the game right now.

Now it was the part she hadn't seen, while she'd been making her way through the crowd with Kim. He was crouched in his batter's stance, his hands gripping the bat, and then all of a sudden…his face crumpled.

That was the only way to describe it. He turned away, putting his hand up like he was calling for time, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his jersey.

Is hecrying? He's crying. This guy is getting paid millions of dollars to suck and he's crying. There's no crying in baseball! I mean, maybe the fans can weep, since Carolina's twelve-and-sixteen to start the season…

Daphne paused the video, only just realizing she'd been biting her knuckle so hard she'd left an indentation in her skin. There were fifty-eight seconds left in the video, but she wasn't sure she could take any more.

In the end, she pressed play but turned the volume down, not wanting to hear this guy's no-doubt gleeful commentary. Chris finished his at-bat, his face stoic, and between the shadow from his batter's helmet and the eye black he wore on his cheekbones, it was almost like he'd never reacted at all. But there was that sheen in his eyes, which you could see when he moved his head. That look on his face, the way it had collapsed for that split second. The expression he'd had before, when he'd turned to make eye contact with her. Those couldn't be explained any other way.

She'd made him cry.

She was still staring down at her phone, frozen on a blurry still from the end of the video, when it buzzed in her hand with a call from Donovan. Now that she knew what he'd called about, she really didn't want to talk to him, but she picked up before the phone could ring again.

"Well?" Donovan demanded. "I know you had time to watch the video because I just finished rewatching it myself. Do you know how bad this makes me look? What did you say to him?"

"I—I just said he was Winnie the Pooh."

Silence.

"Or Christopher Robin? That he should be called Christopher Robin, because he played like Pooh."

Those raspberry vanilla beers had her feeling like Rodney Dangerfield at the time. Now she just felt stupid.

Donovan sighed. She couldn't tell if the sheer inanity of her insult made the situation better or worse.

"Justin said you made him give up his ticket?"

Her brother's censure had moved back to the personal, it seemed. She didn't feel like filling him in on everything that had happened with the divorce papers the other day, and it sounded like Justin had already filled him in anyway. He sure was quick to tell people what information cast him in the best light. Everything else, he shoved behind a closed door.

They'd had to live separately before they could be granted a divorce—hence the shoebox she was living in, since it was all she could find and afford at the time. In South Carolina, there were only a few grounds for divorce, and technically Justin hadn't cheated on her, hadn't hit her, hadn't abandoned her, and wasn't chronically drunk. There were no "reasons" for them not to be together, so the state insisted they live apart for a full year before it would let them go through with the dissolution.

And sometimes that was the hardest part. There wasn't any huge event Daphne could point to and say that, that was unacceptable. It had been a lot of little moments, times when she realized her marriage just didn't feel good. It had been a slow whittling away, an eventual realization that there was more negative space than anything substantial there.

Donovan sighed again, clearly taking her prolonged silence as a refusal to answer. Really, she'd just spaced out on his question. She found she was doing a lot of that lately.

"Look," he said. "It's late. We'll talk about this more tomorrow, yeah? They're probably going to call me into a meeting. They know Layla and I got you those tickets. Hope you enjoyed the game, because it's the last one we'll probably be able to get you into."

Her brother could be overdramatic, but she still tensed up when she heard him say that. "This won't cost you your job, right? Or Layla?"

God, she would absolutely die if this came back on her sister-in-law in any way. She was the first Turkish American woman to work the sideline in the MLB, and was great at her job. Daphne still figured her brother had been a nepotism hire, but she didn't want to see him down and out because of her shitty judgment, either.

"Layla, no," he said. "She's under contract. But me…"

He drew out the last word, and she wished she could tell if he was playing it up to make her feel bad, or if he really was worried.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I'll make it better. I'll do anything to make it better."

He gave a snort that was far from encouraging. "Good night, Daph."

After hanging up, she tortured herself by watching the video again with no sound, and then scrolling down the comments before giving up. The gist was either that she was an obnoxious bitch who disrespected the game, or that he was a crybaby loser who disrespected the game. No matter what, commenters were positive that the game had been disrespected.

She wondered if he'd said anything about the incident. Her thumbs hovered over her phone, not even sure where to start, but eventually she just searched his name and filtered the results to the most recent.

At the top was a clip from an interview he'd apparently done with Layla after the game. One of the other side effects of Daphne leaving early—she hadn't even been able to see her sister-in-law other than a brief wave before the game started. She wasn't super close with Layla—not because she didn't want to be, but just because her sister-in-law was intimidating as hell.

Chris looked uncomfortable in the video, his body language closed off. Daphne heard Layla's familiar voice saying, not unkindly, that he'd seemed emotional, and what was going through his head in that last inning?

"They played us tough," he said. "I'm still making adjustments to my swing, and I know I wasn't at my best on the field. I've already talked to Marv and some of my teammates, and we know what we have to do in this upcoming road trip."

It was the most nonanswer Daphne had ever heard. But she was surprised by his voice—it was smooth and deep, the kind of voice you wished would narrate an eighteen-hour audiobook about a sweeping multigenerational saga. Something about him, in fact, gave her the impression of a 1940s soldier about to ship off to the German front. Maybe it was the short, utilitarian cut of his brown hair, or the hard line of his jaw.

"Chris," Layla said, her voice even gentler. Daphne had never heard her use that tone before. They'd been out to a restaurant and had people turn around and glare at their table before; that's how loud Layla usually was. "I have to ask—what happened before that last at-bat? Did a fan say something to upset you, or—"

If he looked uncomfortable before, it was nothing compared to the way he seemed now. His eyes cut to the side, almost like he was looking at someone off camera. Maybe he wanted someone to end the interview, if that was a thing you could even do. Daphne had no idea how that all worked.

"It's baseball," he said. "You want to win and it can get emotional. But I'm grateful to our fans for coming out and supporting us. I hope to earn that support as the season goes on. Thanks so much."

And with that, he was walking away, back toward the dugout, where only a few players remained. It was almost impressive, how little he'd managed to say. The way he'd left the interview felt casual, normal, like he was always supposed to talk to Layla for exactly twenty seconds and that's how much he'd done.

Somehow Daphne knew that wasn't true.

She sat up in her bed now, drawing her robe tighter around her. If she was going to creep on Chris Kepler's social media, she'd feel self-conscious flashing his Instagram feed. She found his account easily—the unimaginative combination of his name and his number, with a little verification check to prove it was the real him.

It was a nice-looking feed. Professional. Literally professional; she assumed the team had someone who took all these photos of him, crouched down by third base, on the run with his batting helmet flying off his head, leaning against the dugout with a teammate. There were no captions on any of the pictures except a short video posted last year, the crack of the bat as he hit a home run that apparently had won them the game.

This feeling, the caption said.

She scrolled back to the picture of Chris in the dugout. It was from last season, as most of the pictures seemed to be. In it, he was smiling, crinkle lines around his eyes. The guy she'd seen earlier that day, the one from the interview, didn't look like he'd ever smiled a day in his life, but here was proof that he had.

Daphne knew what it felt like to have a bad day, a bad month—hell, a bad year. She knew that the YouTuber and commenters had a point; this was his job and he was paid well to do it. But she hated the idea that she might've added one more brick to the pile, kicked him when he was down.

She'd feel better if she could at least apologize, or explain. It was probably pointless—she doubted he ran his own Instagram account, and even if he did, he wouldn't accept a random DM. But something made her click on the message button and start to type.

You don't know me, but I wanted to reach out to

"Reach out." God. She sounded like she was sending a business follow-up. She deleted the words and started again.

Hi. It's me—I'm the problem

Maybe quoting song lyrics was too flippant.

I was at the game earlier—I was actually the one who

Paranoia kicked in that she'd accidentally send the message before it was ready, so she opened up her Notes app instead, figuring she'd type it there first and then cut and paste it over.

And she should probably lead with his name, even though it was what had kicked off this entire nightmare scenario in the first place. Chris, she added to the beginning of her message, and then leaned back against her pillows, her thumbs hovering over her phone while she thought about what to say.