Chapter Twenty-Eight

"You're still in your head," Chris' dad said, reaching to grab the bat out of his hand. He got into his stance, demonstrating a slight hesitation before taking a big swing. "You see that? The hitch? You've still got a hitch."

Chris had about fifty different responses to that. He was a thirty-two-year-old man. He'd been playing in the major leagues for eight years. He'd been hitting better the last few games. There was an entire coaching staff whose job it was to advise him on his swing; they were aware of the "hitch" and had been working with him on it. A hitch wasn't always a bad thing. Lots of power hitters had a hitch. Pujols had had a hitch. And regardless, Chris wasn't a Little Leaguer who needed his dad to teach him how to coil.

But of course, his dad had been the one to teach him everything he knew about baseball. It was the reason Chris, who was right-handed, batted left. His dad was a leftie and it had been easier for him to demonstrate that way, so that was how Chris had learned.

His brother Tim had batted better from the right, actually, had been a viable switch-hitter all through high school. For some reason, Chris had never gotten the hang of batting from that side, even when it should've been more natural for him.

"It's a mental game," his dad said now, taking another swing. "You know that. It's mental. You gotta stop thinking, let your body do what it knows how to do."

If Chris had it in him to respond to that, he would've asked how exactly his dad recommended he just "stop thinking." He would've asked if that's what he'd done, if that's how he got through his days without thinking about Tim at all. But instead Chris just pulled the collar of his shirt up to wipe sweat off his chin, stepping out of the box in the makeshift batting cage his dad had constructed in his backyard.

"I'm going to grab a Gatorade from the fridge," he said. "Want anything?"

"Nah," his dad said, still taking another big hack with the bat at an invisible ball. He tapped the bat in the dirt, getting set again. "Actually, get me a beer."

The screen door leading onto the back porch squeaked a bit, the door with its own hitch before it closed all the way, and Chris made a note to fix that. His major league salary had bought this house, and that salary had also funded the back addition on it including this porch and the batting cage. He had no issues giving his father anything he wanted, money-wise. The man had raised him, had shaped him into the man and baseball player he was. He'd give him the last shirt off his back if he needed it.

But it was becoming increasingly difficult to feel like he was giving his father anything else that he wanted. Chris felt like he couldn't be as devoted a son; couldn't be as good a ballplayer; had obviously failed at being a brother.

There was a magnet on the fridge with the team's schedule on it, and Chris paused in front of it, finding that day's date on the calendar. He lived his life from series to series, week to week. Sometimes his dad was more on top of what he'd be doing a month from now than he was. It would be six days until the next road series.

Six days until he could be with Daphne again.

He couldn't deny it had stung when she didn't even want to exchange numbers. Admittedly, he'd never done a friends-with-benefits type thing before, but didn't that mean they could at least be friends? Friends texted each other sometimes. If he wanted to see if it was a good time to head over, if he wanted to check if he should order any food to bring with him, if he left something behind in her room. If he saw something that reminded him of her or that he thought might make her laugh.

Chris was still staring at the magnet, his eyes unfocused, when his dad came up behind him. "It's one of those old-fashioned fridges with a handle you pull with your hands," he said, reaching around to open the fridge and extracting their drinks.

"Sorry," Chris said. "I got…" He didn't want to say distracted. It would give his dad more fodder for the same broken record he'd already been playing all day.

Chris took a big gulp of the Gatorade, feeling the cool liquid slide down his throat without really tasting it. "Do you remember when Tim cut my hair that time?" he asked his dad. "I was what—three? Four?"

His dad used a bottle opener stuck to the side of the fridge to pop the top off his beer, taking a sip without making eye contact with Chris.

"We were playing with some kids down the street," Chris said. "They were chasing me. And Tim said if we cut my hair they wouldn't recognize me, that it would be a perfect disguise. That seemed so brilliant to me at the time. I thought, how lucky am I to have a big brother who knows how to hide me."

"He was messing with you," his dad said gruffly. "He did that when you were kids."

It was true. Chris could remember lots of times when Tim had played some trick on him, gotten him to believe that he was playing a video game no-handed when it was a recording, made him freak out that there was a frog in his bed when it was a toy. But that wasn't how he remembered this particular incident. It had really felt like it was him and his big brother against those kids, against the world. He would've done anything Tim said.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm still hiding," he said.

His dad grunted, tipping his beer bottle toward Chris. "You just gotta find your drive for the game again," he said. "It's gotten you this far. It can take you the rest of the way."

But that was the problem, Chris thought. The rest of the way where? To what?

By the time the Battery was on the road again, Chris had made several decisions. First, he couldn't do batting practice at his dad's anymore. It wasn't helping him; it hadn't helped him for a while. It was more for his dad than for him, and it wasn't a sacrifice he was willing to keep making.

He also realized he did care where he ended up next year. He knew the Battery wasn't the best team in the league, knew it was possible he was just prioritizing what was comfortable over what was best for his career. But he was invested in this team. He respected his manager. He liked living in Charleston, wanted a chance to really be a part of something in this community. "You're not giving me much to negotiate with," his agent had said when he called to tell her that he really wanted to stay out of free agency next year. "I trust you to help convince the Battery that I'm still an asset," he'd said. "Just do anything you can to keep me here."

The final thing he decided was that it was fine if Daphne didn't want to give him her number yet. He'd just have to earn it.

"Hey," he said, leaning into Daphne's hotel room once she'd opened the door. She'd just gotten out of the shower, her hair still wet and smelling like vanilla, her cheeks all pink. She was wearing the hotel's fluffy white robe, her bare toes sticking out from underneath. She looked adorable, and he immediately wanted to kiss her.

She gestured him into the room, closing the door behind him, but she was backing away, holding the lapels of the robe tight at her chest. "Bad news," she said, and his heart dropped into his stomach. Was she okay? She didn't look sick, but…you couldn't always tell. Or was it something about this, about their relationship? Someone had found out, she didn't want to do it anymore, she'd met someone else.

She pulled a face. "The Red Sox are in town."

Automatically, he ran through his mental Rolodex of matchups and schedules, remembering that Boston had a big divisional matchup this weekend. "They're in Tampa," he said. And why would that be bad news either way?

Daphne rubbed her eyes with one hand, giving a self-deprecating little laugh. "Sorry," she said. "Trying out my baseball humor again. I just meant I have my period."

"Oh." It still took a minute for Chris to catch up. The only reason he could think of why that would be bad news was if they were trying to get pregnant, which…suddenly he had a flash of images of Daphne, her belly swollen, Daphne, holding a baby. His chest clenched with a sudden ache, and he felt almost desperate to think about something else, anything else. It was outrageous, to have those kinds of thoughts about someone he wasn't even in a relationship with. It was surprisingly painful, and he didn't know why.

She was looking at him now, and he wondered how long he'd been standing there, silent in the doorway. "I'm feeling kind of crampy and tired anyway," she said. "So it's not going to be a great night to get up to anything. This whole series, probably. Sorry."

Chris wanted to tell her that she didn't have to apologize. That despite whatever ground rules they'd established around hooking up, it had never had to be only physical for him. But he still didn't know how she felt about all of it, so he figured it was better to play this one with soft hands.

"Want to watch a movie?" he asked. "We could see what's on TV."

She hesitated for a moment before giving him a nod. "Sure. I have to finish with my hair, if you want to find something."

He settled in on the bed, grabbing the remote to start to flip through channels, but he kept getting distracted by her movements out of the corner of his eye. The room had one of those setups where the counter and sink were outside of the bathroom, and she had several products all laid out, spritzing her hair with a spray bottle before she put a dollop of cream in her hand and started spreading it through her curls.

"What's all that?" he asked.

Daphne turned toward him. Her robe was gaping a little bit now, showing him the soft swell of one breast, almost exposing the nipple. He meant it when he said he was fine with not doing anything that night. If he was being honest, he was pretty exhausted himself, his body achy from the late game the night before and the flight today. But what could he say, none of it turned off the way he reacted to her.

"It's the problem with curly hair," she said. "If I don't use the right shampoo, condition and moisturize it properly, get all the tangles out, it's a nightmare."

Chris loved her hair. He loved it when it was big and perfectly styled during the broadcasts. He loved it when she pulled it up in a loose bun on the top of her head with one of those elastic bands she always wore around one wrist. He loved it when it was sweaty and stuck to her neck while he was still buried inside her.

He tried to turn his attention back to the TV, flipping through channels without registering much of what he was seeing. "That must take a lot of time," he said.

"It can," she said. "But I kind of like that part. I didn't use to take care of my hair like this—I just used whatever products were on sale and sometimes I blow-dried it for a special occasion and that was about it. It was one of the things that made me the most nervous about being on television. I didn't really feel camera-ready, you know?"

Chris realized he'd never even thought about that part of this new job for her, how jarring it must've been to suddenly have to worry more about her appearance. He fixated on how he was playing, whether his glove had actually tagged an opposing player out at third before he touched the bag, whether he'd been stupid to take a big hack at a ball obviously in the dirt, ending up on one knee. He didn't give a lot of thought to how he looked on camera.

"You're always camera-ready to me," he said. "If it makes any difference."

He could see her smile at him in the mirror. "It's been a benefit to the job, when you think about it. I used to feel like spending too much time on your appearance was vanity, or just a waste when you could be doing other things. But now I see the ways that it can be really good, actually. To take a little extra care with yourself, to give yourself something that's just for you. After my div—"

She broke off, her fingers still caught in her hair where she'd been combing the cream through. Her eyes met his in the mirror, and she looked almost stricken.

"Go on," he said.

She gave a brittle laugh, scrunching her curls with one hand before she finally started putting the products back in a clear plastic pouch propped up on the counter. "I feel like I'm in an infomercial," she said. "Like I should be telling you all these products can be yours for the low price of nineteen ninety-five a month for twelve months. Sorry, this is so boring. Did you find anything good on TV?"

He turned his attention back to the television. Commercials, commercials, some religious programming. Then he stopped on a channel that was showing Pretty in Pink. The movie was almost over, Molly Ringwald already in her prom dress. I'm Team The-Dress-Looked-Better-Before. He changed the channel, letting it sit on a commercial for talking to your kids about drug and alcohol abuse, the child actor's Love you, too, Dad voice-over plugged in where his lips didn't even move.

"It's not boring," he said. "I'm interested. I don't know that much about you."

Once again, he had the impression that his comment somehow bothered her. She just gave a jerky shrug, then disappeared for a second before coming back wearing a white T-shirt, Carolina Battery across the front in script letters.

"I forgot to pack my pajamas," she said. "And so I grabbed the first thing I could find to use as a nightshirt while I was at the airport. You have to promise you won't laugh. Or get a big head about it."

"Why would I get a big head?" he asked. "You work for the team. You're allowed to wear the merch. Some might say you're encouraged to wear it."

She turned around, and he had to swallow at the way the hem of the T-shirt hit her at the thighs, her shapely legs bare beneath it. When she lifted her arms up to scoop her hair over one shoulder, he saw the briefest flash of her black panties. He was so distracted by that image that it took a second for him to register what she was trying to show him—his number 15 on the back of the T-shirt in screen-printed numbers, his name across her shoulder blades.

He really shouldn't feel a possessive surge at seeing her wearing his T-shirt. But fuck if he didn't like it. Suddenly he found he was having all sorts of fantasies about just how much he liked it.

"Surprised you didn't get Caminero," he said when she turned back around. "We sell a lot more shirts with his name on it than mine."

"I know," she said. "I had to really dig through the racks for this one."

She was grinning at him, and he supposed maybe he should care about this reminder of his place in the organization, especially given his current contract negotiations where he was hoping to stay. But it wasn't anything new to him. And he found that he liked the idea that she didn't just pick up the first thing—that she'd gone through the piles of shirts until she'd found the one with his name on it.

"Come here," he said, not even waiting for her to fully climb in the bed before he grasped her around the waist and brought her onto his lap. He pressed a quick kiss to her temple before he started laughing, leaning his head against hers.

"You promised you wouldn't laugh," she said.

"The Red Sox are in town," he said. "Christ. Took me a minute, but that one's killing me."