Chapter Twenty-Nine

They ended up watching an episode of Seinfeld and the latter half of a movie where the whole premise was apparently that the two actors were the victim of some magic that switched their bodies, which was an extremely confusing scenario to come in the middle of. Chris had taken his shirt off at some point, and Daphne kept thinking about getting up to put some leggings on, but then she felt warm enough from snuggling up against his hard chest, his arm around her and resting on her bare thigh.

The credits to the movie were rolling, and she was in that blurry, half-awake state where she felt like everything was a little underwater. She thought she might've fallen asleep during the last ten minutes of the movie, which was fine—it wasn't like she'd been able to follow it anyway. So her reaction time wasn't superfast when Chris suddenly asked, "Earlier you said after my, and then you never finished. After your divorce?"

Her heart was hammering in her chest. "My divorce?"

"That's what it sounded like you were about to say," he said. "Or something else?"

She supposed it couldn't hurt to reveal that one detail about herself. Lots of people got divorced, after all. It didn't have to connect her back to Duckie. "Yeah," she said. "I was just saying I tried to find better ways to take care of myself. After my divorce."

He was quiet for a minute, and she wished she could read his mind, know if he was even thinking of Duckie at all in that moment. "Why didn't you want me to know about that? I don't care if you've been married before."

"I know." Daphne pushed herself off him, scooting back against the pillows. "Or, I mean, I should know. But it still feels like an awkward thing to bring up. Sometimes it makes me feel like…" She caught his gaze, his eyes sympathetic but also very, very serious. She swallowed the word failure. "It's just awkward to bring up."

"Do you still have feelings for him? Your ex?"

His voice was matter-of-fact when he asked the question. For all she knew, he didn't care about her answer either way. But then he rubbed his hands along his thighs, almost like his palms were sweaty, and she thought maybe he did care. At least a little.

"No," she said.

He nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. She should really leave well enough alone, because nothing good would come of bringing it up, running the risk of him connecting the dots, but suddenly it was bursting in her chest and she had to get it out. "What about you?" she asked. "Your someone else?"

Chris shook his head, giving her a smile that she thought was almost sad. "I told you, it wasn't really anything. Just someone I was talking to for a little bit."

Daphne hated that it hurt to hear him say that. She should be happy. The last thing she wanted was to know he was thinking about another woman while he was with her. But when she was also that other woman…she couldn't help it. It hurt to hear their relationship dismissed that way.

"I think maybe people come into your life at different times, for different reasons," Chris said, then smiled when he saw the dubious look on her face. "I know that sounds cheesy. But I mean it. I think I was meant to have someone to talk to at that time. I needed that. But it was a fantasy, you know? It ended up not being real. And now I'm grateful to have you in my life, and if it meant that you had to get divorced first, well, I'm sorry you had to go through that but I'm grateful it brought you here."

"You barely know me," she whispered. "You said it yourself."

He leaned back against the headboard, turning to look at her, his hazel eyes dark and sleepy as they traveled over her face. "I'd like to know more," he said. "But in the meantime, I know enough. I know that you're a hard worker. It's not easy, jumping into Layla's job and having to figure out the player personalities and how to convey so much detailed information in a short amount of time. I know that you care. You didn't have to help me with my walk-up song, or interview the team about me, but you did. Not just for a segment but because…"

This time when he swallowed, it looked almost painful, like he had something stuck in his throat. "My brother died at the beginning of this year," he said. "Just after New Year's. It was suicide. He—"

Daphne only realized tears were streaming down her face when Chris reached out to wipe one off her cheek. "Ah," he said. "Don't cry. It's okay."

She shook her head, wishing she could say something, wishing she could just tell him. Because right now she felt just about the most awful she'd ever felt in her life. She felt awful for him, for what he'd lost. And she felt awful about the fact that this wasn't even the first time he'd opened up to her about it, and of course he didn't know that. "It's not okay," she said finally.

He still had his hand on her cheek, stroking her skin with his thumb. "No," he said. "It's not."

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm so, so sorry."

"I've been thinking about him a lot lately," he said. "With the All-Star Game coming up. It wasn't a surprise when I didn't see my name on the ballot. I'm lucky I got my average up above the Mendoza Line, but it's hardly All-Star level. But I realized I'd always had this dream of going one day, not even for the game but for after the game. You know, when they show all the players on the field with their families?"

Daphne nodded, even though she didn't think she'd ever seen an All-Star Game in her life. She only knew what it was from press briefings she'd gotten about the one pitcher from the Battery who'd been picked to go.

"I always had this vision of being out there, having my dad with me, my brother Tim. And maybe Tim would have a kid. Maybe I'd have a kid. Tim was so funny, he could make anyone laugh, he would've made a great—"

Chris' face crumpled briefly, and his eyes were shiny, but he was holding his jaw very rigid, like he was willing himself not to cry. "Some people say suicide is selfish, but then I thought, how fucking selfish am I, that this is what I'm thinking about? A fucking All-Star Game. I don't care about a fucking game. What was all of this for? The World Series? Some stats? Money? I don't give a fuck."

He was so tense Daphne worried he'd break. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him toward her. And when she felt his body start to rack with silent sobs, she tightened her grip, holding him as he clung to her like he was drowning and she was the only one who could save him.

"I should've been there more," he said. His voice was thick and muffled against her shirt, but she understood every word.

"He was obviously in a lot of pain," she said. "You couldn't have fixed that all by yourself."

"I should've tried harder."

She had to swallow against the lump in her own throat, not wanting to break down herself. "You try, Chris," she said. "You try so hard. It's who you are. But that's a lot to carry."

She held him until she could tell he was all cried out, stroking his hair and murmuring occasional responses to anything he said. By the time he drew back, his eyes were swollen and red, and there was a damp circle on her shirt.

"Sorry," he said, running his thumb over her taut nipple where the fabric was wettest. "Chris Kepler cried again, this time on the heckler's Chris Kepler shirt, a breakdown."

He smiled at her, and she returned it, although the expression felt shaky and false on her face. Why should it upset her, that he referred to her as the heckler? That's what she was. And there was a time when she thought she'd never be able to look at Chris Kepler without thinking about that moment, and feeling terrible about the fact that she'd made him cry, however unintentionally. But now she looked at him and saw so much more. She saw the man she was falling in love with. She saw the man she knew she was going to hurt, much worse than she could ever have done by shouting an insult at a baseball game.

"I'm tired," she said. "And I know you must be exhausted. Do you want to just sleep here? We can set an alarm for early in the morning for you to head back to your room."

"Yes," he said, pressing an emphatic kiss to her forehead. "I thought you'd never ask."

This time, when Daphne ended up at Layla's house after the road series, she barely let her sister-in-law queue up any footage from her interviews. She already knew what they'd be. She'd asked all the questions she was supposed to, there'd been a funny moment when Randy photobombed her postgame interview with the winning pitcher, Chris had looked a little tired, dark circles under his eyes that weren't just from the eye black but probably didn't even register on camera.

After that first night, he'd spent the next night in her hotel room, too. They'd managed to catch a replay of the exact same movie, only this time from the beginning so they spent most of the movie marveling at how much more sense it made now that they knew the actors were supposed to be playing each other. They ordered room service and found ways to work around her period and stayed up late talking. And by the time Daphne was on her flight home, she knew things couldn't keep going the way they were.

"I fucked up," she told Layla now. "I really, really fucked up and I know you're going to be mad at me but I need you to first just listen to me and tell me what to do."

Layla, uncharacteristically, looked so startled that she didn't say a word. She only stared at Daphne as she paced back and forth in front of Layla's bed, outlining what had happened from the night she DMed Chris to the night she ended things with him to the relationship they had now. She left out the salacious details—no need to fill Layla in on everything—and also kept Chris' revelations about his brother private. Otherwise, she laid it all out. When she was done, she was almost out of breath, both from the pacing and from the onslaught of words.

"Don't worry," she said, catching sight of Layla's shocked face. "I'm going to tell him. I have to. My plan is—"

Layla sat up in the bed then, clutching her belly even though she was only just starting to show. It occurred to Daphne that maybe she should've cleared Layla's health before she went into this whole saga. Her sister-in-law's face was all red.

"You absolutely will not tell him," Layla said. "Not until the season is over, at least."

Now it was Daphne's turn to look shocked. "But that's months away." They were barely into July—there were practically three full months left to go.

"And it's going to come a lot sooner if you tell him. For you, because honestly, you'll be lucky if you don't get fired. And for him and the rest of the team, because any long shot they might have at making the playoffs will be toast if he's all distracted and upset and bringing it into the clubhouse every day."

"But wouldn't it be better—"

"No." Layla cut her off without even letting her finish. "It would not be better. Look, what you did was—I don't even know. I don't know what would possess you to stay anonymous in the first place, and then I really don't know what would possess you to start a real-life relationship with the same person you catfished. That's some Theranos-level shit."

Daphne opened her mouth to protest—she didn't know if she deserved to be compared to a company that had defrauded investors out of millions of dollars—but she shut it again when she could see that Layla wasn't going to be interrupted.

"But you did it," Layla continued. "Damage is done. You can't undo that, but what you can do is mitigate it. Which means, for example, not fucking up the Battery's playoff chances because you're suddenly having a crisis of conscience."

Daphne knew from her reporting that the Battery was currently fourth in their division, but in a tight race. They'd have to improve their record post-All-Star break quite a bit from their record pre-All-Star break, and considering they hadn't gone to the playoffs in…Daphne didn't know the exact year, but it had been a long time. She had to admit that in anything she'd considered while figuring out what to do, she'd never once factored in the playoffs. She heard Chris' voice in her head, saying it was just a fucking game, that he didn't care.

But he did care. She knew that. And Layla had a point—any harm that had been done was already done. The last thing Daphne wanted was to make things worse.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, burying her face in her hands. "I never meant to hurt anybody," she said. "Not you, with your job, not the team, definitely not Chris."

Layla leaned forward to give Daphne's shoulder a squeeze. Coming from her, it was an unprecedented gesture of comfort, and Daphne almost lost it right there. But then Layla spoke, and brought Daphne right back down to earth. "I know you didn't, honey," she said. "But intention doesn't really matter in situations like this. It's only about the impact, and right now the best thing you could do is nothing. Let this meteor hit in the off-season, when he can deal with it. And in the meantime, he seems happy, he's hitting better, he hasn't made an error in weeks…is that such a bad place to be?"

Daphne shook her head, but the pit in her stomach said otherwise. It said it was absolutely the worst place to be. Sure, the meteor hadn't hit yet, to use Layla's metaphor. But she didn't know how you were supposed to just live your life, knowing that it was going to. Knowing it would destroy everything.