Chapter Thirty-Eight

Somehow Daphne made it back to her apartment in one piece, physically at least, but once she was alone she let it all out. She cried so much that Milo hid under the bed, less interested in comforting her in her time of need than in removing himself from the tense situation.

On the one hand, she'd known this was coming. She'd been dreading it all these months, and it was almost a relief to have it out in the open, to not have to worry anymore about keeping secrets. But on the other hand, it had taken her by complete surprise, the way it had all happened and just how badly it had hurt. She couldn't shake that image of Chris' face, when he'd first realized. He'd looked betrayed. He'd looked devastated.

She heard a key working in her lock, and she sat up in bed, so thrown by the sound that she couldn't even process who it could be. Her first thought was Chris—which was of course ridiculous, and true wishful thinking. She'd never given him a key. She'd done everything to keep him as far away from her apartment as possible, actually, which was part of the problem with the subterfuge she'd been running. And even if he did have a key, there was no way he'd be coming over now. Those days were over.

It was only when Kim shoved her way in, the door sticking in its frame the way it did during the humid summer months, that Daphne remembered. She'd texted Kim earlier that morning, asking if she could stop by to feed Milo and check in on him. Back when she'd thought maybe she'd still be at Chris' place. Back when she'd been feeling hopeful, and happy, and like maybe she deserved it.

God, she hated herself for having felt that way.

"Oh!" Kim said, her hand flying to her chest as she was clearly surprised by Daphne's presence. "I'm sorry, I thought you said tonight?"

"I did," Daphne said. "I'm sorry. I should've texted you that I'd be home after all."

"Plans fall through?"

Daphne tried to respond, but she only ended up crying again. To her credit, Kim didn't ask any more questions for a few minutes. She just kicked off her shoes and climbed into bed with Daphne, holding her until the last of her sobs died down.

"Have you been hydrating?" Kim said. "Because I think that was most of your seventy percent."

Daphne let out a choked laugh, gesturing toward an untouched glass of water on her nightstand. "I've been meaning to."

Kim grabbed the glass and dumped the remainder of it in Milo's water bowl, then refilled it before handing it back to Daphne. "Nice and fresh," she said. "Take a few big sips for me and then tell me everything."

Daphne followed her friend's directions, and if Kim hit her with an I told you so, well…she knew she'd earned it. Kim had warned her from the beginning that none of this would end well—not chatting anonymously with Chris over DMs and texts, not hooking up with him in real life, none of it. But Kim just listened, wincing at a few of the worst parts and rubbing Daphne's knee sympathetically when she got to the end.

"I'm sorry, honey," she said. "What are you going to do?"

"Do?"Daphne blinked in genuine confusion. "There's nothing for me to do. It all blew up. He made his feelings perfectly clear."

"But did you explain? How it was all an accident at first, why you didn't tell him later?"

She'd tried to explain. She didn't know how coherent it had all been, or how much of it he'd heard. But she also knew that there was no explanation, no excuse that would negate what she'd done. She had lied to him. That part was undeniable.

"You didn't see the way he looked at me," Daphne said.

"Well, what are you going to do about the job? You can't show up every day and interview him like nothing happened. It'll be too painful. It'll be impossible."

Daphne buried her face in her hands, jamming the heels of her hands against her swollen eyes. She was so tired. She never wanted to think about walking into that ballpark again, never wanted to have to put on makeup and smile and ask surface-level questions about a specific play. But at the same time, she knew she couldn't quit. It would leave the team in the lurch and be a real shit move to do to Layla, who hadn't had to advocate for Daphne in the first place but who had, trying to support her every step of the way. Not only that, but she knew she couldn't quit for herself. This was something she needed to see through.

"I'll take it one day at a time," Daphne said. It wasn't lost on her that it was the very same sound bite players were always giving her. One pitch at a time. Three outs to end the game. Tunnel vision.

Kim was silent for a few minutes, just rubbing Daphne's back. "I still think you should try to talk to him again," she said. "When he's calmed down. It sounds like he really cared about you."

She knew what her friend meant, but that past tense still hit her right where she most hurt. Whatever we were to each other, Chris had said. She'd told him she loved him, and he'd said the words were empty, that he didn't know her at all.

The problem was that Chris had cared about her. She didn't know if she'd even appreciated how much, if she'd allowed herself to feel it. Maybe she could only feel it now because of its stark absence, the way that the clouds came out to cover the sky, and all of a sudden you missed the sun.

Chris had told her that there was a new energy among the team, the first game back after the All-Star break. It was only three days, but when you were used to grinding the way they did six days a week, afternoon games, night games, doubleheaders, road trips, press events, fan events…those three days meant a lot. And there was always a renewed hope, he'd said. Like even though your record still carried over into the second part of the season, you could imagine certain slates wiped clean if you wanted to, a chance to have a new start.

Daphne didn't feel any of that. And from what she could tell, unfortunately Chris didn't, either.

The Battery were up by one in the seventh inning when the opposing team hit what should have been an easy grab at third base, thrown across to get the out at first. Daphne had seen Chris make the play a thousand times. It was one of her favorites to watch, actually, because it was basic enough that she didn't really sweat it, didn't feel her adrenaline spike as the ball headed toward him. He always fielded it cleanly. And then sometimes he held on to it for a second—it would feel like a second too long to her, she'd start to sweat it then, wondering if he'd be able to make the throw in time—or sometimes he had to throw right away, on the run or twisting his body, slinging the ball over to first in this straight spear that she could hear from her place by the dugout hit the first baseman's glove with a satisfying thwack.

It was during those kinds of moments when she thought, I like baseball, actually. There was a rhythm to it, a flow. And she watched Chris make that same play over and over enough that she could see there were nuances to it, too. I think Chris would like Mary Oliver, she'd thought once, a thought which had seemed to come out of nowhere, but which she understood more as she watched him play. How could you not be poetic about baseball?

But this time, the ball came right toward Chris, and he put his glove down, ready to make the same casual pickup he'd done so many times before, and instead the ball just skipped right off the end of his glove. There was an awful moment, where he obviously thought he already had it, reaching in to make the throw. When he realized he didn't, he spun around, looking for the ball on the grass.

"Come on," Daphne whispered. "Come on, come on."

There was still time to make the throw. The runner was still not quite to first base—it would be tight, but there was time. Chris finally scooped up the ball, turning to throw it almost over his shoulder, the ball landing with a bounce in front of the first baseman's outstretched glove and rolling all the way out to foul territory. By the time it was over, New York had scored to tie the game, and Chris had been charged with two errors on the same play.

"That's a rare one," one of the photographers muttered from behind her. "What's with him?"

Daphne knew it was a rhetorical question, so she didn't bother to answer. But it wasn't lost on her that she was maybe the only person in that entire stadium who knew exactly what was wrong with him, ranging from everything he'd told her to everything she'd done. When the inning was over, she watched as he came into the dugout, completely stone-faced, tossing his glove into the garbage can before disappearing down the steps into the clubhouse.

"Did he just—" the photographer asked, and this time Daphne knew the question was directed toward her.

"Yeah," she said. "He did."

Any minute, Daphne had expected to get a note for an update to announce, something about how third baseman Chris Kepler had been replaced on the field, or even that Chris Kepler had been taken out of the game on some injury pretext. But it never came, and by the top of the eighth inning he was back out there again with another glove to finish the game. She should've known that wasn't his style, to just leave like that. At least not when it came to his job. With her, he'd left exactly like that.

After the loss, she also headed to the clubhouse for a quick interview with the starting pitcher. Several of the players jostled her as they went by—not in a rude way, but just in the inevitable way when everyone is headed to the same place. For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder if Chris had told anyone about what had happened between them. Randy, at the very least, probably knew. And if Randy knew, that meant the entire team knew. She hadn't gotten a weird vibe off anyone yet, but it slowed her steps a little bit, made her less confident as she moved toward the dugout.

But even after a few minutes among everyone else, she knew he hadn't said anything. For one thing, why would he? As far as she could tell, he was doing a bang-up job of pretending like it had never happened. He was back to his old stoic self, his face not giving away any hint as to what he might be feeling. Then for another thing, a word from him could be enough to poison the entire team against her, and somehow she just knew he wouldn't do that.

Still, if this was how the rest of the season was going to be—the tense silence, the way her heart seemed to live permanently in her throat—it was going to be a long one.

With everything else, it had completely slipped Daphne's mind that tonight was when Chris had unveiled the new walk-up song after the fan vote. Her own initiative, and she'd barely paid attention to what the selection had ended up being or even whether it had played during the game. She had notes from Greg that she was supposed to get a quick quote from Chris about the song, what he thought about the choice, how he thought it was going to help pump him up, that kind of thing. She could think of nothing she wanted to do less.

By the time she got to him in the clubhouse, he'd already taken off his jersey, was only wearing the navy athletic shirt he wore underneath. He was sitting on the bench, messing with his glove in some way, and it was only when she got closer that she realized he was cleaning it with a paper towel and a bottle of hand sanitizer. He must've retrieved it from the trash can.

She cleared her throat from behind him, and he turned, looking over his shoulder at the sound. There was a split second when his face was open and waiting—just ready to talk to whoever had come up to him—but then it quickly shuttered again when he realized it was her. He set the glove a little away from himself on the bench, like he didn't even want her looking at it, and stood up.

God, he was tall. She knew that already, of course. But he seemed extra tall now, looking down at her with those hazel eyes and those eyelashes and that mouth that once again was back to looking like it had never known a smile a day in its life.

"I'm supposed to talk to you about the walk-up song thing," she said.

He just looked at her, and for a moment she almost imagined he was taking her in the same way she'd been taking him in. That he was cataloging every detail about her face, that he couldn't help staring at her mouth. But then he glanced away, and she realized she'd been silly to even imagine it. He hated her now. If he'd been looking at her at all, it was probably just to remember how angry he was with her, how much he resented having to talk to her.

"Okay."

That was all she was going to get out of him, she realized, so she waved the cameraman over and waited until he'd framed the shot before she pasted on the brightest smile of her own that she could muster. "I'm here with Chris Kepler, who had the chance to unveil a new walk-up song tonight, chosen by you at home in a fan vote that got quite heated in the last round of voting. Chris, how do you feel about what the fans chose for you?"

"It's great," he said, and he was good at this. He switched into Chris Kepler, Professional Athlete so well that for a moment she was only relieved that he wasn't looking at her the way he had before. He was neutral, a vaguely positive shade of neutral, and even that was like taking a long drink of water after being in the desert all night. He said two words and she wanted to cry.

"I'm not that surprised ‘Eye of the Tiger' won," he said. "It's a classic for a reason."

Wait. What? Daphne wished she had her notes in front of her, but she'd started handing them off to the cameraman in situations where she knew her hands would be in the shot. She'd been feeling more confident lately, more able to think on the fly if she needed to. But now she was struck speechless. That had been the song that won? It had been one that Chris had thrown out there as one of his picks, and he'd told her that it was only because he was having such a hard time thinking of anything else, so why not.

It was her turn to speak, to ask some question that would garner one more sound bite about how the song really fired him up, or thanking the fans for their input. But she didn't know what to say.

Chris was definitely looking at her now. She was sure it was in a what's wrong with you? kind of way, but she couldn't even make eye contact. She gave a helpless glance to the cameraman, like can we just start over?

"I was worried about this song," Chris said finally. "Not going to lie. It's so iconic, and when you go out and have a night like I had tonight…but then I remembered that the whole point of the first Rocky movie wasn't that he won, but that he went the distance. I think this team has a lot of fight in it."

Daphne tried to say I agree, but what came out of her mouth was more of a choked guttural sound than actual words.

"Although the song wasn't used until Rocky III," Chris continued after a pause. "I grew up in Philadelphia watching those movies with my brother and he would've had my ass if I didn't correct the record on that point." Now it was Chris' turn to glance at the cameraman. "Sorry. He would've wanted me to correct the record on that point, is what I meant to say."

Daphne tried to pull it together enough to do her job at least. If he was able to be professional and talk about the song like none of the past few days even mattered, then surely she could do the same. "Well," she said, addressing the camera. "A little appreciation for his new song and a movie history lesson all at once. Thank you, Chris."

If she had any fantasy that he'd be different with her now, that the interview indicated a softening of his attitude toward her, she was quickly disabused of that notion once the camera was off. He scooped up his glove from the bench and, without even a glance in her direction, headed out of the locker room and toward the hallway where all the training facilities are. Daphne had never been back that far—she'd never had any reason to.

I still think you should try to talk to him again, Kim had said, but Daphne didn't see how she'd crack through his reserve even to set up a time to talk, much less get through the whole conversation. Maybe if she could interview him, if there were a microphone and a camera between them. Even then, all she'd get would be that same polite Interview Chris from when she'd taken the job. And if it came to a staring contest, she knew she'd blink first.

But it kept her up that night, after she finally got home and fed Milo, crawled into bed, and put on an old sitcom with the volume low just to try to tune out her thoughts. When she looked back on that horrible scene in his condo, she didn't know that she had been able to fully explain everything. Despite the fact that she'd been waiting for months for the other shoe to drop, when it finally did, she'd been taken completely by surprise. She'd barely been able to think, much less get the words out that would help him to understand where she'd been coming from, why she'd done what she'd done.

Maybe there was no explanation. She knew that. Maybe anything she said would just be an excuse, maybe it would make Chris even angrier, if he bothered to listen at all. But she didn't want to leave it without at least trying. Even if it didn't change anything about the way he felt about her, maybe it would help to answer some questions. If she could give that kind of closure at the very least, she wanted to do it. For him, but also for herself.

She reached out to grab her phone off her nightstand, closing her eyes momentarily against the harsh bright light of the screen. It was already three thirty a.m., but she sat up, switching on the lamp so she could settle in. She knew she had a lot to say.