Chapter Forty-One

"Magic number's three, yo!" Randy came from behind Chris to pinch the tendons between his neck and his shoulder, right where he knew it would make Chris squirm.

"Don't tell me the number, man, I don't want to know the number."

"Ah, you know the number."

Randy had a point. It was impossible not to—the Battery had four games left in the season, and if they won three of them, they'd have a Wild Card spot. They didn't have to wait to see if another team lost, they didn't have to hope a favored team choked at the last minute, they could just win three out of four and they'd be in. The fact that they'd made it that far was wild, especially when you looked back on how badly they'd been playing in the early part of the season.

Most guys had cleared out of the clubhouse, but Chris had started sticking around later and later, wanting to put off going home as long as possible. Sometimes Randy invited him to do something, go out with other guys or just back to his place to play video games, and Chris was always grateful for those gestures. At his lowest moments, he thought about inviting himself over, but he hadn't gotten that desperate just yet.

"Did you see Layla had her baby?" Randy asked, taking his phone out of his pocket and scrolling through until he reached the picture he wanted, turning to show Chris. He had already seen that one—it had made the rounds in several group chats. It showed Layla in a hospital bed, somehow looking just as perfectly coiffed as she always was, holding a little bundle of blankets he had to assume was the baby, although there was only a sliver of a forehead peeking out from the swaddle. There was another one with Layla and Donovan together that showed the baby a little better.

"Yeah, that's awesome." Chris cleared his throat. "Are there any other pictures?"

Randy clicked through a few things, handing his phone to Chris. "Scroll up to see all of 'em."

Chris gave the first couple pictures a few long beats of his attention, even though those were the ones he'd already seen. There was another picture of just the baby, lying in the bassinet with brink-demir written on an index card taped to the front, stars hand-drawn in blue highlighter to apparently indicate boy. Chris scrolled up one more and stopped.

It was a picture of Daphne holding the baby in her arms. He recognized the dress she was wearing as one she wore for the broadcast, and he remembered the night when she'd left early to go to the hospital. He'd been on his way to the dugout after a quick one-two-three top of the first, and his gaze had automatically slid over to the spot where she usually stood, surprised when he didn't see her. It wasn't until the seventh inning when he finally got out of someone that she was just at the hospital because her nephew was being born, and he was so relieved, he'd come so close to texting her. It wasn't the first time he'd had that impulse. He'd typed and deleted so many things into that text box, ranging from hey to you looked beautiful tonight to u up? to I miss you.

In the picture, she was looking down at her nephew and smiling, and something about the way her hand cradled the back of his head…He returned the phone to Randy. "Cute," he said.

"The baby, or Daphne?"

"Come on, man."

Randy made occasional comments like that, which Chris tried to respond to in the casual way he would if it were just a teammate teasing him about a crush on the sideline reporter with nothing else behind it. Normally that was enough to get Randy to drop it, until a week or so later when he'd hit him with another one.

But this time, Randy apparently didn't feel like letting up. "You were pretty worried about her that night," he said. "Kept asking where she was."

"It was unusual," Chris said. "That's all."

Randy gave him a long, considering look. "When are you just gonna forgive her, man?"

Thatcomment wasn't easy to form a casual response to. Chris racked his brain to figure out what Randy could even mean by it. Did he know? But how could he know? Had Daphne said something? He couldn't imagine her having that kind of conversation with him.

Randy reached up into his locker for some lotion, applying it to the new ink on his forearm. Chris had gone with him as he got a tattoo of his mother's initials when they'd had a little extra time in San Francisco, and for the first time Chris had wondered if he should do the same thing for Tim. Get his initials, an image that reminded him of his brother, something.

Randy seemed to understand Chris' silence, because he capped the lotion back up and said, "You told me all about it that night you came over. You were pretty drunk, it didn't always make sense, but I think I pieced it together. Something about how your text girl and your real girl were the same girl? And then there was a bit about Daffy Duck. It wasn't hard to figure out that you were talking about Daphne. Anyway, you were never in your hotel room anymore, and you might think you have game, but you don't have woman-in-every-city type of game. Unless it's the same woman in every city."

He tapped his head, like he was Sherlock Holmes for cracking that one. Chris could only stare at him, completely taken aback.

"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked.

"Why didn't you?" Randy shot back. "Look, clearly you were going through it. I know you don't always like to talk about stuff, like your brother, and the game. I figured you'd come to me with it when you were ready."

Once Chris had talked to Marv, it was easier to slowly open up more with the rest of his teammates, let them know what had been going on with him. They'd all been supportive and cool about it, which wasn't really a surprise. His reticence to share before hadn't really ever been about them. Several actually shared their own stories of losing family members or friends to suicide, and he had been a little surprised by that part, just how much more common it was than he'd ever realized.

He'd shared even more with Randy, generally about how his weekly therapy sessions were going, how much better his relationship with his dad had been lately. But he'd never talked about Daphne, because she worked with the team still, and he didn't want to risk making anything awkward or uncomfortable.

At least, he thought he hadn't talked about her. Apparently that wasn't true.

"What exactly did I say?" he asked. "When I was drunk."

"Like I said, it was all garbled. But basically, that she'd lied to you and you didn't know who she was." Randy paused, as if considering his next words. "And that you really, really loved her. You said it hurt, how much you loved her."

Chris closed his eyes. He wished he could say that didn't sound like him, but…he still loved her.

"I just couldn't believe it," he said. "I mean, I was all in. And then I found out that she had all this information that I didn't have, that she hadn't seen fit to share with me. If I'm being honest, I was embarrassed. I felt like such a fool for not seeing it before."

"I get that," Randy said. "But isn't it just as foolish to throw it all away, just because you're mad? If you love her, then you should be with her. This isn't reason enough not to be."

"I'm not even mad anymore," Chris said. He hadn't fully realized it until he said it aloud, but it was true. He hadn't felt true anger about the situation in some time—weeks, maybe months. Maybe not since those first few days after. "I'm just…I keep thinking about what her plan could've possibly been. You know? Eventually the truth was going to come out. We couldn't have dated forever without me ever getting to see her place, or know her phone number. How far would it have gone? Would she have gotten a brand-new number, just so I never had to know? What about her cat? She wasn't about to rename her cat, or get a new one. So what's the only other option? Maybe she never thought we'd make it that far. We'd break up before any of it had to come to light, and she could walk away with a nice text relationship that lasted for a while and a nice friends-with-benefits arrangement that lasted a little while longer."

"Or maybe she didn't have a plan," Randy said. "Maybe it wasn't that deep."

Chris sat slumped over, his forearms resting on his knees, while he thought about that. Maybe it wasn't that deep. Maybe she'd just made an error, a series of errors on the same play. Maybe he'd fucked some stuff up, too. He thought of the way she'd told him she loved him, how open and vulnerable her face had been, the way it had crumpled when he'd thrown the words back at her. He'd made her cry, and god, he hated seeing her cry.

He'd told her then that they were done, not to talk to him except inasmuch as she had to as the sideline reporter for the team. She'd helped lay out the ground rules for their arrangement, and she'd been flawless in following the ground rules he'd set for their breakup. So then why, perversely, was he bothered that she hadn't fought it a little harder? Why did it make him worry that one of his fears was right, that it was just a sign that she hadn't been that invested to begin with, that she'd been playing by the rules that they'd set for themselves while he'd gone completely rogue?

"Just think about it," Randy said. "You don't have to make any big decisions tonight. Or even before the end of the season." He leaned down to whisper in Chris' ear. "Magic number is three."

Chris laughed, flinching at the way that tickled as he swatted Randy away. "Get outta here with that shit," he said. "I told you, I don't want to know."

That night, Chris sat out on his balcony with a beer, looking out over the water. When he'd told Daphne that he barely used his balcony, she'd been appalled. "If I had a view like this, I'd be out here every single morning," she said when he'd shown it to her that one time she'd stayed over. "And every night. Maybe sometimes in the middle of the day, too, except if it was super hot."

"And when," he'd said, pulling her onto his lap, "would you be with me?"

Now, he wasn't around during the early or middle parts of the day much, but he found that he did like sitting out there at night. And most of those times, he thought about what Daphne had said. He thought about Daphne.

One moment he kept going back to, for whatever reason: the way she'd looked fixing her hair in that hotel room. Wrapped in the white robe that was a little too big on her, her bare feet peeping out, the way she'd had her hands in her hair while she talked about taking more care with her appearance as a way to take more care of herself. There had been something so domestic about that moment, so tender, that he just couldn't get it out of his head.

He'd read through their text message chain so many times by now, he felt like he could quote parts of it word for word. It was almost unthinkable to him now, that he hadn't known she was Duckie. Sometimes he wondered if on some level he had known, although he knew that was a stretch. He just could hear her voice so clearly in those messages, could fill in all the blanks from both sides of her that he'd wondered about at the time. Her dickhead ex had made her feel insignificant and unworthy of his notice, and she still carried that with her. And then Chris had thrown that back in her face, too, telling her I'll tell you one thing, though, you're not boring. Whatever else this was, it was a hell of a ride. He felt sick to his stomach when he thought about saying that to her.

He got to the beginning of the text chain again, and this time he wanted to keep going, all the way to that very first message that had started it all. So he redownloaded the Instagram app on his phone, barely waiting for it to finish updating before he opened it up to check his DMs.

There were a bunch since the last time he'd been on, and he didn't even bother to delete them, just scrolled through until he reached the bottom of the unread ones to find her message. When he didn't see it, he scrolled back up, stopping when he saw her little profile picture of the rubber duckie on top of a stack of books.

There was a new message. He sat up straighter, reaching to put his beer on the table next to him without even looking, which was probably why it immediately wobbled and fell to the ground, the bottle miraculously intact but cold amber liquid puddling on the concrete.

The little gray words under her profile name said Sent 9w. Did that mean it had been sent nine weeks ago?

He was almost afraid to open it up. He couldn't believe these words had been sitting here all this time and he hadn't known; he couldn't believe in only a few minutes he would be done reading them. He clicked to open the message.

I had a chance to do this once before, but I made a mess of it. So, I'm going to try again. I hope you read all the way through to the end, but if you don't, I understand.

My name is Daphne Brink, and I am your heckler.

First, I want to clarify a few things. I didn't know anything about baseball. Literally nothing. So the idea of me heckling you…I mean, it's ludicrous. It would be like me heckling the world's greatest opera singer about their vibrato. It would be like you heckling a champion whistler.

Chris snorted.

I was also incredibly drunk. Which is not an excuse, I know, but let's just say I was not in a great place emotionally. I'd signed my divorce papers a couple days before, and I was at the game with my best friend, sitting in seats that my brother had originally intended to use to try to get me and my ex back together. That's a long story, I won't bore you with it.

Chris had spent so long thinking about all the connections between Duckie and Daphne, all the little points where she'd lied to him or where he should have figured it out, that he hadn't thought about all the near misses. All the ways that he might never have met her at all—if she hadn't been at that game, if she hadn't heckled him, if she hadn't DMed him in the first place. How could he fault her for all the bad parts, when he wouldn't go back to have it any other way?

When we started talking, it felt so good. Maybe it was just that I was lonely. Maybe it was just that it had been a long time since I felt like I really wanted to know a person, to have them know me. Maybe it had nothing at all to do with you at first. But I think I fell for you at least a little bit from that first message about your pug Otis. That is objectively a very cute dog and dog name, so you knew what you had there—but also I loved that you immediately made that connection, that you'd be texting a stranger about your childhood dog at eleven thirty at night.

I only realized after we'd been talking for a bit that I'd left out the most important paragraph of my initial message, the one that explained who I was and why I was contacting you. The whole point had been for me to apologize about heckling you at the game. I'd only added the rest of it to try to make it more interesting, to show you that I was a person, too, and was just responding to my own pressures and acting out in a way that had nothing to do with you. But I'd deleted that opening bit and hadn't added it back in, so now you just seemed to think that I was a really kind person who cared enough to reach out to you because I saw that you were upset on TV.

I know I should've just told you then. But I thought, what's the harm? It'll be better for him to think some kind stranger reached out to him than to have to think about his heckler again. And selfishly, I liked talking to you. I didn't want our conversation to end. We'd chat this one night, and that'd be it.

Except we kept talking. And Chris, when I tell you how much those conversations meant to me, I really mean it. They brought me back into myself in a way I don't even know that I can fully explain. And that was probably selfish, too, that I allowed them to keep happening even though I knew I was only getting in deeper and making things worse. By now, I really didn't want you to know I was the heckler, because I worried I'd lose you. So when you asked me my name, I couldn't give it to you, in case you were able to connect the dots.

(Duckie is a nickname my brother called me when we were kids, by the way. And although the handle is supposed to be like Duckie's Books, I can tell you that the "S" stands for Sarah.)

Daphne Sarah. It made him feel almost dizzy, suddenly having all this information he'd wanted for so long. He'd wanted her name and a picture when he'd been texting with her anonymously; he'd wanted to ask her more about her divorce when they'd been together in person but didn't know if that was breaking their rules.

Chris tried to imagine how he would've reacted if, somehow, Daphne had just come clean with him when he'd asked for her name. No doubt he would've thought it was weird that she'd taken so long to clarify that point. He might've been embarrassed, clammed up a bit, worried that she was acting in bad faith and trying to catch him out in some way. Maybe it would've ended their relationship right there, another near miss.

Then you can start to piece together the rest of it. I didn't set up the interview, or the sideline job…but yes, I took them both partly because they gave me a chance to see you. Only then it got even more complicated, and I felt like everything was so tangled up I'd never get the knot undone. You asked me if I remembered the night we talked on the phone—of course I remember that night. I knew it was dangerous, I knew it was wrong, and still I wanted it so badly that I convinced myself it was okay.

Once he'd gotten past his initial reaction, the knowledge that she was the one on the phone that night had only made the memory ten times better. He could also see how vulnerable it must've made her feel, could understand why it had made her pull back the way she had. Especially when they'd started working together more.

I really didn't want to stop texting with you, but I knew it was for the best to try to make as clean a break as possible once I took over the sideline reporting duties. And then I thought I could keep it professional between us as the reporter, and you'd never have to know that we'd had this whole other relationship beyond that.

I recognize how shitty that sounds now. I see how it was always destined to blow up. But at the time, I didn't know what else to do.

And maybe it could've been okay—not great, but at least okay—if I'd left it right there. You'd briefly wonder about this anonymous person you'd chatted with for a few days, but you'd move on. I'd do my job as the Battery reporter until Layla got back, and then I'd move on.

But I couldn't leave well enough alone. I couldn't leave YOU well enough alone. I shouldn't have propositioned you in that bar, I shouldn't have let you take me back to my room, I shouldn't have let any of that happen.

He remembered the way she'd been after that first time. He'd come out of the bathroom and she'd been subdued, clearly retreating back into herself in a way that closed him out. At the time, he'd just worried that she regretted sleeping with him, that she was worried about her job or already second-guessing the rules they'd set for themselves. Now, of course, her reaction made a lot more sense.

From there it was easy to tell myself that the damage had been done, so what was the harm in just one more time? One more day, one more chance to be with you. And maybe I fooled myself along the way that I was somehow making the right choice for you, too, because if I could make you happy, it couldn't all be bad, right?

Then there was that night that you told me about Tim. It meant so much to me that you trusted me with that, that you would share memories of him with me. When you talk about him, I can see how much pain you're in, but I can also see the way your face lights up when you tell a story about who he was. I can tell how important he still is to you.

Chris realized he'd been holding his breath, and when he let it out, it came out shallow and shaky.

But it also felt so wrong—that you were telling me something I already knew, that I was having to pretend I didn't already know. That's the part I'm the most sorry about, the part that I don't know if I can forgive myself for. I certainly can't blame you if you don't forgive me. I said in that very first message that I don't pretend to know what you might be going through, and even now, when you've told both versions of me, I can't pretend to know. It's devastating.

You hold yourself in such tight control. You keep so much locked inside. And maybe I did use both the text messaging and our real-life relationship as a way to try to crack you open a bit, and that was wrong of me. I just wish you could see what I see when you let go of that control, when you're laughing with Randy in the dugout or when you're showing a kid how to field a ground ball on a bounce or when you can't sit still for five seconds while I draw perfectly shaded abs on you. Sometimes I think you believe you don't deserve that joy, but you do.

This time when Chris snorted at the perfectly shaded abs part, it sounded phlegmy and disgusting, and only when he reached up to wipe at his nose did he notice there were tears on his cheeks.

(btw I love that your new walk-up song is "Eye of the Tiger." And I love that your brother would've had your ass if you didn't clarify the correct Rocky movie that used the song. Is now a bad time to tell you I've never seen those movies?)

Anyway, I'm rambling again. Maybe you haven't read through this far, and so this is the worst possible place for me to put the most important parts. I really am sorry. I never meant to hurt you. And I really do love you. Those words might not mean shit to you, but they mean a lot to me. I understand if you never want to talk to me again. But if you do, just know I'm always here.

That was the end of the first long message bubble, but there was another one directly underneath it.

Oh, and—please don't let me have ruined any of the magic of "The Way" for you. I've been losing a lot of sleep over all of this, but you might be surprised by how much I'm haunted by the idea that I could've ruined that song.

Chris didn't know why that made him smile, but it did. Truthfully, he hadn't even given a second of thought to the song.

He clicked over to her profile, and there were a few new pictures from the last time he'd checked, but they were still all older. The newest one was from back in May, when she'd shown off a fanned array of library books on top of a patchwork quilt he recognized from pictures she'd sent him of Milo. Doesn't it always happen that all your library holds come in at once? her caption said.

Chris stared back out at the dark night, the barest reflections of light that demarcated what was water and what was sky. If you love her, then you should be with her, Randy had said. Like it was that simple.

And suddenly, Chris felt like it was.