Chapter 2

Brooks Elliott, aka a man who's clearly down on his luck, in so many ways

When I gotup this morning, I didn't expect I'd end the day getting cock-blocked by a flaming meatball.

A meatball who knows my biggest secret.

And a meatball who's stupidly fast in that costume.

After a split second of hesitation while I regain my balance, I leave my phone and dart after the damn mascot.

I'm about to grab her when the door swings open and Cooper Rock steps in, then leaps out of the way of the running meatball, but unfortunately, right into my way.

He jumps out of my way too, still staring at the mascot. "Whoa, Meaty, where's the fire?"

Once again, I'm scrambling for balance. "Stop that meatball!"

He snags me by the collar and yanks. I make a gurgled noise and spin, but he's got a tight hold. "Hands off the mascots, dude. You don't want beating up a meatball to be your legacy."

"She's stealing the damn costume."

"Huh."

I yank myself free, but he leaps between me and the rapidly retreating meatball.

"Get out of my way." I finish the order with a shove that doesn't budge him.

"Elliott, man, you really want the meatball to win the mascot contest? Let it go. Fly and be free, meatball, but don't be the Fireballs' new mascot, right? Also, you didn't hear me say that. I promised Lila I liked the meatball best. But I swear, she was going to trade me away if I didn't."

My chest is heaving while I glare at him. First, because what the fuck is wrong with him that he wants to play for this team—the guy's good enough that he could've had three championship rings for any other team at this point in his career by now—and second, because I can't tell him why we have to stop the damn meatball.

Not like I can blurt out the fucking meatball knows my secret, because I don't talk about the pristine condition of my V-card with anyone.

Which begs the question, how did she know?

How the hell did she know?

I don't have a lot of practice denying it, because I don't have a lot of practice being confronted with it. Which means she caught me off-guard, and now I've basically confirmed it for her.

Fuck.

If I have nightmares about meatballs, I'm gonna be pissed.

Cooper punches me lightly in the arm, one of those I got you, buddy hits. "Look, we'll put a pirate eye patch on you and say you got meatball sauce in your eye while you tried to stop it, and you'll be a hero, plus you'll only have to sit out maybe two games. No publicity is bad publicity, and a kidnapped mascot? This is like gold for getting more people to talk about the Fireballs."

This.

This is what I've been traded into. We need a meatball-napping to get publicity, because the team's game sucks so hard.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try some of that deep breathing stuff my brother swears by since he married a nutcase, and I wish for the umpteenth time in the last seventy-two hours that this is all a bad dream.

"Huh." Cooper glances back at the door. "Knowing Lila, this could be a planned kidnapping."

Lila. The woman who inherited the Fireballs a few months back, and one of my sister's best friends. Long story.

"You think Lila set up a meatball kidnapping for publicity?" This is the most insane conversation I've ever had, and my brother's married to a woman who knows over a thousand euphemisms for penis and uses them liberally, and my sister's autocorrected text messages need their own museum.

He nods. "She definitely set this up. Which means we can both put it out of our minds, and head out to the club."

At that, I perk up.

A club?

Oh, hell, yes.

The damn meatball was probably right about something else—I should at least be legit attracted to the first woman I bang, and not just getting a hard-on at the idea of the first vagina that signs up for the job.

The meatball was right?

I have issues.

"Point the way," I tell Cooper.

Out in the parking lot, I hop on my bike and follow Cooper's truck through the Palm Bay traffic to a less congested area of citrus groves. He turns down a dusty road that feels close to the compound, but I don't see a club.

All I see is a dilapidated shack with half a dozen cars and trucks parked at it.

Half a dozen sports cars and souped-up trucks that were parked at the ball field a few hours ago.

Dammit.

I'm not getting laid.

I'm getting initiated.

Initiated into the worst team in baseball.

And I'll do it, because that's what you do for your team.

It's not being on a new team that has me pissed. Not the guys. Not the management. Not even moving away from New York and family.

Wait.

Yes, I'm pissed that I'm not playing for New York anymore. It's my home team. The team I thought I'd retire from. The team so close to home that my family frequently showed up for games, and sometimes joined me for parties afterward.

But the shit icing on the sewage cake of being traded away from my home team is that they didn't trade me just anywhere.

Nope.

They had to trade me to the worst team in baseball.

Tell me all you want that the new ownership and the new management and the new coaches will make a difference for the Fireballs this year, but there are two things I know for damn certain:

One, curses are real in baseball.

And two, my game goes to shit anytime I get past second base with a woman.

If I'm going to play on a losing team, then why am I going to keep my pants zipped for another year in the name of my game?

My agent tells me I'm stuck. The Fireballs won't budge on the idea of trading me away as fast as they got me. They want your experience, he keeps saying. Lila knows you'll be good for the team. She's probably good for the team too, Elliott. Get your head out of the superstitions and give them a chance.

Says the guy who won't negotiate a deal without his mango-kale-acai power smoothie in his special smoothie cup sitting by his side, who still carries a lucky rabbit foot on his keychain, and who can't operate without his monthly psychic readings.

I'd fire him, except he keeps getting me sweet endorsement deals for everything from motorcycles to axes.

He can't break a curse though. And I'm sorry for Lila that she inherited one, but I'm getting laid.

Be a team player, show up for work, and play a damn good game? Sure. That's what I always do, because it's what the job requires. But it's not my responsibility to give up what every other guy on the team has to try to fight the impossible.

And the Fireballs winning anything?

That's fucking impossible.

"How's this go?" I ask Cooper while we walk to the shack. "Strip me naked and leave me to find my way through the trees to the compound? Or are we getting drunk?"

He barks out a laugh. "You've been playing for the wrong team."

He swings the door open, and there's half the team hunched around a table that's as rickety as this whole tinderbox.

"Welcome to a new era, gentlemen," Max Cole says while Luca Rossi—a fellow new guy on the team this year who was with New York for his rookie season a few years back—gives me a help! look from the corner. "We have work to do."

Work.

Not partying.

Not drinking.

Not getting laid.

"What kind of work?"

Darren Greene flashes a bright white grin, his dark eyes lighting up like he hasn't played for the worst team in baseball for the last three years. He leans back so I can see the spread on the table. There's a baseball, a voodoo doll, a pack of cards, a matchbox, and—is that a dildo with the Fireballs logo on it?

He points to a hand-knitted orange and yellow bat cover, which is as strange as you think it is. "I promised Tanesha our baby wouldn't be born to losers. We're breaking curses, because we're gonna fucking win this year."

Win.

Right.

Darren would have better luck keeping that promise by asking to get traded.

But I scrub a hand over my face and dig deep to find my team spirit, because this is the team we have.

Sure.

Win.

I'll humor them, even though I know that the Fireballs are where baseball players go for their careers to die.

I hope I'm wrong.

I hope the new ownership is going to make a difference.

But when a team has this much talent, and still sets records three years in a row for progressively worse seasons, without going to the play-offs in forever, it's hard to have hope.

Especially at the price of my blue balls.