14. Alan

Chapter fourteen

Alan

Finding time to be alone with Ryan on the tour hasn’t been as hard as I thought it could be. With Dennis and the choreographing team setting us up with these star-crossed lovers numbers, we’re tasked with extra rehearsals on nights at the hotel after everyone else heads to bed. It’s working, too. In the last three games, when either of us played against an OG team, we won. We’ve played against each other a couple of times, too, and it looks like whatever luck our hookups are giving us stops there. We won the first time against them but the Funky Monkeys kicked our butts last game. I sneak back into my room that I’m sharing with Phillip and crawl into bed just before eleven.

Ryan and I were…rehearsing our next number and lost track of time. We play against each other tomorrow, and our late-night shenanigans will probably have more influence over his fastball than it will my ability to cover second base. But we’ll see. My phone vibrates on the bedside, and I grab it, expecting a message from Ryan. But what I get instead is a notification from the group chat I have with the guys.

PHILLIP: Sooo Alan, what’s going on with you and the Funky Monkey?

WTF? Do they know? Did someone see us?

BENNY: Come on, guys, leave him be. If he and the kid have a thing, then they have a thing.

Kid? They can’t mean Ryan. He’s like a year younger than me. He’s no kid.

HARRISON: You remember what happened when Casey and Pat were hooking up and then Casey met that bartender from Missouri. We hadn’t even started our tour yet and the infighting in that team was so bad Casey quit. Ryan is the best pitcher that team has. Do you think the bosses would be happy if he up and left?

STEVIE: Didn’t Casey do his knee?

GORDON: He did his knee after he quit, got drunk, and fell down a flight of stairs. Luckily, he didn’t break his neck.

BENNY: This is not like that. They play on opposite teams. If it didn’t work out, worst it might do is make Alan swing for that fast ball a little harder.

STEVIE: We can’t tell Alan who he can and can’t date. If you are dating. It’s okay if you are or aren’t. No judgment here. You better always be swinging hard for that fast ball either way!

HARRISON: You all used to tell me all the time who I could and couldn’t date. ***Middle finger emoji***

GORDON: We strongly advised you who you should and shouldn’t fuck, and that was different.

HARRISON: Because it was me?

GORDON: Because you were blind drunk, hitting on anything that had a dick. Are we really going to argue about how many times we stopped you from sleeping with random men? Should we add Arlo to this chat?

Seriously, why the fuck am I in this chat?

HARRISON: Arlo knows about my past and loves me, anyway.

GORDON: Exactly fuckhead. And you have Arlo because you stopped fucking around. Look, they brought in rules after the Casey thing. If Alan and the kid want to do whatever Alan and the kid are doing, they can talk to the bosses, sign the waivers, and go for it.

He’s not a fucking kid . Oh my god, this shit has to stop.

ALAN: Firstly, WTF? And second, Ryan is not a kid! He’s 29 and I’m 30.

STEVIE: He’s 29? Seriously? I thought he was like 23, 24 tops.

BENNY: Yeah, I was sure no way over 25. He looks great for 29. Do you think it’s genetics or like does he have a whole skincare routine thing he does?

HARRISON: Gordon’s the only one with a skincare routine.

Seriously, how do these guys get anything done?

ALAN: Yes, he’s 29. And whatever Ryan and I do is between Ryan and me and doesn’t need the input from you lot. So can you stop discussing it like it’s something you get to debate and decide on?

PHILLIP: He’s right. Besides, if the rumors are true, they might not be on opposing teams for long. Plus, I’m pretty sure those agreements are for players on the same team, anyway. It says teammates on them.

BENNY: How do you know what the agreement has on them?

PHILLIP: I might have asked for one at one point last year.

BENNY: Really? Who was it? Are they on our team?

PHILLIP: It never eventuated to anything, so it doesn’t matter. I was curious about how hard it would be and it’s really not that hard. We’re all adults here, after all.

ALAN: I think that’s debatable judging from this chat thread.

HARRISON: We’re just worried about you. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it just one more time. I really think dating a player is a bad idea.

ALAN: Noted, now can we all go to bed? We play the Funky Monkeys tomorrow, and as much as you might think otherwise, I want to kick their asses.

HARRISON: I’m sure that’s all you want to do to a Funky Monkey’s ass. ***Winky Face emoji***

Fucking Harry. Now all I can do is think about Ryan’s perfect round ass, and though we snuck into a linen closet for some mutual pleasuring before heading to bed, now my cock is thickening, and I wonder will it be bad luck to head to the bathroom to do a little solo stroking? I close my eyes, but when I do, all I picture is Ryan’s cock plump and heavy in my grasp. Fuck it. I climb from the bed and head to the bathroom.

If the Funky Monkeys beat us tomorrow, it can be all Harry’s fault.

***

I get a few disappointed looks from the guys when I get to the locker room. With the rumor on everyone’s minds, they probably think me being late reflects badly on all of them, but truth be told, if they are going to cut back to three teams, they would pick the best players from the lot of us to fill them, not just keep who’s on the teams now, so if anything, me being late helps them. I change and head out to the crowd, spend some time taking pictures with fans, and signing autographs, and then we play some fun old-school fair games. They set up a sack race down one side; the sacks are shaped like split-open banana peels and the people in them are wearing cream shirts with hoods to make them look more like the bananas as they hop down the field to the finish line. The winners get their choice of a plushie of their favorite mascot. Most of them choose the Banana, because the OG’s are legendary no matter where you go, but a few pick the Funky Monkey, too. Our mascot is a big-headed dude in an animal catcher’s outfit with a giant net. Kind of hard to complete. But when the next kid crosses the line and reaches for the AC mascot, I cheer.

“Yes, legend!” I call, and Benny and Harry look my way and then at the kid hugging the large soft toy.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Harry asks, and Benny and I both nod. “Stay there, kid,” Harry calls and we run up the stairs to the box seats. They always deck them out with the best displays, swag, and merch. And unlike the regular-sized plushies they are giving out on the field. Up here there are three bigger sizes, and we each grab one.

Harry runs down first with a plushie a little bigger than the one the kid has and he hands it over. The kid is clutching both at his chest with the biggest smile on his face. But then he spots Benny coming down with another slightly bigger again and his face lights up even brighter.

The kid’s mother is standing beside him, shaking her head with a smile as he’s passed the next one to add to his collection. He struggles to hold all three, and one hangs down by the arm, but his happiness is unmatched. At least it is until I come down with the largest of the plushies. This thing is about the same size as the kid, and when he sees me, he jumps up and down squealing.

I drop the large one in front of him, and he leaps forward, tackling it to the ground with the others still in his grasp. Now this is why we do this. Why we spend time with the fans before the game, after the game, fuck, even during the game. This right here. This pure joy, pure excitement. The fun and happiness it brings into people’s lives, but also into ours. This is what it’s all about.

Ryan walks by really close and I feel a slight pinch on my ass cheek as he passes.

I spin around, but it doesn’t look like anyone saw it. They’re all still looking at the kid as he and his mother struggle to carry all four plushies up to their seats for the start of the game.

I should warn him that the guys know about us. But I don’t want him to worry about what they think. I mean, I’m ninety percent sure he won’t care that they know, but in that ten percent, my heart is doing backflips at the thought of him ending it all.

He deserves to know. I should just text him, and then he’ll at least know to be a bit more discreet. If the players on my team know, it won’t be long doing things like that until the whole of the league knows. I pull out my phone and on the screen is a message from Harry. The notifications are still silenced from last night, so I have no idea when he even sent it, but when I slide open the chat, I do.

HARRISON: I guess when they post photos of that, you can say it’s part of the star-crossed lovers act.

Well, fuck. I guess someone did see. And he’s not wrong. This place is full of cameras. Someone could have gotten that pinch in a shot, and before we know it, photos could be everywhere on our social media. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s time we just owned whatever this is. The guys got over it pretty quickly in the chat. None seemed really bothered by it at all this morning. His team is going to find out, eventually. Nothing stays secret for long in this place.

Maybe we can talk about it tonight. He needs to know that this has become so much more than sex to me. He’s sweet. He cares about people. He cares about family.

When I asked him about the dinners in Gramp’s freezer, he said he did it because helping out my Gramps made him feel like he wasn’t so far away from his own family. But I know it wasn’t just about making himself feel good, he’s always looking for ways to help other people. Even grumpy old men who think Banana Ball isn’t baseball. When I was at Gramps’s, he let slip that Ryan had promised to keep him well-fed while we were away. He was down to his last Tupperware container, and just the suggestion that I was going to pick him up a few TV dinners had his nose scrunching up like a child being asked to take medicine.

So instead, Kelly and I helped Ryan cook up another month’s worth of home-cooked meals for Gramps before we left. And by helping, we bought the ingredients, cut things up, and passed Ryan stuff. Guys like Ryan that spend their whole Sunday cooking for someone else’s grandfather, guys that care more about other people than themselves, are rare, fucking non-existent, in my experience. Now that I have him in my life, I don’t want to even think about what it would be like if he wasn’t there. But how do I tell him I’m falling in love without freaking him out?