6. Alan

Chapter six

Alan

“Okay, my star-crossed lovers, let’s take advantage of this momentum and get some more stuff out there,” Dennis says when he enters the conference room.

“Star crossed what now?” I ask, and he smiles a cheeky grin.

“Your little performance at the last game is trending on socials. Everyone is talking about it.”

“I don’t think it’s everyone.” Ryan blushes.

“Anyone who’s obsessed with Banana Ball is and as far as we’re concerned, that’s everyone.”

“But we aren’t—” I start but can’t even bring myself to say the words out loud.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re performers. You’ll play my star-crossed lovers, and they will love it.”

Dennis taps a few buttons on his phone and Kissing You by Des’ree starts playing.

“Will half the audience even get this reference?” I ask with a chuckle, and he pauses the song, puts one hand on his hip, and pops it out to the side.

“You got it, so I think we’ll be fine.”

Ryan looks from Dennis to me and back.

“What’s the reference?”

“See,” I say, stretching my arm out towards Ryan.

“It’s from the most incredible Romeo and Juliet movie ever made, the Baz Luhrmann masterpiece. If what I have planned is going to work, you’ll need to at least be able to mime the songs. I’ll send you both the list of songs and movies we will be referencing over the next few weeks. If I were you, I’d watch the movies first, then practice the songs.”

“How many movies are we talking about?” Ryan asks, but before Dennis can reply, I have a more important question.

“Did you say weeks?”

“So far five, and yes, weeks, so get to it, but if this thing takes off, there are countless movies to draw from. It’s one of the most popular tropes after all.”

“I never really liked it,” I say, and Dennis clutches his chest like my words have wounded him.

“Like it or not, you will practice the words to these songs. I don’t want any weird guppy fish mouths out there.” He hits play, and the song continues, and we go through some possible skits to go with it. The scene they used the song for in the movie has Romeo and Juliet spotting each other for the first time through a fish tank, and when Ryan flips his phone over and shows Dennis he can order adult costumes of various fish, he decides that is the way to go for this skit. We move through the list of songs and movies, Titanic . He wanted to do the bow of the ship scene, but we convinced him recreating the fun dance they do below deck would be way cooler. He’s hitting the younger crowd with a vampire skit, and it was nice seeing Ryan go all red-faced at the thought of biting into my neck. To tell you the truth. It excited me far more than I should have let it, too. Ryan is young, well, he’s actually about my age, but with his beautiful porcelain skin and bright blue eyes, he could pass for a decade younger. He’s sweet, too, and fucking gorgeous, but he’s also on the other team, and mixing business with pleasure, no matter how pleasurable it would likely be, I’m told, is not a good idea.

***

“It’s your turn,” Kelly, my sister, whines from the comfort of her bed while I pull on my trainers, sitting on the couch that was my bed for the few nights I stayed here. Getting her crap out of her spare room so that I could have my bed set up was a top priority after night one. This couch sucks. I really should try to get my own place. But I’ve never liked living alone. I grew up with my brothers and Kelly and Gramps always there, and I had roommates all the time up until I moved in with my ex. Not that living with him was an enjoyable experience. At first it was. You know, when you first meet someone, and they show you the rose-colored version of themselves, then… bam! Their true colors shine through, only now you’re invested, you’re in love and you explain away all the red flag behaviors because it was good once. It was perfect, and you know that if you are just good enough, they will be that person again. Only with him there was no turning back, because the rose-colored version wasn’t just him on his best behavior, it was a complete fabrication of a man he never was and could never be. When I finally got up the courage to leave, Kelly was on my doorstep an hour later with a trailer and she helped move me out of there and into her place.

“How is it my turn?” I reply, grabbing my gym bag from beside the couch.

“I took Precious to the vet for him last week, remember?”

Oh shit, yeah, I do remember. Gramps insisted that his cat, Precious, which I am still not convinced isn’t the spawn of Satan, had swallowed a button from one of his shirts. I was not sitting in a vet’s office with that thing trying to claw at my face the whole time, seeing as he refused to crate her or go with her, so Kelly took the hit.

“But I have the gym this morning, then training.”

“Go after training.”

“Does he need to eat? I mean, he’s old and chubby. Surely he can go a few more days. Oh, we can have Quickdrop deliver him his groceries.”

“Nope, last time we tried that he attacked the delivery guy with a stick, and now none of them will go there. Besides, he likes it better when you shop for him. You get him all the stuff I refuse to.”

Fuck.

“Fine, I’ll go after training.”

It isn’t that we don’t love Gramps. We do. I have some of my best childhood memories with him, and he’s the reason I love baseball at all. It’s just that he doesn’t think what I do is baseball, and he doesn’t miss an opportunity to tell me as much whenever I see him. He hasn’t even come to a game before. He’s basing all of his opinion on what he’s seen in the papers about us, so it’s really hard not to get into an argument with him over it. Plus, if it’s not Banana Ball he’s complaining about, it’s my love life. He doesn’t give a shit that I’m gay. He does care that I am gay and almost thirty and single again. If he knew what a controlling douchebag my ex was, he probably wouldn’t give me such a hard time about finding another guy. No. He probably would. He’d just tell me to pick better next time.

At least now that Harry has moved in with his boyfriend, I won’t have to hear about all the visitors he has or fend off the repeated requests that I sneak over there and install curtains.

“Dean and Nial should have him visit the ranch and get him out of our hair for a while,” I tell her.

Our other brothers Dean and Nial took over the ranch in Bellerelle when it got too much for Gramps and moved him out to Savannah. I didn’t think it would stick, but they found an apartment he didn’t hate and got him the spawn of Satan, and he never looked back.

“You’d have better luck getting them to visit here. Actually, it’s been ages. We should get them to come to one of your games now that you’re actually in the league and all.”

I scoff. “I was in the league last year, too.”

“Those were like warm-up games. You’re playing with the OG’s now. That should get them here.”

“Whatever. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Don’t get him any of those chocolate cookies, Wheat Thins only,” she calls, and I leave before I lie and agree.

I get to the gym, and Ryan isn’t here yet, so I start on some stretches, then hit the leg press. It was torture last week working out while Ryan moved through Kyle’s program. I tried to stay focused on what I was doing, but I would catch myself staring, and it would totally put me off what rep or set I was even up to.

“Hey,” Ryan says, walking in and rubbing his shoulder.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I just need to warm up, I think.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard.”

“You’re starting to sound like Kyle.”

“He is the expert in this department. Maybe you should tell Dennis these extra skits are too much.”

“It’s not. They’re not. I’m fine,” he replies and starts on his program. I watch as he moves through each action slower than he did yesterday. If he’s hurting, he should stop. It’s only going to make things worse for him if he pushes himself too far. I climb from the press and walk over to where he’s standing, circling his shoulders.

“How about we skip on the rest of the workout? Nothing I seem to be doing is getting these chicken legs any bigger, anyway. Let’s hit the steam room instead,” I say, and his lips pick up a little in the corner.

“You don’t have chicken legs. Your legs are great. I mean fine. Your legs look fine to me, is what I’m saying.”

I know he’s probably just being nice. He had a thing for Harry, and his legs are thick as tree trunks, his arms too. That guy is all muscle. But the way Ryan’s gaze trails down my body and back up sends a shiver through me and makes me hope that his compliment is more than just a false nicety.

“Thanks. People always joke about me skipping leg day. My ex most of all. He always called them chicken legs, even got in the habit of tossing me a packet of the real things whenever we were at the store.”

I immediately feel my cheeks warm, and I turn my attention to where my shoes rest against the base plate of the leg press. Fuck, why did I bring up my ex? I should just shut up and go back to working out.

“Good thing he’s your ex then,” Ryan says, and I look back up to find his eyebrows raised and a wide smile on his lips. “Because he sounds like a bloody wanker.”

I laugh. “He was, actually. In so many ways.”

“Well, forget what he called them, because those stems are fit.”

“Fit?”

He shrugs, and I catch the slightest wince in his expression. He really should not be working out today. “It’s British. It just means they are…great,” he continues.

“Oh, well, umm, thanks. So do you want to maybe hit the steam room? I think I’ve had enough for today anyway. My stems are a bit sore.”

He smiles softly, my heartbeat racing faster the longer he holds my stare.

“Kyle did say I had to do the whole program,” he replies.

“Kyle also said to stop if it hurts. I’m just suggesting we stop slightly before it hurts. Steam is good for your muscles. It increases blood flow, and reduces stiffness.”

He looks away, his small smile growing into a wide smirk.

“I mean, muscle stiffness. It makes your muscles feel better. Shit, you know what I mean.”

“Okay, but if Kyle asks, I did the whole program,” he says, and he climbs from the floor.

“Got it.”

Note for later. Steam rooms are not a place to get to know someone. The air is thick, and as relaxing as the steam is for your muscles, it also makes you want to just sit or lie there and do nothing but breathe. So that’s what we did until the timer went off and he hit the showers. I lied and said I had to make a phone call before training started. No shower boners for me today. Well, at least not until I get home anyway.

***

I walk the distance to the grocer by Gramps’s place after training is finished and start filling a cart. I start with the essentials to not forget them. He’d have a fit if Precious didn’t have her expensive food pouches and salmon treats. Kelly was right about him preferring me to do his shopping, mostly because, like she said, I get him all his favorites, so basically, all the unhealthy things she refuses to get him. I figure he’s old, so he’s lived a long enough life doing what he’s doing, and if he wants to eat a few Chips Ahoy with his cup of tea and start the day with a bowl of Lucky Charms, who am I to stop him? I grab the cereal first, and when I see they have an offer to buy two, get one free, I load up.

“Cat food and Lucky Charms. Okay, so you have a cat and a massive sweet tooth,” Ryan says, suddenly leaning over my cart.

“It’s for my gramps. He doesn’t get out much, so I do his shopping.”

Ryan’s cheeky smile softens. “That’s sweet of you.”

“Thanks. Wait, did you follow me?”

His face flushes a pretty shade of pink, but he shakes his head.

“No, I live up the road now. I moved in with Duckie and Ian.”

“You took Harry’s old room?” I ask, pushing the cart forward to head towards the biscuit section.

“Yeah. It’s been…interesting. I mean, they are pretty quiet guys, not that you would know it. The place is filled with ducks, like there is one in every corner. I thought I was going mad because it was like they were multiplying, but then Duckie got another package of them, and the bottom fell out while he was taking it to his room. There were like fifty red and white ducks strewn across the floor.”

“He can get a little obsessed.”

“Yeah, but he’s not the funniest thing I have to live with.”

“Really?” I ask, half hoping he’s about to tell me Ian sleepwalks or something, anything other than the words that I’m pretty sure are about to come out of his mouth.

“There is this old guy that lives across from me.”

Here we go.

“He’s always sitting at his window with his cup of tea and chocolate biscuits, checking out the street with binoculars like he’s some detective on a stakeout. Only this guy’s partner is a cat that I was pretty sure was dead the first time he held it up.” Yep, he’s totally talking about Gramps.

“Yeah, old people can be funny,” I say, grabbing a few of the different chocolate biscuit varieties and dropping them into the cart. My gran was from the UK, and growing up, Gramps used to correct Gran every time she called cookies biscuits, but after she passed, he never called them cookies again. I have no idea when I stopped calling them cookies and starting only calling them biscuits too.

“He’s hilarious. Asked me the first time I met him why I don’t play real baseball. Oh and don’t even get me started on the sound his cat makes in the middle of the night. I swear it’s like a demon has possessed it.”

Precious hates me. The demon cat hisses at me the second Gramps opens the door, and if it doesn’t attack me, it’s threatening to the entire time I’m there. I reach across from Ryan, grab the big packet of black tea bags, and put them in the cart, too.

His gaze moves down to the cart, across the contents, and then back up to me.

“Where did you say your Gramps’s place is again?”