10. Felix

CHAPTER TEN

Felix

For a minute, Blake doesn't respond. His eyes are blue and wide and shocked—but not angry. A flush stains his cheeks like he's surprised I actually said that.

"How's that, exactly?" he asks, voice tight.

I could kiss her. You could kiss me . "Nothing. Just a bad joke."

For a second, I think he's going to tell me to go fuck myself, or at least the polite Georgia boy version of that. That I should get myself out of the pool and stop leering at his girl.

Instead Blake gets a daring gleam in his eyes. "Does my stubble bother you?" he asks Shira.

"Hmmm." Shira taps her finger to her chin consideringly. "I'd need a reminder."

"Well, you did ask nicely," Blake says. "But, uh, you don't have to."

"Afraid Felix is gonna criticize your technique?" she asks.

Blake shakes his head. "Nah, I know when I'm good at something."

She laughs. "Me too." At that she wraps herself around him, legs at his waist the way I've seen her wrap them around a pole. The way she used to wrap them around me sometimes, when she was dancing, when my universe began and ended with her.

"Don't worry, I can hold myself up." She tugs Blake down, hand at the back of his neck, dipping lower and lower until she's bent halfway back, her hair a dark spread in the water.

He moans and kisses her, rolling his hips, fingers tense along her back until it's clear she doesn't need his support. So he traces them over her shoulders, down her sides, past the swell of her tits, to the low curve of her belly and back up again. They move together, hot, seamless, like they've forgotten I'm here—except for how Shira winks an eye open. For how she smiles at me, familiar and playful.

A kiss that goes on a long time—or maybe doesn't, but time has a funny way of stretching when you're watching something good.

Too soon, Blake pulls himself upright and Shira follows, the only sign of her exertion—or arousal—the rise and fall of her breath. He traces his hand down the curve of her cheek adoringly.

She giggles, then turns to me, eyebrow arched. "You gonna hold up one of those score cards?"

More like I'm trying not to be too obviously into you. To both of you. "I can see why the Monsters signed him." It comes out too honest, a question I can't expel from my brain: If he's here, what does anyone need me for?

At least Blake laughs. He eases himself back to the hot tub bench—not next to me but not that far either.

For a second, Shira doesn't move. She studies me, mouth drawn like she's worried.

I don't want to be that guy, someone who tries to make up for my own inadequacies by having her carry them. I shrug, one-shouldered, as if I didn't really mean that.

With that reassurance, she sits between us, close enough that her thigh brushes mine. Until Blake pulls her into his lap. Show's over. Point taken.

Only Shira's facing me. Her hair falls in a tangle like it did when I interrupted her in the shower. Her lip gloss is smudged. She looks imperfect and beautiful, lit up. She likes calla lilies and irises , I want to tell Blake. She used to like me or at least pretended to.

I could pack it in—pull myself over the edge of the hot tub, slosh back to our room and jerk off guiltily over the vanity sink then put myself to bed or, rather, couch.

But something about the night air doesn't let me move. Meteors burn out hot and bright—and they're still worth watching. This trip feels just the same. So I could stay, see what happens. "You want something to drink?" I ask.

"Sure." Shira smirks. "I'm pretty thirsty."

I lever myself up and grab the beverages I left on the deck, now sweaty with condensation. I hand a beer to Blake and a soda to Shira, then hop back into the water.

"We could get you something a little stronger than that Sprite," Blake says to her.

"She doesn't—" I cut myself off. I'd been about to say drink while she's working . But of course she's not working. I also didn't crack the can. She doesn't like to drink anything she doesn't open herself. Things I shouldn't know about her; things I hold onto now. They might be together, but I get parts of her he doesn't have access to—the Melody parts, the tough, smart, sharp parts she's filing off to be with him.

"I can grab something else," I offer.

"Sprite's fine"—Shira opens the can—"at least to start." She takes a long swallow, extending the column of her throat.

Blake kisses her when she's done drinking, a quick kiss to her cheekbone, a relationship kind of kiss. What he gets with her is real so long as he doesn't know anything real about her. She used to grind on me in a club for money , some mean part of me could say. But that wouldn't do anything more than hurt her, and fuck, I couldn't live with myself if I did that.

Watching them together hurts enough as it is. I'm done pretending it doesn't, so I stare up at the night sky.

Blake catches me at it. "More stargazing?" he asks. At Shira's questioning look, he adds, "Felix keeps an astronomy diary."

"Journal," I laugh. "And yeah, I try to update it every night." Maybe it's just an effect of being in a place that feels suspended between somewhere and somewhere else—or maybe it's the pang I always get looking at the sky—but I add, "Sometimes I look up and think those are the same stars over the farm . I know, corny, right? But it makes every place feel more like home."

"It's not corny—it's nice," Blake says. From anyone else it might be sarcasm, but he says it with a low wistfulness like I'm not the only one missing home.

"How is the farm?" Shira asks.

"Good." It'd be better if I got paid this year like I did last year , I don't add. "Cows are good. My sister Zoe and Emily—that's her wife—are good."

"Does Zoe know where she ranks in your esteem?" Shira jokes.

"O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint, agricolas ," I say. "It means, roughly, farmers don't know how good they have it."

Shira laughs. "Is that what's going on in your head most of the time—Latin and agriculture and stars?"

And you . And now, Blake. "More or less." I feel around for a change in subject. "So what do we think traffic's going to be like tomorrow?"

After that, we sit for a while, drinking, talking about whatever: traffic, road food. What it'll be like in Florida when we get there, when we get to play under the warm blue bowl of the sky.

"Too bad you won't be around for a game," Blake says to Shira. "They don't start for another week."

"These games don't count, right?" she asks.

Unless you're worried about making the roster. "Not really." I take another drink of beer. "Spring training is kind of a six-week dry hump."

Shira laughs big and open. For a second, Blake looks scandalized that I said that to her. Then he laughs too.

"What's Latin for dry hump?" she asks.

"I assume that's aimed at me," I say. "And I don't know, ask Catullus."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a giant fucking nerd?" The word fucking comes out full Boston, fully Shira, and she glances up at Blake like she's waiting for his disapproval.

He kisses the side of her face. "Shira calls 'em like she sees 'em."

"Yeah, I guess you got me," I answer. It's funny how my resentment of him dissolves with every sip of my beer, until the bottle's empty. I finish it and set it by the edge of the pool.

Blake gently slides Shira off his lap. "I was just about to get another." He nods toward Shira's now-emptied soda can. "You ready for something other than that?"

"Sure, just let me see it before you open it—" She cuts herself off. "I mean, don't want to waste anything."

If Blake thinks anything of the request, it doesn't show. Then again, after spending two days with him, not much shows that he doesn't want to. Except for the way he stroked his fingers down your face earlier or the heated look in his eyes that he tried, and failed, to stanch.

Now he pulls himself from the hot tub, not bothering with the stairs. Water runs down the muscles of his back and along the trim cut of his sides. The tendons in the backs of his knees flex as he walks, and I must be pretty far gone if I'm getting a semi looking at a teammate's knees.

Except Shira's watching him too. She smiles at me knowingly, like we're sharing a secret.

"He's hot, right?" She whispers it at a Shira volume, but it's almost immediately covered by the sound of me choking on my own surprise.

Blake turns back to us. "Everything okay?"

"Just waiting on that drink," she yells back.

He's hot. Denial rises in my throat. When I was talking about my ex as they of course I meant her . A denial that comes easy after a lifetime spent in clubhouses and locker rooms: When I was out at that bar with a date, of course he was just a friend. No, I've never messed around with a college teammate, and definitely not the top catching prospect in a certain baseball organization.

"Yeah," I say.

She howls a laugh—not meanly, but like I've managed to delight her.

"You gonna tell him?" I ask.

Shira shakes her head. "I wouldn't do that."

"I wouldn't blame you," I say. "It's not like I don't know something about you."

Her shoulders stiffen; her mouth sets in a determined line. "It doesn't matter because I wouldn't fucking do that. Because I know there are things you can be proud of that you don't want other people to know about."

Said with that Shira toughness that makes me want to kiss her. Shira, with her quick temper and iron will, who knows what it's like to protect herself. Who, for whatever reason, extends that protection to me.

"Thank you." My heart rate slows fractionally. "Also, how did you ever try to convince anyone you're demure?"

She laughs. "No fucking idea." She plucks her soda from the deck. A few drops rattle inside it. She tips her head back, drinks with a long effusive gulp. "And I'm not gonna say a word to Blake. But…maybe you should."

And there goes my heart again, racing against my ribs. "I don't know if that's a good idea," I say. "He might not even be…" I think of his startled expression when I was holding his wrist as he was trimming my beard—pleased and terrified at once. "He might not be sure."

"But you think there's something there?" Asked with a certain Shira bluntness I appreciate, the same tone that said it'd be a problem if I didn't kiss her all those months ago.

I could deny it, could assure her that I'm not after Blake the same way I'd assure Blake I'm not after her. But she doesn't sound jealous. Not with how her brown eyes are practically glowing in the dark. Not with how his pulse thrummed against my thumb.

"Yes," I say, honestly, "yes, I think something's there."

I don't have time to add anything else when Blake comes back with three drinks: two beers and a can of hard seltzer that he hands to Shira unopened. A gentleman in the truest sense.

Fuck, I like them both so much. Shira plants herself back on Blake's lap, facing me. After a second, he slides his palm on Shira's stomach, on the low curve of it that hides the strength underneath. The kind of strength it took to work a pole, to navigate handsy customers, to rebuild a life after injury.

Maybe you should say something. The kind of strength it takes to sit in a hot tub and tell me I should kiss the man she's dating.

Blake pulls her to him. "You doing okay, sweetheart?" he breathes, low.

Shira laughs and settles against his chest. She bites her lip—something knowing and easy. Fuck, they look good together. Especially when Shira snakes her arm up and finds the back of Blake's neck. He lowers his mouth to hers. Their kiss deepens, with a teasing slide of their tongues.

He must be getting hard. I know I am—at the memory of how she felt all those months ago, breathing the same charged air, when she'd roll herself against my lap and asked if that was all for her. How I always said yes and pretended I was only talking about my cock.

"I should turn in," I say. "Give you some privacy."

Neither of them moves. They glance at each other, having one of those wordless couple conversations. It only makes things worse: how right they are together.

Eventually, Shira leans up to whisper in Blake's ear.

His eyes go wide. Shock? Outrage? Something else? He looks between us a few times in slight disbelief. Color flushes his cheeks. Whatever she asked him managed to surprise him—possibly in a good way. "Are you sure?" he asks.

She gives a tiny acceding shrug, her teeth playing at her lower lip.

"You don't have to be," he adds.

She leans up, says something else, something low and heated that I only catch the edge of. Blake goes even pinker, but he's nodding as if he's agreeing with whatever she's saying. The word share floats across the hot tub like steam.

She isn't suggesting ? —

We couldn't ? —

Blake's clearing his throat like he's gathering courage. "Counteroffer: you don't leave," he says to me.

"Weren't you about to…" There's no real nice way to say fuck . "I don't want to intrude."

This time Blake's answer is surer. "What if that's what we're asking you—to intrude?"