Moonshot(65)

“You think I care about sitting in an air-conditioned box next to them?” Dad swore, and I heard the shush of Carla next to him. “I care about you. I want you to be happy. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. Don’t worry about me.”

I smiled despite myself. “Thanks.”

“See you tonight. Take care of yourself ’til then.”

“Always do.”

He hung up, and I locked my phone, taking one last look at Tobey before stepping away from the window.

The game was six hours out.





Third inning. Neither team had scored. I stood from my seat and stretched. Walked to the window. Stared down at the dugout. Walked back.

“You don’t like baseball?” the idiot of a woman before me tittered, her straw swirling in a drink that looked like piss.

“Of course she likes baseball,” another woman chimed in, reaching over the kitchen’s island to pluck a carrot from the tray, dragging it through the artichoke dip. “She’s Tobey’s wife.”

The front door was only twenty or third steps behind me. If I took off, I could hit a full sprint in enough time to blast through it, these three-inch heels be damned. “I’m a Yankee fan.” I spoke up before these women discussed my whole life right here before me. “Don’t have a stake in this game.” Only a half-truth. I’d love to be in the other room with the guys, gathered around the giant screen, watching the play and discussing the game. It was the World Series for God’s sake. Seven games that the world stopped spinning for. Except that the Orioles had made it. Chase had made it. Which put me here, in this kitchen, staring at these women and trying not to strangle any of them.

“Well, I understand that.” One of them grinned, leaning on the counter, her ginormous breasts resting on the granite. “But with Chase Stern playing, I’d watch just for some bedroom inspiration, if you know what I mean.” She winked, and I didn’t know how anyone could not know what that meant.

“Oh Cayce, stop.” An older brunette to my left shushed her.

“Who’s Chase Stern?” That question came from the teenage girl, one who looked up from her phone for the first time since the starting pitch. That was how long I’d been in this Godforsaken kitchen. Since the pitch. Now, in the third inning, I was full on finger food and beyond ready to leave.

That question brought a new swell of conversation, all focused on the man who I was hiding from in the kitchen. Only they didn’t care about his batting average or wOBA. They cared about things like an Instagram account and a nude spread he had done for Sports Illustrated, two things I knew nothing about but wanted to see instantly, the pull of my phone almost impossible to resist. The teenager looked him up, and there was a new round of swooning, the iPhone passed from hand to hand, but I stepped back from the action before it was offered to me. I moved to the entrance of the media room, glancing in on the men in hopes of distraction.

And there he was. In high definition, his jaw tight, eyes looking down the line, his hat pulled low, a day’s worth of growth on that face. The camera held him there, held me in place, until the pitch, one low and outside. My hand tightened on the doorframe, willing him to wait, but he didn’t. He swung, one hand leaving the bat, the crack loud and crisp, his eyes on the ball until it was gone, the crowd surging to their feet, his eyes moving to the camera and giving it one, cocky wink. I turned from the TV, but was too late to miss it.

I walked through the kitchen and out the front door, the cool fall night a shock to my senses. My butt hit their front steps, and I wrapped my arms around my knees, his face, that wink, stuck in my mind. And there, on a stranger’s empty front porch, for a long breath of time, I mourned a life lost.

A life I had now found. It was there, in my grasp, that man down there one who had waited for me. Four years he had waited. I suddenly wanted to run out of the box, like I had fled that party, taking the halls, elevator, and ramp down to the field. I wanted to burst into that dugout and wrap my arms around his neck. Jump into his arms and kiss his lips, inhaling the scent of sweat and clay and leather.

I didn’t. I stared down, watching him from above as he leaned against the dugout fence, one foot resting on the ledge, his eyes on the game, on the action. Then I turned back to the room, and found my seat next to Tobey.





101



World Series: Game 2

I didn’t know what happened when lives split. Couldn’t imagine sitting in this bedroom and packing up my things. I didn’t have much, not that was just mine and not ours. Some memorabilia from my ball girl days that Tobey had framed and mounted. A few things in the baby’s room … the shrine that still sat, two rooms away, neither of us able to bear the task of returning it to a study. After I left, I was sure he would. I was sure he’d take my library and turn it into a cigar room. Would probably have the gardeners tear out my orchids and replace them with something else. Something without memories. I would do all of that, if I were him. I would burn this place to the ground without a moment’s guilt.

I had less than a week left in this house. Not enough, yet hundreds of hours too long. I walked through the library, my hand drifting over the spines, thousands of hardcovers—some read, some not. I spent most evenings in this room, Tobey off with the guys, me with my plots and heroines. Fell into other worlds, Chase seen in every hero, his build in every description, his touch in every sexual scene. He had rescued me from burning buildings, solved murders, and seduced me a hundred ways. I smiled, thinking of all of the times I had pictured actual sex with Chase and expected it would fall short, my expectations that of the bestselling erotica variety.