Evvie Drake Starts Over(51)

“Whatever it takes.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re fantastic. I just…feel like you should know. I don’t know if you know.”

She leaned back against the sink. “So are you. And as scary as I know this is, all you have to do is the same thing I’ve already seen you do.”

“If I fuck it up, it’s going to be the biggest flop this place ever saw.”

She waved her hand. “That’s not true. You’d be way behind a second-grader falling on her face, dressed like a box of Cheerios. That’s the great thing about failing here. You’re still beating the elementary school students who face-plant for our amusement.”

He laughed and rubbed his jaw. “Hey, can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure.”

“It’s going to sound…I don’t know how it’s going to sound. But they told me it’s general admission. Could you try to set up behind the plate?” He made a straight-ahead gesture with his hands, like he was helping to park a plane.

   Her first thought was that he wanted her to be able to see whether the pitches were good. Her second thought was that he wanted her to have a good seat. It took three thoughts to get what he meant.

“I can. You want me to wave or something? I don’t know if you’ll really be able to see me.”

“I won’t,” he said. “I’ll know, though. Who knows? It might help. I’m ready to try anything.”

“That’s sweet. I think I’m honored.”

“I should get going,” he said, not going. He stood with his keys in his hand, fiddling with them, dangling the ring from different fingers. “I’m fucking nervous.”

Her intent when she took the first step was to get some kind of perfect, knee-melting hug, where he smelled her hair, where she smelled his neck, where they lingered in a strange, suspended, secret clutch. But as soon as she moved, he looked right at her and dropped the bag from his shoulder. It slid down his arm and went bump on the floor. It pulled his shirt to the side, and she saw his collarbone. And a step later, he let his keys go from his fingers, and they clattered on the tile. Just as she got to him, in one motion, he grabbed her Claws cap by the brim and tossed it behind her.

All she could think as she finally, finally kissed him was finally, finally. She crossed her wrists behind his head and felt his hands on her, his fingers digging into her hip bones. He made a surprised little noise, or maybe they both did.

It was a little sloppy and imperfect, or maybe perfect, because they’d never done it before. Toothpaste, scruff, breath, Dean’s hand creeping an inch under her shirt at her waist, a joint in his shoulder that popped like a cracked knuckle when he shifted his arms to hold her tighter. That was all that really registered. That and finally, finally.

They pulled apart slowly, and she stepped back. She put her hands in her hair and realized he’d halfway dislodged her small ponytail. “I forgot to give the go sign,” she said, leaning her hands on the table behind her.

   He grinned and rubbed one hand over his cheek. “It’s okay, I got it.”

She reached down to get her cap, then looked at him with a little flash of concern. “Oh my God, I know you have to go. I know it’s a big day. I didn’t plan that or anything. I didn’t mean to…do something confusing.”

He picked his keys up off the floor and hoisted the duffel onto his shoulder. “Evvie, that was…not confusing.” He started out the kitchen door, and before he went, he turned back around. “Lotta things. Not confusing.” He paused, then added, “I’m sorry if I messed up your hair.” He winked and left.





EVVIE MET UP WITH ANDY and Monica and the girls on the way in, so they could sit together. When she saw Lilly’s hair in two neat French braids, Evvie leaned down to inspect it. “My lightning bug, it looks like your dad finally figured out your hair.”

“My dad can’t do anything,” Lilly said matter-of-factly. “Monica did it. She did my best braids ever.”

“Ah, of course she did.” Evvie stood back up and gave Monica a thumbs-up, marveling at the way a kindergartener could deliver a shot to the solar plexus without even looking up from her cotton candy.

Of everyone in the stands except some of the players’ wives and girlfriends and a couple of people on the Claws’ staff, only Evvie and Andy and Monica knew that Dean Tenney was going to come out of the dugout and pitch the fourth inning. They’d picked the fourth because the game would be underway, but he wouldn’t be responsible—well, any more responsible than necessary—for how it turned out.

The Claws were leading 3–2 when the Explorers came up in the top of the fourth. Between the third and fourth innings, Gloria Rubia, the principal of Calcasset High, came out and read a list of Top Ten Cafeteria Improvements We’d Like to See, written by the senior class. (“6. Skee-Ball.”)

   Evvie shifted in her seat, adjusted her cap. Andy looked over at her. “Are you gonna be okay whatever happens here?” She nodded, and he smiled. “Okay.”

Over the loudspeaker: “Ladies and gentlemen, with a very special announcement, please welcome the owner of the Calcasset Claws, Ginger Buckley!”

A roar. Ginger was a straight-up eccentric dowager in the best sense, the heir to her late husband’s Kentucky-based whiskey empire. In the mid-1990s, after he died in his early fifties in a small plane crash, she’d packed up and left the South because she’d grown up out East and missed the ocean. Now she lived in a decommissioned and renovated lighthouse all the way at the end of a jetty, with three rescue greyhounds and a constant stream of freeloading grandchildren she adored. In 2009, she’d bought the Claws, as she put it, “for my adopted hometown to enjoy forever and ever.” She came to every game, often putting a papery silver space blanket over her bright red hair when it rained, and now and then, she took to the field to deliver important news.