Sure Shot (Brooklyn #4)(49)

“Maybe,” I concede.

“Your wife leaves you. Then you get traded to a team that doesn’t appreciate you.”

This is a trap. You can’t trash-talk your teammates to a guy who knows them better than you do. “There are days when that seems true.”

He smiles. “It’s been a long time since you had to employ visualization, Mark. But I think it can really help you. I’m going to give you some exercises.”

“Great,” I say, because it sounds like he might let me out of this room soon if I agree.

His smile widens. “The trick, though, is that you actually have to do them.”

“Sure. You mean, like, sitting around and trying to picture Castro passing to me when I’m open?”

“Exactly like that.” He flips to a fresh page on his legal pad and clicks his pen. “You’ll start with just five minutes. You’ll close your eyes and play a mental film for yourself. A repetitive highlight reel, basically.”

Fucking Brooklyn. I knew meditation would come up. “Okay.”

“I need you to humor me.” He’s scribbling on the page. “I’ll send you an email tonight with complete instructions. Then you’ll come and see me again in two weeks. We’ll talk about how it’s going.”

Oof. “Sure thing.”

He puts the pen down. “Getting traded is very disruptive, Mark. Everyone knows that.”

“Uh-huh.” They know it. But if it doesn’t work out, they’ll just trade you again anyway.

“You can make this work. I can help you.”

“Thanks,” I say tightly. I shake his hand and leave his claustrophobic little office.

Visualization. What a crock.

I’m halfway up the block when I realize he didn’t make me talk about my divorce. So that’s a small mercy. Although I could have poked a giant hole in his visualization theories.

Early on, Jordanna and I spent a whole lot of time visualizing what our happy future together should look like. A house full of kids. A big, loud family like the one she grew up in. We were really good at visualizing. So good at it that we bought a big house in the suburbs, with a big backyard that was just waiting for a sandbox and a swing set.

And it didn’t do a lick of good. Visualization is a big load of bullshit. Nobody knows that better than me.





Twenty-One





Who’s with Me?





Bess





“We have to get up,” I tell Tank as the clock ticks past eight a.m.

It’s not that I’m eager to break the spell. We’ve just made sleepy love in my bed, and, given the choice, I’d never get up. But now the sun is shining down on us, and I need to shower and head into my office. This working girl has to review several contracts and return about a hundred phone calls.

Prince Charming is a busy man, too. “You have to go to practice, and then get on the jet,” I remind him.

“So you say,” he mumbles. His hand is a steady weight on my hip, and his solid back is pressed against my chest. “Your bed is my favorite place in the world, though. I really don’t want to leave.”

My heart doubles in size, of course. “But we can’t always have what we want.”

Tank runs a hand down my thigh, and it feels dreamy. “Should I order some breakfast from the deli? I brought my gym clothes with me so that I could go straight to practice.”

“Yeah,” I say softly. “Of course.” I’d have breakfast with Tank every day, given the choice.

“There’s no chance you have eggs and bacon in that little refrigerator of yours, right?”

“Nope,” I say cheerfully. “When I told you I don’t cook, I wasn’t kidding.”

“But that means different things to different people,” he points out. “I can’t manage a crown roast, but I cook eggs all the time.”

And now I feel incompetent, and I hate feeling incompetent. “I’ve never been much of a breakfast person.”

“What’s not to like about breakfast?”

“It’s too early in the day,” I say, even though meal timing isn’t really my issue.

My lack of skill in the kitchen is directly related to my shitty childhood. I’d gone hungry in the mornings because I’d been too afraid of my father to ask for things like cereal and milk when we ran out. Dave and I had never woken him up. We knew better. I remember tiptoeing around the house before school, my brother trying to tame the knots in my hair with an old brush of my mother’s. He’d done his best. But we’d been little kids when my mother died of a drug overdose, and my dad hadn’t cared enough to step up and run a household.

Those memories are grim, and I keep them to myself. Tank knows that Dave is my only family, but I’ve never discussed why. Tank likes spending time with me because we have fun. My past isn’t fun, though. He doesn’t want to hear about my harrowing childhood.

“What do you want from the deli?” Tank asks, finally sitting up.

“Scrambled egg, bacon, and cheese on a roll. Large coffee.”

He snorts. “That sounds like a girl who enjoys breakfast.”

“Once in a while, I guess.”