by CD Reiss
“I like the older style. And the neighborhood? Too many nosy old ladies. And I can’t walk to the grocery store. I’m not going to be able to drive much longer, peanut.”
I hadn’t even wondered if I liked the house. It was the house I had grown up in, and when I left to live with Carl, the fact that it was there, and Dad was in it, was a comfort I took for granted.
“You should go if you’re not happy here.” I said it as if I was talking to myself, and in a way, I was.
Dad put his hand on my shoulder. “I am happy here. I kvell thinking of you doing your homework in the courtyard. Reading on that couch. I watched you for hours. You were the reason I was here, and lately I’ve been thinking I made you my reason too long.”
“I thought you stayed because of Mom.”
“For a few years, sure. I was a lonely grouch when I met your mother. After you came, I was a man with a family. My empty heart was full. You gave me everything. I stayed in this house to thank you.”
I gulped back denials because I was the one who should have been thanking him. He’d built his life around me because it was what I needed. He’d taught me the purest form of love, but had I learned it? I choked back a sob.
“Believe me,” I said, looking up at him, “I’m trying not to say I owe you the thanks. But being your daughter was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
He patted my shoulder again then squeezed it. I put my arms around him and laid my cheek against his chest.
Dash hadn’t answered the text, and I was glad. He needed to rest. He’d been tired and upset about his performance over spring training. One great game wasn’t going to change that. He needed constant injections of confidence.
I was his serum.
I sat on the edge of the bed. My room looked over the vegetable garden that volunteered to grow on its own every year. I’d crawled out of that window every night when I was fourteen until Dad put a bell on the outside and I was busted. The walls had been painted twice. Dark blue over pink when I went to high school, and two coats of primer and white over that when I started college. I’d studied here, eaten here, fucked here.
I could move from this house to Dash’s place in the hills. I could demand he and I get a new place. I could stay in this house. I could get an apartment. I could stand on my head and spit nickels. It didn’t matter.
What mattered?
Someone needed me. A human being I cared about. The way Dad needed Mom and he needed me. The house didn’t matter. The ring didn’t matter. What mattered was the evolution of a relationship.
My bio dad hadn’t evolved. He’d needed my mother at a certain stage in his life, and when that changed, he didn’t go with it, because in the end, he didn’t know how to love her.
If Dash needed me to give him confidence now, that didn’t mean he’d need the same thing next year or in ten years or after his retirement. I needed to be willing to give him what he needed and evolve later.
I feared he wouldn’t be able to evolve, but wasn’t that always the fear? No matter who I was with, we’d need to evolve. Wouldn’t children, middle age, old age change us and change our needs?
I was going to be a zombie today, but a zombie with a completely changed attitude. No dream had come to change my outlook. No little spirit whispered in my ear.
No. Just a little rest for the brain.
Dash Wallace was the only man in the world I wanted.
I was going to be there for him one hundred percent. I was going to let him know that every day, every minute, until he put his heart back into us. If he needed me to walk the bases around every major league field in the United States, I’d do it. He’d own my summer and a chunk of my autumn. His rushed proposal wasn’t going to stop me from loving him with everything I had. I could refuse it and still love him. I could put a ring around my heart.
I took a deep breath and committed myself to him.
Long haul. He was my responsibility.
forty-nine
Dash
I couldn’t sleep. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb for the night and juggled three balls ten different ways. I was a fuckup. Everything was fucked up. Wrong. And those phrases just replayed as I tried to distract myself with the rhythm of the balls. You’re a fuckup. You’re a fuckup. She hates you now she thinks you only want her for luck do you love her do you even love her such a fuckup a fucking her is the best thing that ever happened to me with her body around mine she’s mine no one else can fuck up you fucked up you fucked up…
When my arms hurt, I ran up and down my newly dug-out stairs in the dark, and I stopped when I tripped and thought I’d sprained my ankle.
My greatest fear wasn’t a strikeout or even a string of them. I worried about making errors, but they were small potatoes when I thought about the other thing.
An injury. A career-ending injury.
I needed her. I didn’t feel safe on the field. I didn’t know how I knew it, but there was no question. She was all my luck in one little body. She was kind and beautiful and, yes, sexy as hell, but that was gravy.
I shook off the twisted ankle and stretched out on my bed for two hours, drifting in and out of anxiety-laced sleep.
She was right. That was the thing that kept me up. I’d been trying to slap a glass jar over a butterfly. That was bullshit. It was hurtful and stupid and bullshit. She saw right through it. Of course she did. And I’d just fucked it all up by panicking.
At six o’clock, the DND shut itself off, and I heard the chorus of texts coming in from the kitchen. I went out to see what was so important.
Good night
I love you
Then a line where time had passed, and the last few came in real time.
Listen. I’ve thought about it
I don’t think we should get married. I’m sorry. There’s no reason
Not now. Not so soon
Maybe someday
You’re right
She was right. I’d been stupid and impulsive.
The messages continued as if she wasn’t even waiting for a reply.
But the now. Let’s have the now. Let’s do this together
If you need me, I’m there for you
I want to be clear. I WANT to be there for every game I can. I will do everything. I’ll take red-eye flights and lose sleep if you need me to
I’ll walk the bases with you, Dash. I don’t need a ring to do it
Was she done? I had so much to say, but I didn’t want to interrupt her.
I’ll walk the bases with you
Nothing more came. The little rolling dots that told me when she was typing had stopped. It was my turn. I had to tell her what she meant to me. I had to use big words and gestures. Infinitely big words. I constructed the speech in my mind before I tapped the glass, and I went for it. I said it big, and I said it loud. The relief, the love, the joy. I thought I was going to explode into a two-word sonnet.
Thank you
I didn’t have any more words. Everything I felt was right there. But what did she need? I had to think of that, and I brushed away the gratitude to find clarity.
For forgiving me. Thank you. I own the world with you by my side
fifty
Vivian
Nothing changed, but everything changed. Dash came to get me that afternoon, and though the stadium was too populated for him to fuck me in the dugout, he made do in the best way possible. He parked in a far off corner and fingered me in the car like a teenager, then he walked me around the bases, tagging each one. He introduced me to the grounds crew and kissed me at home plate.
“Two games down,” I said.
“Hundred sixty to go.” He put his lips on my forehead. So soft. So warm. He turned my insides to paste and exposed them to the comfort of his attention.
“I’m doing this because I want you to be happy,” I said. “But you don’t need me. You’re a brilliant player. Period.”
“Thank you,
” he whispered, and I didn’t know if he was thanking me for speaking that truth or for playing along with his ritual. I didn’t ask.
He played that night as if it was the defining moment in his career, and talk of his passion and talent was reignited in the post-game show. The third game was on Wednesday, and he had a car pick me up.
I got there ninety minutes before game time, and we walked the bases quickly, kissed, and I took my spot behind the dugout, where Francine waited in a puffy black coat and red beret.
“Larry and all of them are going to be at the bar on Friday.” She handed me a large black coffee. “Including Carl. I know you avoid him, but I thought you might not have to anymore?”
“I don’t, but Friday isn’t good.”
She pouted. “Doesn’t he have a game? Like… away? Not here?”
“Yeah. I have to be there.”
She blew into the little hole in the coffee lid, making a low whistle. “I’m not even going to ask why,” she said between blows. “I’m going to ask how.”
“I have to leave work early and get on the freeway to San Diego. And when he’s across the country, I’ll get on a plane Friday afternoons and take an overnight back on Sundays until school ends.”
“You know that’s crazy, right? I mean, I’m assuming he’s great in bed, but I’m sorry, I don’t know if any man is worth all that confusion.”
We stood for the “Star Spangled Banner.”
“He is.” I leaned in and whispered, “He’s completely worth it.”
She smiled, bumping me with her hip. “Good.”
He was worth it. Every hour of lost sleep. Every inconvenience. Every moment I wanted to shake him and say, “It’s your talent! Can you please own it so I can get to bed early?”
He needed the routine I gave. When he was away midweek and I had to work, I watched from a stool at the bar. His failures seemed bigger and his successes more modest. For a moment, I thought there might be something to the superstition. Maybe he did need me. Even if it was all in his head, maybe he needed me.
By June, I was wrecked.
“I think I miscalculated,” he said in the airport after a night game in St. Louis.
I would be getting off the plane to be shuttled right to Hobart Elementary, where Jim was covering the first half hour of the library schedule in case there was traffic.
“Miscalculated what?”
We sat on a leather couch in the first-class lounge. He draped his arm around the back and tenderly stroked pieces of my hair off my neck. I was flipping through a magazine, but the pages couldn’t hold my attention.
“You have dark circles under your eyes.”
“I can’t think. I feel like I live in peanut butter.” I tossed the magazine aside. “Two more weeks. Then I can go around with you all the time. I’ll find an apartment when you have that double home stand in July.”
“I don’t like seeing you like this,” he said. “I want you to move in with me.”
“That’s not going to help.”
“You won’t have to look for an apartment. And it’ll just cut a step out of the travel.”
“I don’t know,” I said, resting my head on his chest. “Maybe I’ll get used to the peanut butter.”
“I love peanut butter.”
I bent my neck, resting my head on the back of the couch. “I love you too.”
He kissed me, and I could have dropped off with the softness of his lips on mine and the smell of summer grass around me, but they announced my flight.
“Think about it,” he said when he picked up my bag.
“I will. I’ll see you Friday.” I kissed him, grateful that he’d be home for the weekend series and I could sleep.
fifty-one
Dash
The slumps usually started at my second at bat if she wasn’t there. Sometimes I walked or the other guys were at the top of their game so no one could tell. But I could. I felt it because things got harder. I felt as though I was hanging on by my fingernails.
“You’re psyching yourself out,” Youder said for the hundredth time.
We were on a plane back from St. Louis, and he thought now was the perfect opportunity to lay down more mentoring. I wanted to punch him sometimes.
I put my seat back. “I’m fine. It’s up and down for everyone.”
The truth of that, even as it came out of my mouth, had no effect on me. I was just saying words. I knew I was down when she wasn’t there and up when she was. Any statistician could see my weekdays away sucked.
I had a hundred things to say about Vivian. But the most important was that with her, I felt loved. Really loved. All of me. The non-medicated, not-charming, awkward son of a bitch who read too much and had learned to juggle balls to calm down.
I sent her library fruit and candy, boxes of pens and sticky notes. Anything she mentioned the kids needed. It wasn’t enough. She drove herself to the edge of exhaustion to be at my games. She had to quit that job because as nice as it was to be loved without limits, she was hitting a physical barrier.
She waited for me at the gate with a sign that said KING OF ELYSIAN. She wore a skirt, and if I looked under it, I knew I’d find something that would keep us up half the night.
I kissed her right there and took her home.
fifty-two
Vivian
He started kissing me when we were barely in the door, dropping his bags on the hardwood with a clap. He was more intense after a series away, less controlled. His hands went up my skirt and grabbed my ass hard. Yes, it hurt. Yes, it turned me on.
I kissed him back, reaching under his shirt for the hard muscle that waited for me. I felt suddenly empty, wanting, awake and ready.
He pushed me onto a barstool and yanked my legs open, exposing the new stockings and garter belt I’d bought for him.
“Yes,” was all he said as he spread my arms over the counter. “Stay still. I’m going to taste that delicious pussy.”
“Okay, I—”
I forgot the next word, and all that came out was a groan. His tongue flicked the inside of my thigh, a point of pleasure surrounded by the scratch of his stubble. He moved the crotch of my panties aside and ran his tongue along my cleft like a hungry man, sucking on me while holding my legs wide open.
I was wet, hot, pulsing in response to every flick of his tongue. He ate me as if he’d never done it before, as if he had to do it now or die trying. My arms stretched on the counter where he’d put them, and my back arched.
“I’m close, Dash.”
He lightened the pressure of his tongue but didn’t stop. My raspy breaths only uttered please please please, though I didn’t know what I was begging for. When I thought I couldn’t be on the edge any longer, he laid his lips on my clit and gently sucked the orgasm out of me.
When I could breathe again, he stood. His cock was monumental, pushing against the fabric of his pants. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Welcome home,” I said.
“Home?”
“To Los Angeles.”
He glanced around. “You didn’t move your stuff in.”
I slid off the barstool. “I think I found an apartment.”
He looked surprised but unshaken. “Where?”
“Bottom of the hill. Your hill. It’ll be ready next month.”
“Do you need help packing?”
Yes? No? There was a quarter century of crap in that house. Dad hadn’t decided where or when he was moving, but I felt as if I needed to give him room and reason to go. So I’d found a cute one-bedroom behind a Craftsman.
“Can I let you know about the packing?”
“Stand up,” Dash said.
I didn’t have time to comply. He took me by the shoulders and got me to my feet, pulling my shirt up to reveal my lacy bra. He slid that over my tits, exposing the hard nipples to the air.
Pressing his erection against me, thumbs and forefingers circl
ing the bases of my breasts, he spoke into my ear, “You’re here all the time.”
“But you aren’t.”
He closed his fingers around the apex of my tits and squeezed the nipples, twisting until my knees melted under me.
“You’re so hot. I can’t even think. Take your skirt up and the underwear down.”
I hitched my skirt around my waist while he played with my nipples, and I got my underpants just below my ass.
“Take my dick out.”
I reached for him, wiggling to get at his enormous cock. He was wearing sweatpants, so it wasn’t long before I felt the skin of it against my palm and the drop of pre-cum waiting. I was ready for him again. With a final tug, he took his hands off my breasts and hooked a finger on my underpants, yanking them wide.
“Leg. Come on, sweetapple. Before I fuck these off you.”
I pulled my leg through the opening, and my panties dropped over my left foot.
He pressed four fingers onto the wet ache between my legs. His eyes were on fire, and his lips were tight with intention as he rubbed my clit and slid three fingers inside me.
“Deeper, God, Dash, deeper.”
He got his fingers in me and found the bundle of nerves inside, circling it, pressing it awake. I hitched a leg over his waist, and he took his hand away. I groaned.
“I want you here,” he said, stroking my wet cleft with the head of his cock. “In this house.”
“I’m here. But I want to—”
He shoved himself in me, and I gasped.
“Want to what?”
“Fuck. Dash. God. Just take it. We can talk later.”
He got all the way inside, down to the root, grinding up against me. He pushed me against the counter, pinning me with his cock, pushing his body against my clit. I held onto his shoulders for dear life as he fucked me hard and slow, angling himself against me. I felt full, every surface stimulated, the pressure of his hips bringing my other foot off the floor.
His eyes locked on mine. His jaw set. He looked as if he wanted to tear me open and crawl inside me. And I wanted him to. Fuck me. Fuck my identity. Fuck my own skin and soul.
