Playing Ball

by Kerry Freeman

  “I wish I could be so sure.” He slid his hand away from Caleb’s and shifted into reverse. “Let’s get you home. Day game tomorrow, and then you’re on the road.” He managed a small smile in Caleb’s direction. “You’ll have to tell me where I’m going.”

  Caleb studied him for a long moment, and while he didn’t return the smile, it did seem he’d burned off the anger. He started giving directions, and Toby felt himself relaxing. Maybe they could be friends after all. He’d like that.

  He’d like more, but that just didn’t seem to be in the cards.

  SUNDAY was…. Well. After it was over, Toby felt like he’d been through a war. Three hit by pitches, one on-field brawl, six ejections, and on top of it all, the Braves lost. Good thing it was a getaway day and the team headed for the airport almost as soon as it was over. Toby had seen the aftermath in the clubhouse from a game like that, and it wasn’t pretty.

  As it was, the mess the disgruntled players left in their wake took a good half hour longer than usual to clean up. If they hadn’t had a ten-day road trip ahead of them, it would’ve been even worse. Thank the baseball gods that the clubhouse staff had plenty of time to restock and reset for the team’s return, so Toby just made his usual towel-and-trash rounds and headed home.

  He found a note stuck under the windshield wiper of his car. Frowning, Toby pulled it free and slid inside before opening it.

  Toby—

  Hotel rooms on the road are bad enough with a roommate. Looks like I’ll be on my own for this trip, so I could use a friendly voice to talk to. Give me a call if you want.

  Caleb

  Underneath Caleb’s name was his number, though Toby already had it from Caleb’s call earlier in the week. Toby smiled. Maybe this friendship thing could work out after all.

  Instead of calling, he pulled out his phone and sent Caleb a text message: Got your note. Call or text anytime. My schedule’s light with school out and the team on the road.

  His phone buzzed before he got out of the parking lot. He glanced down to read it before he pulled out onto the street.

  Will do. Plane’s about to take off. See you when we’re back.

  Toby smiled again and drove off into the dusk.

  “A HUNDRED and twenty-four on the field. I don’t care how dry it supposedly is. That should be illegal.”

  Toby laughed and picked up another towel to fold. His phone sat beside him on a sofa cushion, speaker on, as he and Caleb talked. It was late on Wednesday night, three days into the road trip, and spending those three days in the Arizona heat had apparently been more than Caleb could stand. Even the trip on to Denver for the next series hadn’t stopped his grumbling. Toby had heard all about it during the phone calls each of the previous two nights too.

  “Just wait until you get back to Atlanta,” Toby warned. “It won’t hit 124, but it’ll feel like it when the humidity kicks into full gear. Hard to breathe in that kind of sludge.”

  “Ugh.” Caleb blew out a breath. “I took three cold showers a day while we were there, and I still felt like the top of my head was gonna blow off.” He fell silent for a few seconds before letting out a snicker. “Okay, that sounded way less dirty in my head than it did out loud.”

  Toby felt his cheeks warm. That first call late Monday night—early Tuesday morning, really—had started out stilted, both of them treading carefully to keep things light and avoid the subject of the night they’d spent together. By the time sleep had demanded they hang up an hour later, Toby had been smiling. Call number two had been better, and tonight, he’d been looking forward to talking with a friend. Just one little innuendo, though, and suddenly all Toby could think of was spreading Caleb out on a bed and riding him hard and fast.

  Shit. Toby shook his head. “Dirty mind,” he replied, after too long a pause. He tried to keep his voice light. “At least you’re out of the desert. Well, out of one type of desert and into another, I guess. How’s Denver?”

  “Dark.” Caleb snickered. “But at least it’s cooler. Pretty, what I could see of it on the way in from the airport. We’ve got all day tomorrow, though, so maybe I’ll look around some before we have to head to the ballpark.”

  “It’s a nice city.” Toby set aside another folded towel. “High sky. Watch out for pop flies behind the plate, and be glad you’re not playing outfield. Easy to lose a ball in all that bright blue.”

  Caleb made a sound of agreement in his throat. “Gotta admit, I’m hoping to get a chance to launch one in the thin air. It’d be nice to get at least one long ball while I’m with the big club.”

  Toby rolled his eyes and reached for another towel. “Seriously, you’re not going anywhere anytime soon. You’re doing great, and the team recognizes that. You started yesterday, didn’t you?”

  “Only because it was a day game after a night game and Berrymann always gets those off.” Partly true, Toby knew. Catchers rarely started two games that close together. All that squatting was damn hard on the knees. But it was more than that.

  “And you’ve pinch-hit in almost every game,” Toby pointed out. “Diamont’s been hurt almost more than he’s been able to play the past two seasons. Stay healthy and you’ve probably got the backup catcher job wrapped up for a good long while.”

  Caleb blew out a break. “From your mouth to management’s ears.” He barked out a laugh. “Oh wait. You are management.”

  Toby couldn’t help the grin. “Am not. I have another couple of weeks before I even get my share of the team, and that just makes me a stockholder, not management.” His grin turned as evil as his thoughts. “But you’d better behave yourself if you want to stay on my good side.”

  “Oh, I can be very, very good.” Caleb practically purred his reply, and a white-hot flash of desire shot through Toby at the sound. He cleared his throat and heard Caleb chuckle.

  “Stop that.” Toby managed to make it sound chiding and only a little shaky.

  “But you make it so easy,” Caleb shot back, his voice back to normal and infused with more than a little humor. “You know I’m just giving you a hard time.”

  It was Toby’s turn to laugh. “Oh, now that was a fastball right over the center of the plate if ever I heard one.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Caleb groused. “Taste of my own medicine, go ahead. I deserve it.”

  “Nah, too easy.” Toby flipped the last neatly folded washcloth on top of his stack. “Much as I’d love to harass you some more, it’s late, and some of us have to work in the morning.”

  “Oh, wow, I didn’t realize it was after midnight already.” After 2:00 a.m. for Toby, actually, but Caleb was off in Mountain Time. “You have to go in even when the team is on the road?”

  Toby rolled his tight shoulders and leaned back against the cushions, stretching out his legs. “Not all the time, but we have a staff meeting tomorrow and a couple of shipments to get put away. I’ll have the weekend off for a change, though. Maybe I’ll go to the movies or something.”

  A sound in his ear confused him for a second until his realized it was Caleb yawning. Naturally, his body immediately responded to the cue. Once his own jaw-cracker ended, he huffed out a laugh. “I think our bodies are trying to tell us something. No, wait!” He interrupted whatever Caleb was about to say. “Forget I even said that. Except for the part that means it’s time for us to go to bed. Oh, for crying out….”

  Caleb was laughing at him openly by then, and all Toby could do was join in. “Get some sleep, and have fun tomorrow.”

  “Will do.” Caleb’s words were interrupted by another yawn. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

  Caleb had ended the call before Toby could respond. He stared at his phone, wondering whether this whole let’s-be-friends thing was such a good idea. Because his first reaction to the idea of Caleb calling him again tomorrow was how long it would take for him to have Caleb naked and moaning in his ear.

  Shit. He stared down at his crotch, where his dick had decided it liked that idea way too much. Sighing, he pushed
himself up, grabbed his phone, and shoved it into the pocket of his gym shorts before gathering up his folded towels. Get these put away and go to bed—to sleep, he ordered himself. No fantasizing about what you can’t have.

  He doubted any part of him would listen, but he could earn that A for effort, right?

  “UNTIL this week, I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a hotel room to myself. Hell, in the low minors, we were stuck three or four to a room in some towns. And you try shoving four grown men into a room with two doubles and see how that works out for you.”

  “Ouch.” Toby winced at the thought and switched his phone to the other ear. “Never really thought about it, I guess. I mean, I’ve been around the big ball club all my life, and I keep up with the talent on the farm teams, but I’ve never spent much time actually around the minors.”

  He lounged against the headboard of his bed, where he’d been listening to Caleb’s low, near-exhaustion voice for almost an hour now. Not the worst Saturday night he’d ever had, he admitted to himself.

  Caleb had started tonight’s call by noting that housekeeping kept replacing the “ungodly” number of pillows on his bed every day in Denver, even though he’d stacked them neatly on the side chair, obviously unused. The conversation had wandered from there, but they’d circled back around to hotel rooms again.

  “That could be something to look into.” Toby heard rustling as Caleb shifted on the other end of the phone. “I’m not complaining, not really, but it’s hard to get by. Most players have off-season jobs, but those are tough to keep when you’re playing ball from April through September. I’ve already made more the last two weeks than I did all of last season.”

  Toby blinked. “Holy crap. I knew the pay was lousy, but that’s worse than I thought. They should do something about that.”

  A low chuckle came through the phone, sending shivers down Toby’s spine. “‘They’? Didn’t you say you’d own part of the team in another couple weeks?”

  Toby smiled slowly. “Not a majority, or anywhere close to it.”

  “But enough to give you a voice.”

  And not just about pay for minor league players, Toby thought, though he kept that to himself. While he knew Caleb was comfortable with his sexuality, they hadn’t talked about what it might mean for him to come out. Hell, they hadn’t talked about what it might mean for Toby to come out, and he wasn’t the one who then had to go out on the field and face not only opponents and fans who could be hostile for any of a number of reasons but also the potential for backlash from the people with whom he shared a uniform. And, maybe more important, a clubhouse.

  Toby shook off that train of thought. It didn’t matter now, not when there wasn’t anything to tell. Knowing Caleb would see right through him, he changed the subject anyway. “Did you hear O’Malley got suspended? You’d think these guys would figure out the steroids aren’t worth the trade-off for fifty days out of uniform.”

  After a long pause, Caleb finally spoke. “Yeah, I don’t get it. Not so much of a problem with the guys who did it back before they changed the rules. I mean, it was stupid then, but it didn’t mean losing a third of a season.”

  Caleb went on, but Toby only half heard him, listening more to the warm, deep cadence than to his words. It should freak him out, the contentment that came just from hearing Caleb’s voice, but instead, it soothed him. He relaxed and let the sound wash over him.

  He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep, but he woke up in the wee hours with his phone still in his hand and a text from Caleb waiting for him.

  Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

  Smiling, he set his phone on the nightstand, turned off the lamp, and rolled over to hug a pillow, trying not to think about what—who—he’d rather have his arms around.

  “SO DAMON’S cutting up and waving the bat around, and he misses taking out the Polish sausage by, like, two inches. I don’t think the guy ever even saw it, but I’m betting ESPN will have it on a highlight reel.”

  The silly-fun, between-inning races between four people wearing different sausage-based costumes in Milwaukee had been the highlights of the week for the Braves, who’d dropped three so far to the Brewers. They had a day game up next, and Caleb was set to start, so he should have been going to sleep—shouldn’t have called at all, really—but Toby couldn’t bring himself to hang up. They’d talked for nine of ten nights now, only missing Monday night, when the game went fourteen innings and didn’t end until nearly 2:00 a.m. Toby had still been awake, even though it had been an hour later in Atlanta, and when he’d finally dropped off around four, he’d slept only intermittently.

  Once again he’d woken up the following morning to find a text from Caleb waiting: Did you get the number of the beer truck that hit me? Damn, I’m glad the day game isn’t until Thursday.

  Now here it was, Wednesday night, and they were up late again anyway, though Caleb’s voice sounded like it was starting to slide off toward dreamland. Toby’s mind was headed the same direction, his thoughts starting to drift away.

  “Toby?”

  Caleb saying his name drew Toby’s attention back. “Hmmm?” he murmured.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  The change in the timbre of Caleb’s voice told Toby that, unlike much of their conversations had been, this was no idle question. Toby was suddenly more awake, and he swallowed, his mouth dry. “Sure.”

  “When we get in tomorrow night… can I come over?”

  Toby knew he should say no. He knew even thinking about anything but friendship with Caleb was playing with fire. But the only thing their conversations had done, rather than cementing a friendship, was make him want Caleb more. Toby’s heart took over, and there was only one thing he could say.

  “Yes.”

  I NEED a longer hallway.

  The absurd thought almost made Toby laugh. He paced back and forth, spinning on his heel after far too few steps, wishing for another twenty feet or two hundred yards or two miles to walk. Maybe that would have half a chance at calming his nerves.

  Caleb would arrive any minute, and Toby had no idea what to do about it. His body and his heart warred with his mind. Any kind of relationship with Caleb beyond friendship had the potential for so much damage, and Toby had no illusions that Caleb was planning just a friendly visit.

  But he’d never felt a connection like he had with Caleb, and not just the explosive sexual chemistry of that first night. He’d looked forward to their nightly chats and spent more time thinking about those than he had the feel of Caleb’s warm, smooth skin under his hands.

  His skin tingled at the sense memory. Okay, yeah, he’d thought about that too. Quite a bit, and he had the dirty sheets to prove it.

  Well, formerly dirty. They were clean now.

  Despite all his qualms, he had high hopes they wouldn’t stay that way long.

  Predictably, the knock at his door nearly made him jump out of his skin. So calm, cool, and collected, he was. Laughing at himself, Toby walked to the door, took a deep breath, and opened it.

  “Hi.” Caleb smiled at him, looking better than should be legal after playing nine innings and sitting through a three-hour flight. Toby’s last rational thought threw up its tiny hands and slunk away in defeat.

  “Hi,” Toby murmured in reply, even as he grabbed the front of Caleb’s shirt with his left hand and dragged him inside. He slammed and locked the door with his right hand, but Caleb was already kissing him by then, and Toby couldn’t spare another thought for such silly considerations as home safety.

  Toby wound his arm around Caleb’s neck, digging his fingers into his hair, and they stumbled across the room in the general direction of the sofa. Toby almost fell over backward when he bumped into it, and he managed to tear himself away from the feast that was Caleb’s mouth.

  “Bedroom,” he said, and he redirected them down the hallway that suddenly seemed about ten times too long.

  It took them about ten times too long to make
it to the bed too. They kept stopping to press each other against walls, doorframes, furniture, whatever they could find that would allow them to brace and kiss deeper, rub against each other harder. Buttons and zippers were navigated with shaking hands between grasps and moans, but when the backs of Toby’s legs hit the side of the mattress, he still had on his jeans, though they were open and sagging toward his knees. Caleb had a hand shoved down the front of Toby’s boxer briefs, working his cock toward full hardness, so Toby just kept kissing him, heedless of anything but the feel of Caleb’s touch.

  He snapped out of it about the time he bounced on the mattress, thanks to a hard shove from Caleb. Toby glared up at him, but Caleb just grinned back, lifting his eyebrows, and stripped Toby’s jeans and boxers out of the way.

  “There.” Caleb crawled onto the bed to hover on hands and knees over Toby. “This would’ve been easier if you’d just been naked when I got here.”

  Toby laughed, playfully dodging Caleb’s mouth as it tried to recapture his. “I would have, but I had this silly idea we might actually talk or something crazy like that.”

  Caleb growled and raised one hand to grasp Toby’s jaw, holding him in place. “I think we’ve done enough talking, don’t you?”

  He kissed Toby hard, tongue driving deep, stealing the breath from Toby’s lungs and every thought from his head. Toby groaned low in his chest and wrapped his legs around the backs of Caleb’s thighs, pulling himself closer to Caleb so their cocks bumped and brushed between them. The kiss went on and on as they serenaded each other with the sounds of their moans and the harsh pulls of air they managed through their noses, unwilling to break apart even for breath.

  Toby wrapped his fingers around Caleb’s asscheeks, intending to pull him closer, when a stray thought escaped the cloud of lust, making him smile into their seemingly endless kiss. Instead of yanking, he lifted one hand and brought it down sharply, the sound of the slap echoing loud in the room. Caleb gasped, finally jerking his mouth from Toby’s, and Toby just giggled and did it again.