Perfect Catch

by Sierra Dean

  Vi had a warm heart and a willingness to listen, where his other sisters tended to fight over who was next to speak. She would tell him if he was crazy for wanting to find an in with Alice, or if this was actually worth the effort.

  He was leaning towards crazy, but a second opinion would be nice.

  The drive from the field to Alice’s house felt longer than it had before, probably because he knew this might be the last time he made the journey. When he pulled in front of her house, she was in the yard, kneeling in front of a flowerbed with her sleeves rolled to her elbows and dirt smeared on her knuckles.

  She looked up when he got out of the car, shielding her eyes against the sunlight.

  “Not working today?” he called out, knowing the answer already.

  “Only two games today. My crew was off.” She rocked back on her heels, crouching low and wiping her hands on her jeans. They were as ratty as the ones he’d worn on their first date, and he liked seeing her this casual. It felt real and honest, her in her ugliest jeans and still as beautiful as anything he’d ever seen. “So was yours, weren’t they?”

  “Yeah, last game was yesterday, but we had final drills today. Cleaned out the locker, you know.”

  “Just like the last day of school.”

  It was strange, standing with the street between them, talking to each other like unfamiliar neighbors. He wanted to go to her, but he felt like closing the gap was risky. He would hold her, and knowing it would be the last time for a long, long time, he might not let her go.

  “Permission to approach?” he teased.

  “Yeah, c’mere.” After jamming a spade in the soft black dirt, she stepped over the small bed and met him on the driveway.

  It didn’t escape his notice she didn’t invite him in.

  It was just after noon, so Olivia would still be in school. He wasn’t exactly expecting a midday quickie, but he wouldn’t have said no to it. Keeping him outside was an obvious way for her to place a safe distance between them.

  Aside from the one time in her car and a few escalating kisses, they hadn’t done anything sexual in their time together. He was willing to wait if there was something to wait for, but if his balls got any bluer, they’d be purple.

  Looked like the only reprieve he’d be getting anytime soon would be from Mister Left Hand. Mister Right Hand, if he was feeling like spending the night with a stranger.

  “When do you head out?” She didn’t meet his eyes.

  He glanced from her to the car, visualizing his bags in the trunk. “As soon as I say goodbye.”

  Alice brushed sweat-dampened hair off her forehead, squinting when she finally did hazard a look in his direction. She tried to smile, but it died on her cheeks, a sheen of tears in her eyes. Rubbing the wetness away with the heel of her hand, she said, “It’s bright.”

  Sure, she could play it off like that if she wanted.

  Alex reached out, grasping her by the shoulders and pulling her into him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, his nose buried in her hair. She smelled of sunshine and damp, fresh earth, like the promise of spring.

  He smoothed her hair back, and she lifted her face to him, the tears in her eyes welling up, even as she tried to smile at him.

  “What’s up, pretty lady?” He wiped the tear away and waited, not sure what else he could say.

  “You’re going, you know?”

  “I’m aware.”

  “I’m going to miss you, I think.”

  “You think?” He put his hands on her waist and tilted himself back to get a better look at her. “Be sure.”

  “Alex…” Her face got serious suddenly, not just sad, but more intense. Something he couldn’t fix with a smile. “You’re going.” This time there was a finality to the way she said it, not as a question but a statement. “You’re going, and I’m staying, and…we had fun, right? It was nice for us to get to know each other, and—”

  “We don’t need to decide anything right now, Alice. I mean, I’m going, but we can—”

  This time she interrupted him. “What? We’ll email? You’ll invite me out on weekends? Then we wait until fall and see what happens?” Her angry pitch set him off, even though a voice in his head told him she was intentionally trying to push him away.

  “Let’s not do anything rash.”

  “We’re not a couple. We hung out. You like me. I like you. We can be fr—”

  “Oh, come on, don’t friend zone me at this point.”

  She pulled out of his grip, putting her hands in her back jeans pockets, looking anywhere but at him. “This won’t work.”

  The worst part of it was his logical mind agreed with her. He was moving halfway across the country in two days, and Alice was going to stay here and live her life.

  A life he hadn’t earned a place in.

  “Okay.” He drifted towards her, wanting to kiss her. She turned towards him like she might meet him halfway, but at the last moment took a step backwards, shaking her head.

  “Good luck. Maybe I’ll, I dunno… Can I email you? Text you?”

  Alex nodded gruffly. Since she’d seen fit to decide everything for them, the only thing he wanted was to get the hell out of Dodge. “Sure. Do that.”

  “Sure,” she repeated.

  “Say goodbye to Liv for me.”

  “I will.”

  They stared at each other for a minute then he inclined his head towards the car. “I gotta…go. My family is expecting me.”

  “Yeah. I’ll see you around?” She phrased it like a question.

  “Yeah.” He walked back to the car, not sure he’d ever lay eyes on her again.

  Not sure he wanted to.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Strike three, yeeeeer out.” With a punchy flourish, Jim Riley pointed Alex’s way back to the dugout.

  Just fucking fabulous.

  Three weeks into the new season and strike three was fast becoming Alex’s new personal motto. If he wasn’t striking out, he was sending pop-up flies directly to the outfielder, or aiming his groundballs so the infield players barely needed to stretch for them.

  Which was to say he was sucking harder than a Hoover attached to a jet engine.

  “Fuck.” He chucked his bat onto the ground in front of the dugout.

  It was a shitty, childish thing to do, and he hated making the bat boy run around collecting his mess, but he was mad, and rationality didn’t factor in all that much when he was cranky.

  After tossing his helmet and batting gloves into the cubby on the back wall, he threw himself down on the bench with all the grace of a huffy teenage girl. Tucker, who was waiting to head back to the mound, had a warm-up jacket wrapped around his pitching arm to keep the muscles from getting cool and tight. He looked a bit goofy wearing a jacket on only one arm, but a lot of the things pitchers did made Alex question their general mental health.

  “All right there, buddy?” Tucker asked.

  “It’d be better if I wasn’t the worst goddamn player in the history of baseball.” Alex tugged on his catcher gear with exaggerated jerks, taking his aggression out on the kneepads and vest.

  “Oh Jesus, Alex. Be more of a prima donna.” Tucker laughed and smacked him on the back. “It’s not that bad.”

  “No? I think I’m the only one on the team with an average under two hundred.” One ninety to be exact, which was more than a little pathetic, given how few at-bats he’d seen in the season so far. It was typical for batters to have their best averages early in the year, when the hits-to-at-bats skewed in their favor. For Alex, if this was the best he could do, he would be batting a two out of a thousand before the season ended.

  There was a saying that claimed baseball was the only sport where a player could fail seven out of ten times and still be considered a great batter. Right then, Alex would have traded his left nut to be a three-for-ten batter. He’d be happy to get back over the two hundred mark.

  No one could bat a thousand, not in real life, and certainl
y not in baseball, but he was about as far from that as he could get.

  The batting coach had brought him in for special sessions, trying to figure out what was wrong with his swing. But there was nothing wrong with Alex’s swing, it was all mental. There was a big brick wall in his head getting in the way of him doing his job. A big brick wall named Alice.

  He didn’t want to admit she was still on his mind, because what grown man wanted to acknowledge pining for some chick he barely knew? She’d made it clear she didn’t want to be a couple and didn’t want to waste time pretending they had a shot, and he had to accept her ruling on it.

  So why did she still text him every other day?

  It was all mundane stuff, like gripes over grocery store parking lots, or giving him updates on the Felons AAA affiliate team and how they were shaping up for the season. She’d sent him photos of a weird-shaped tomato she’d found, and a picture of ESPN The Magazine where the article had mentioned him.

  Nothing about the messages indicated a romantic attachment. She certainly hadn’t tried to sext him anything. If she had, he wouldn’t have complained in the least, but as it was she was sending him the same stuff his sisters might.

  In fact, Ricki had photo texted him the exact same ESPN blurb.

  Which meant Alice held him in the same regard as his sister did. Awesome. It was love, but not the kind of love he could do anything with. The girl he liked had the kind of ambivalent emotional attachment for him some people had for their pet fish.

  To Alice, Alex was a cute goldfish, destined for a swirl in the toilet bowl of life.

  He held his catcher’s helmet in his lap, thinking about what an idiot he was being. One of the unwritten rules of the sport was you don’t let women mess up your game. That was why married guys or the men in long-term relationships rarely brought their ladies on the road with them. Keeping your woman and your job at a distance meant one couldn’t mess with the other.

  Tucker was an obvious exception to the rule, since his bride-to-be worked with the team and was leaning against the dugout fence a few feet away, watching the game.

  But Tucker had found a way to make it work for them. Emmy had become his good-luck charm, an integral part of his superstition. There must have been something to it too because his game had improved by leaps and bounds since Emmy had come on board with the team. Maybe that had more to do with her actual skill than with luck, but there was no way Tucker would go anywhere without her.

  Probably a good thing she’d agreed to marry him.

  Alex, on the other hand, was being jinxed by the lure of a woman he couldn’t even touch. Devilish, breasted harpy, she was ruining his life. Or at least she was wreaking hell on his swing.

  Instead of thinking about his game, he was wondering if there would be a text waiting for him when he returned to the locker room. Aside from her random ponderings, Alice would also send him casual commentary on his game performance.

  Which meant she was watching.

  Logically, this should have led him to perform better and show off to her in the only way he could. Yet he continued to suck. Hard.

  Had it been limited to one or two games, it might have been fine. But this was becoming consistent, and it didn’t take a genius to know he couldn’t carry on with his performance stinking to high heaven, no matter how good he was behind the plate. A subpar batter had no place in the lineup, and if Alex’s bat didn’t perk up, he’d be sent packing.

  With Angel on the roster now—who was having no trouble at bat—Alex was legitimately replaceable. And if the team wanted to get to the playoffs, there was no room for sentimentality. It didn’t matter that he was well liked if he couldn’t help them win. Baseball wasn’t a popularity contest, it was a show of skill.

  The inning went quickly, no runs to show for it, and it didn’t make Alex feel any better that he wasn’t the only one to strike out. Instead he felt like his bad luck was starting to leach out and infect those around him.

  “Better not sit too close,” he grumbled sulkily to Tucker. “You might never throw another strike.”

  Seeming to understand Alex’s implication, Tucker squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry too much. Strikes don’t seem to be a problem for you.” He removed his jacket and strolled out to the mound. When Alex took his place behind home plate, the first pitch he called for was done so with a solitary finger.

  The middle one.

  After the game, Alex could see the vultures circling. The batting coach and the field manager were waiting outside the locker room doors when he emerged, both looking grim.

  “Ross,” Chuck said. “Got a minute?”

  As if Alex had a choice. Could he simply say, Sorry, boys, I think I’ll pass on this one and walk out, avoiding whatever serious discussion awaited him?

  Alas, avoiding his coaches was about as easy as herpes in a whorehouse. This discomfort was impossible to get around.

  “Yeah, sure.” He hiked his bag up on his shoulder with the downtrodden expression of a man heading off to war, and followed the two older men into the manager’s office. Jim Carver, the batting coach, remained standing, while Chuck sat at the desk, folding his hands neatly in front of him and meeting Alex’s gaze with a calm look of his own.

  “I think you might have some idea of why you’re in here.”

  “I might,” Alex replied, not wanting to verbalize all the things he’d been thinking. What man in his right mind would openly confess his shitty performance while sitting across from his boss?

  Not a single damned one.

  “We’re worried about you. You were nailing it in Florida, and suddenly we get you onto the field and you can’t hit a thing. What’s up with that? Where’s the Alex we know?”

  To Alex’s knowledge it was the most polite way Chuck Calvin had ever called a player out on their performance. It was the good old compliment sandwich, albeit an open-faced one. Normally Chuck would start telling players they were falling apart in front of an audience, as if the shock and humiliation could jar them back into proper functionality.

  Alex getting a private chat meant things were going worse than he had previously imagined.

  “I know it’s not looking great, Skip, but it’s early…” He drifted off, hating that he’d just used the platitude usually reserved for Astros fans when their season started falling apart in the first week. It was the same as telling a terminal cancer patient there was a chance.

  It’s still early wasn’t a great thing to say in his current situation.

  Especially not when everyone else on the team was running laps around him.

  “I want you to know your performance behind the bag ain’t what we’re worried about. You’re still making great stops, great throws. Really topnotch work.”

  Alex nodded and held his breath in anticipation of the inevitable but.

  “But we think maybe you need a bit of a break.”

  “A break?”

  “The stress might be getting to you. Lots of pressure to do well, especially considering the expectations placed on the team after last season.”

  The Felons had made the playoffs the previous year, and a lot of sports magazines were using their barely functional crystal balls to imply a run at the Series was a sure thing for the team this year. As much as he wanted them to get to the World Series, Alex didn’t put a lot of stock in what the mags said at the beginning of each season. There was simply no way to know how a team would do until they were out in the thick of it.

  “All due respect, but the stress doesn’t seem to be getting to anyone else, does it?” He didn’t know how to deal with the manager’s forced politeness, so he chose instead to needle him. A little honesty was what Alex needed, and sugarcoating it did neither of them any good. “Just say it.”

  “You’re dragging the lineup down, and we’re sending you down to Triple-A. Effective immediately. Angel will take over your full-time position starting with tomorrow’s game, and we’re going to call Jeff Craig back up
from Lakeland to fill the extra spot on the bench.”

  The verdict felt like a punch in the throat. Although he’d asked for it, receiving it was still the hardest thing he’d had to hear in his major league career.

  He hadn’t played anywhere but San Francisco, with the exception of his first season, playing Double-A ball in Tulsa. Since the Tulsa team was part of the Felons organization, he’d known that season was a test to show his mettle and get himself into the big leagues. He’d done it, and he’d stuck around in the big show ever since.

  Now he was being shipped back down. Triple-A wasn’t as low down the ladder as Double-A, but he might as well be coaching a high school team for how terrible the move made him feel. It was a temporary shift. An opportunity for him to regroup. But he knew the truth.

  If he didn’t start improving—and fast—there was a chance he’d be stuck in Lakeland for good. Or traded to another team who was willing to risk his low average.

  This was his last shot.

  And of course they were sending him to the one place where he could be the most distracted.

  Right back to Alice’s backyard.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Alice checked her phone for the seven hundredth time that evening. It was late, and she should have been sleeping, but it was three hours earlier in San Francisco, and she was waiting for a reply to the text message she’d sent two hours ago.

  During the last few innings of the Felons-Royals game, she’d watched with gritted teeth as Alex took a foul tip off the bat of a Royals player that clipped the catcher right in the mask.

  Sparks had literally flown from the metal grill, sending Alex sprawling onto his ass, but he’d held on to the ball, saving a potential stolen run home.

  She’d sent him a text reading, Hell of a hit. Hope you’re okay.

  And then she’d waited.

  And waited.

  And now it was almost two in the morning Florida time, and the game was over, yet he still hadn’t responded. Normally if she sent him a message during a game, he would reply when he reached the locker rooms. Even if it was a quick one-line quip or a smiley face, it was something.