by Sierra Dean
“Hardy-har-har. You get me anything?” In addition to being a chain smoker, Misty had been on and off every diet known to man since Alice was a little girl. When Alice had been about Liv’s age, her mother had enrolled them in Weight Watchers together, saying Alice was getting a bit hefty. Ever since, Alice had been hyperaware of her weight. Once she’d popped out a kid, though, her body lost interest in being stick thin. She’d had to learn to accept the curves that came along with motherhood the same way she’d accepted the baby.
“I got you a regular burger, no cheese, and a small fries.” She lay the dinner out on the kitchen table where Liv was already devouring her Chicken McNuggets with the zest of a starvation victim. “I’m going out again once Liv gets to bed.” She didn’t ask permission because that would give Misty an opportunity to say no.
“Oh.” The older woman wrinkled up her nose. “Do you think that’s a good idea?” She cast a meaningful glance towards Olivia.
“I think it’s a fine idea.”
“She’s going to see her boyfriend,” Liv announced.
How on earth the kid could have known that was beyond Alice, but apparently her daughter paid better attention to things than she’d given her credit for.
“I’m sorry, your what?” Misty’s tone was halfway between horrified and gossip hungry.
“He’s not my boyfriend. It’s just a…just someone.”
“Someone who?”
“Alex,” Liv supplied when Alice hesitated. “He’s a baseball player like Dad.”
If looks could kill, Alice would have exploded into a fiery ball of flame under her mother’s withering scrutiny.
“He’s a what?”
“A base…ball…player,” Liv said slowly, thinking her grandmother might not have heard her properly. With a mouthful of nuggets, the enunciation was extra ridiculous.
“Didn’t you learn anything from the whole Matt debacle?” Misty scolded.
“Mom.” Alice cut a glance to Liv and shook her head once. “This isn’t the time. And besides which, it’s really none of your business.”
Misty sniffed indignantly and crossed her bony arms across her chest. “I don’t approve of this.”
“Well, you don’t approve of much. But thankfully I’m not looking for your approval.”
“But you want me to stay here while you run off and have some silly tryst? With a guy who will run away and leave you here just like Matt did? And what, have another baby? Want to hedge your bets by getting a couple different millionaires to knock you up?”
Heat flooded Alice’s face, and she wasn’t sure what stung more, the embarrassment of her mistakes being trotted out in front of Liv, or her mother’s assumption she was stupid enough to let history repeat itself.
“I’m not nineteen anymore,” she replied, setting her Big Mac down. “And Alex isn’t Matt.”
“They’re all the same.”
Wasn’t that exactly what Alice herself had thought? Yet hearing the words from someone else made her blood boil. She pushed her chair back from the table and looked at her daughter. “Liv, honey, you be good for Grandma, and I want you in bed by nine, okay?”
Olivia nodded, a smear of honey mustard sauce covering her cheek, the yellow blending almost seamlessly with the bruises. “Okay.”
Alice faced her mother with a cool stare. “I’ll be home later.”
“Fine. But don’t you come crying to me when you find out I’m right. All you’ll get here are I told you so’s.”
Alice said nothing. If Misty was right and Alex turned out to be the same brand of scumbag as Matt, all the I told you so’s in the world wouldn’t matter.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
When it came to loving the wrong men, it was a two-strikes-you’re-out rule, and Alice hoped Alex’s batting average was starting to look up.
Chapter Twenty-Four
After he hung up with Alice, Alex got a second call almost immediately.
“Hey, beautiful, miss me already?”
“Get your dick outta your hand, Ross, I ain’t calling to hear any goddamn sweet talk.” The Skipper’s voice came through loud and clear, all gravelly and rough.
“Sir, sorry, I thought you were somebody else.”
“I should frickin’ hope so, otherwise you’re a damned dirty pervert. And you ain’t my goddamn type, you hairy beast.” Chuck made a hock noise and spit something out. Alex was glad video calling wasn’t a popular option. “I’ve been talking to the GM. We’ve been watching the tapes out of Lakeland, and you’re looking good, kid, really good.”
“Thank you.”
“Where was all that piss and vinegar when we had you here? You need daily hummers or something to get you going? Jee-sus. Anyway, like I was saying, GM says you’re doing fine work, he’s liking the look of your swing. You keep things up another week or so, and we’ll be welcoming you back with open arms, got it?”
Alex’s heart skipped. He’d known his game was picking up. Ever since the sage old guy in the ballpark batting cage had told him to grow a pair, he’d been improving by steady measures. He felt it, like the difference was a physical entity coming with him to the plate. If baseball had a Holy Spirit, he was taking it with him every time he held a bat in his hands.
Good to know someone else was watching.
He was momentarily ashamed of his own happiness. Getting back to the big show was what he wanted, it was the whole reason he’d come back to Florida, and now he was within reach of having it back. Only, returning to San Francisco and the Felons would mean leaving Alice behind again.
One more big bad reality they were going to have to deal with when she showed up tonight.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me, Ross. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and don’t fuck it all up. This Angel kid”—he pronounced it as angel instead of the proper Spanish an-hell—“he’s good, he’s got some zest in his swing, but he ain’t you. So get your ass back here A-sap, get my drift?”
As if he was being subtle and there was a secret message Alex was supposed to find difficult to decipher. The Skipper was about as subtle as a dick slap to the face.
“I understand.”
“Good. See you in a week.”
“Thank—” But there was no point in finishing the sentence. The line was already dead.
Too stunned to consider sleeping, Alex sat on his bed staring at the phone. He’d turned on the TV earlier to catch the end of that night’s Felons game, but now found himself too distracted to pay much attention to the post-game. It took a soft rapping at the door to draw him out of his thoughts and back into the real world.
Alice’s smiling face greeted him when he opened the door. “I tried calling, but the line was busy. Hope you got rid of the other girls already.”
“It’s okay, I hid them in the closet when I heard you knock.”
Alice didn’t need to be persuaded to come in. She ducked under his arm and into the suite, heading directly for the bed. Was she planning to distract him from the serious discussion by seducing him? He was exhausted but not opposed to the idea.
Where he was beat, Alice looked wired, her fingers twisting around each other with nervous energy while her knees bobbed up and down. He’d seen her come-hither face, and this wasn’t it.
So they’d be going directly into the talk, then.
He pulled up a chair and sat across from her, thinking she might want the bed to herself. “I guess we need to talk about some stuff,” he said, hoping it would ease her into the conversation.
“We do.”
“Some Matt Hernandez stuff.”
“Yes.”
“And then some other stuff.”
“Oh?”
Alex held up his phone as evidence of the other stuff. “We’ll get to that after.”
“Oh.”
“Now…tell me about Matt.”
Alice gnawed on her lip, unfurling her fisted fingers and set
ting her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Matt sooner. The thing is, that’s not really…well, it’s not public knowledge. He’s never openly admitted to having a daughter.”
“But Olivia knows him, so they’ve met? I mean, he came to see her in the hospital, right?” Alex couldn’t imagine the kind of man who would ignore his own child in her hour of need. If Matt had skipped out on Liv after the accident, there would be no redeeming him in Alex’s mind.
“Yeah, he came. He does stuff for her once in a while, but it’s so few and far between we can never count on it. He was supposed to come see her during training but didn’t bother. She still thinks he hangs the moon because she’s too young to know better. Whenever he disappoints her, it breaks her heart, but the second he shows up it’s like he’s a superhero or something. Her dad the ballplayer.” Alice gave a halfhearted shrug, her shoulders barely lifting. “But he helps us out a bit. Financially I mean. He knows she’s his.”
“You’d have to be blind not to know she’s his.”
“Right?” Alice smiled weakly, like her daughter’s physical appearance wasn’t a constant reminder of Matt. How could it not be, though? “And when he does come around, he’s great with her. But the problem is he thinks money and toys are all she needs. She needs a father, and I can’t get through to him that once-a-year visits aren’t enough. He won’t acknowledge her to the media. Can you imagine the scandal?”
“And you’ve never thought about outing him?”
“What, running down to Star or Us Weekly with the paternity test and being like, Hey, look what a scummy dink Matt Hernandez is?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Did you sign some sort of a nondisclosure agreement?”
“I did, but that’s not why. I’m not going to subject Liv to some kind of circus. She has a normal life right now. Lots of little girls don’t get to see their daddies, right? At least she’s met hers.” Alice let out a quivery sigh. “He does right by her when he really needs to. When it comes to the money end of things, she’s taken care of. Sure, I need to hound his lawyers to make sure we have enough for school and the mortgage and all that good stuff. I talk to them more than I talk to him in any given year. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know her birthday.”
“Maybe you’re wrong about him.” But Alex wasn’t convinced by his own words. If he’d knocked someone up on the road, he would have the decency to tell the world the kid was his. He wouldn’t hide the baby like some shameful secret. When Liv got older, how would she deal with her father’s absence? How would it impact her to know her dad didn’t want to admit he had a kid?
When Olivia visited Matt’s Wikipedia page and it said no children, what would that do to her adolescent ego?
Plenty of major league players had illegitimate kids. It wasn’t a career ruiner. People might think slightly less of Matt on a moral level, but having children out of wedlock wasn’t as taboo as it had once been.
The more Alex thought about it, the more he thought how scummy it was for Matt to keep Olivia as a dirty little secret. If Alex had a kid as great as Liv, he’d be proud to show her off. Frankly, from a PR standpoint, Matt was missing out on a goldmine. Doting dads looked a lot better in the public eye than douchebag millionaire man-whores.
Alex remembered reading an article somewhere that said Matt was known to send gift baskets to his conquests, filled with signed Hernandez memorabilia. Congrats, you slept with me, have an autographed ball.
The guy’s reputation could only get better.
Sadly Matt mustn’t have seen it that way.
“So, it goes without saying you can’t tell anyone about this. I mean no one.” Alice stared at him, her face pale and serious.
“Who would I tell?”
“I don’t know, but whoever you could tell, you can’t tell.”
“Okay.”
“Now what’s your thing?” She nodded at his lap. For a moment he thought she was talking about his penis, until he glanced down and the iPhone blinked up at him.
Decidedly not the thing he thought she meant.
“I got a call from the Skip. Sounds like things are looking up.”
She stared at him for a long while then simply said, “Ah.”
“We knew this was inevitable. I mean…I wasn’t coming to stay, it was always meant to be a temporary thing.”
“I know.”
“But you sound disappointed.”
“Of course I’m disappointed. There’s a big difference between knowing you’ll have to go back eventually and finding out eventually is now.”
“Well, not now. Soon.”
She nodded. “Soon, then. Soon is still finite. Eventually…that’s a much bigger concept of time.”
He got up, not liking how alone she seemed on the bed. For her story it had felt okay, but now that they were talking about something pertaining to them both, it felt awkward and cold to have so much distance between them.
Sitting close enough for their knees to touch, he held his hand out palm up, and she put hers in it. Compared to the clammy sweat of his big mitt, her hand was warm and dry. He wished he’d thought to rub the dampness off on his pants before going for a handhold. Amateur move.
“What do you want to do about it?” he asked.
“About you leaving?”
“No, about us.”
“You leaving sort of factors into the whole us thing, doesn’t it?”
“Not necessarily.”
“I don’t know. You’re still going to be…there. And I’ll be here. And how does that really work, you know? I think long distance is kind of bullshit.”
Alex laughed, then got serious. “Do you want to sleep with anyone else?”
“Do you?”
“I asked you first.”
“No. Of course not.”
“Neither do I.”
“Okay…”
“Do you want to be with me, Alice? Don’t think, just answer.”
“Yes.”
“So that’s it then.”
“That’s what then?”
“We give it a try. The whole bullshit long-distance thing. And when I finish the season, we reassess. Georgia and Florida aren’t different planets. And it’s not like moving is unheard of.”
“Who moving where? You can’t expect me to totally change Liv’s life on a whim.” Her voice hitched up, not quite hysterical but edging on panic. Clearly Alice wasn’t big on change.
“I’m not. I’m saying we see where we are in October. I think it’s silly to call it quits just because I’m going back to California.” The conversation felt like déjà vu, only this time things seemed to be leaning more in his favor. “Look at it this way, even when we weren’t together, we still talked every day, didn’t we?”
She blushed. “I guess.”
“And you said you want to be with me.”
“I do.”
“So this isn’t rocket surgery, Darling. Communication is half the battle…or something. We’ll talk. We’ll talk a lot. We’ll talk dirty a lot. Maybe you Skype me topless sometimes.”
She whacked his shoulder. “Rocket surgery? Seriously?” She rolled her eyes at his bad joke.
“Point being, this is the twenty-first century. We already know things work okay here.” He patted the bed and waggled his brows for good measure, feeling his best, most lascivious grin cross over his lips. The blush on Alice’s cheeks spread to her ears. He wondered where else she was blushing. “That works fine.”
“Better than fine.”
“So we work on the rest while you’re not near me. Because when I have you in touching distance, I’m not going to want to think about our communication skills.”
“Why do you want this?” She glanced up from the bedspread to meet his gaze. “Why do you want me?”
“Because I’d be an idiot not to want you.”
“That’s not an answer, Alex.”
“You want, like, a list or som
ething?”
“Yes. I want a list. Give me a list.”
“I want to be with you because I’ve never met anyone like you in my life. You’re stubborn and you’re smart and you’re funny—even though I don’t think you intend to be sometimes. Being around you makes me so happy I think I might actually lose IQ points. Like, if stupid happy was a thing, you do that to me. Why in God’s name would I want someone else when I’ve already found what I want?”
Her eyes were wet with tears, and he thought he must have said the wrong thing. The mental recorder in his brain rewound the sentiments, trying to pinpoint which one might have upset her.
“But my life is so messy,” she insisted.
“And?”
“You could meet anyone else. Someone younger, someone…prettier.”
“There is no one on earth prettier than you, you stupid woman.”
“Fine.” She brushed the compliment off like lint, but he saw the smile. “But you could find someone with less baggage.”
“Maybe I could. But she wouldn’t be you.”
She swatted him again, and this time he caught her hand, pressing her fingertips against his lips.
“She wouldn’t be you,” he repeated.
“God, Alex.” She tried to wrench her hand free but didn’t put a lot of effort into the struggle. “Don’t you dare say this stuff to me if it’s just to get me in bed.”
“I’ve already gotten you into bed. I have you in bed right now.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not Matt Hernandez.” He was still holding her hand, but he’d stopped tugging at her playfully. Even to his own ears the tone of his voice had gone cold and serious.
“I know.”
“Do you?” Alex stared at her, trying to keep her attention, but her gaze kept darting away. “Tell me you know I’m not him.”
“You’re not him. But I’m worried you’ll become him. He said a lot of sweet things in the beginning too.”
“If I just wanted to get into your pants, I wouldn’t be here still. You’re an amazing lover, but I’m not going to lie about feelings I don’t have only to get with you again. I’m not sixteen. I don’t need to tell a girl I love her to convince her to sleep with me.”
