by CD Reiss
His breath caught. He liked it. He liked what he was doing to me and how close we were. I reached for him and pulled him close, closer, as close as I’d been to another person, and still it wasn’t enough. I wanted his soul inside me, a melding of skin where we touched, an unbroken circle of pulsing attention and awareness.
“Vivian.”
He only said the one word. A prayer. A supplication. A breath from his heart to mine.
I put my hand on his cheek and said, “Yes.”
When he looked as if he was about to lose himself, I lost myself too. Physically, I came and came hard, arching and stretching under him, pinned to reality by the force of the way he fucked me. But emotionally, seeing him as lost in the moment as I was, unable to stop himself from closing his eyes and groaning… he gave me more than an orgasm. He gave me the sweetest release.
Afterward, when he was still on top of me and planting kisses all over my face and neck, he said, “You knew the Lear quote was ‘boy.’”
“I realized it on the patio.”
He pulled back a little until his nose was astride mine. “But you didn’t say?”
“You gonna spank me for lying?”
“Not tonight, sweetapple.”
“Are you getting hard again? I don’t think I can go another inning.”
He pinned my hands over my head and kissed me. “When you’re still sore two days from now, I want you to remember who fucked you so hard you can’t walk.”
I couldn’t. I really couldn’t come again. I certainly couldn’t let him inside me again.
Well, maybe one more time.
twenty-eight
Dash
Terror. Absolute, all-consuming, skin-searing fear. Like a frog in a pot of water that got hotter and hotter until it was too late, early January became mid-February, and I was still fucking her. Compulsively. I had her on my kitchen floor. My shower. My car. I fucked her face with my cock and my fingers. I ate her pussy and sucked her nipples. I came on her tits, on her back, down her throat, inside her. I put my hands under her clothes as soon as I saw her, held her hands behind her back, spanked her, blindfolded her, and still there was shit I hadn’t done.
I hadn’t tied her down. I hadn’t gotten a finger in her ass.
There was so much.
And I was running out of time.
I hadn’t made a plan because a sensible plan meant either we cut the cord at spring training, no negotiations, or I told her what I told the other ones. It’s casual. It’s friendly. It’s non-exclusive.
But I couldn’t because if I said shit like that to her, she would walk.
So there I was, watching her drive away at the crack of dawn so she could get to work and wondering what the fuck I was going to do, when my phone buzzed.
Hey, bat boy. I’m getting the hotel.
A week.
She got the hotel a week before I landed in Arizona. She’d done it every year since my first winning season. Janice. Nice lady. Ass like a pear and God… what else? Nice hair, I guessed. Divorcee. Her ex got the kids for that week, or she got a sitter. She made sure of it. She met me at the field. I signed her shirt. Met her at the same hotel. She was waiting. Same every year. Every winning year, it was boom boom boom. The year I hit .225 between opening day and the All-Star break? When I couldn’t remove my glove from my ass before July fourth? That year we’d changed something critical, and there I was. Schmuck of the century.
So now what was I supposed to do?
Pace around. Not worry. Tonight was Joe Westlake’s Spring Training Dinner, and she was going. I wanted her there at the same time as I didn’t want to go.
I texted Vivian because I had to. The only thing that calmed me down was putting something sexy in her lap.
I can’t wait to get my mouth on your cunt tonight
Guilt for leading her on. Relief that I was being honest. One text could be both. I didn’t know how to exist inside my own contradictions.
twenty-nine
Vivian
We didn’t have an expiration date.
But we did.
I spent weeks in a state of perpetual soreness. I’d never been sore like that, and if someone had told me it was the most pleasurable feeling in the world, I wouldn’t have believed them. But it was. I walked around school gingerly every day and went to his house every night to get sore all over again and started over the next morning.
I found myself in the hallways, carrying a stack of books and stopped dead, looking at some random corner, imagining the flick of his tongue on me, hearing his voice in my ear. Waiting for my phone to buzz.
I can’t wait to get my mouth on your cunt tonight
Is that from Hamlet?
Shakespeare didn’t have enough words to describe how delicious you are
He’d gotten filthier as the weeks wore on, until the words cunt and cock didn’t make me flinch anywhere above the waist.
I got on birth control, and without the extra step, we wound our bodies together even more easily. He was considerately merciless, bringing me to orgasm repeatedly, pounding me insanely with a dick that never got tired or worn out, and keeping me up late talking about the silly nonsense people talk about between kisses.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, a wrapped basket of fruit showed up at the office. Mostly apples. The kids went nuts when he sent a dozen pineapples once. Iris would never have a vitamin C deficiency her entire life with the amount of fruit she ate. Jim and I peeled them in the faculty lounge, and every kid in the school came by the library to have a piece. I thanked him by screaming his name at night, every night.
And the clock wore on.
The days on the calendar didn’t slow down for us.
His workouts got longer, and he came to me sweaty and sore. The smell of him. Testosterone and musk and the leather of a worn-out ball. He was rougher after a workout. More passionate. Less talking. More bending, twisting, grabbing. He growled lower and fucked harder. I couldn’t come enough to satisfy him.
But if I didn’t see him right after a workout, if he dressed and we went out… if he was showered and shaved and ready… he was not just powerful and strong but commanding and purposeful. I trusted him, and even as I took pleasure in that, I called myself a fool. Because I knew what was coming. His workouts weren’t getting harder because he had nowhere to go.
“They look good this year,” Jim said, handing me my crappy black coffee.
I was wiped out, as usual. Sore pussy. Knees a little rubbed from being on them. Overtired. High as a kite. “Yeah.”
“You might have caught yourself a winner.”
“I don’t think I caught anything,” I said. “He’s going to Arizona in a few days.”
“You going to the Freeway Exhibition?”
“Yes.” I rolled the coffee between my palms.
Every year, I looked forward to the game in the middle of the practice season. Every year, my hometown team played the team two hours south on the 5 freeway, and every year, one team creamed the other before they both went off to polish up for Opening Day.
This year, I didn’t look forward to it as much because it wasn’t about me sitting with Dad all summer and screaming at the TV. It wasn’t about sitting in the bleacher seats a few times during the summer. It was about Dash and me and what I could or couldn’t expect from him.
It shouldn’t have been a big deal all things considered. He’d come back.
“Right?” I said in a moment of insecurity before the season-opening dinner. “I mean, you live here. You’re not disappearing into a black void and never coming back.”
I’d been trying to talk about where we were going during the whole car ride and gotten my nerve up way too late.
“I don’t want you to worry about that,” he said, pulling up to the valet.
Guys in white shirts and black jackets opened our doors before I could press him.
He held his arm out for me, and I took it.
The dinner was at Joe Westlake�
�s place in Pacific Palisades. More money than God. Normally I’d have taken a moment to absorb the riches of the mansion. The view. The gardens. The opulence. But I couldn’t.
“You’ve been avoiding this,” I whispered. “Dash, I can’t. I can’t not know what’s happening.”
“Shortie!” Westlake called. He wore his bow tie and seersucker jacket. Same as always, except now he was just another thing between Dash and me.
Dash shook his hand and introduced me as if I mattered. So I must have.
Right?
I hated feeling like that. Hated the way the gourmet food tasted like plastic. Hated being jealous of all the other girlfriends and wives for knowing what would happen next, what they’d be doing, who they’d be seeing.
I almost wished we’d agreed to part ways when the season started. This felt somehow worse. The not knowing. The insecurity. I hadn’t thought this would feel like a bigger gamble, not because I didn’t have the stomach for him leaving but because he’d already been clear, from the beginning, he didn’t have the stomach for it.
“What’s wrong, sweetapple?” he asked softly in my ear.
What was wrong was three glasses of wine. He drove when we were together, and after I’d told him how my mother died, he stopped taking even a sip when he was behind the wheel. So at Joe Westlake’s house, I had one more than I should have. The nerves kept me from feeling tipsy until it was too late.
The property was a massive expanse of tight little gardens and concrete sections, all set with different chafing dishes from the best restaurants in Los Angeles. Nothing halfway. As usual. Third party like this in three weeks. It wasn’t boring, but all I wanted was to be alone with Dash. I touched him more than I should have, tightening my fingers around whatever part of his body was close, feeling the hardness of his muscles under his jacket, knowing what the force of them could do to my body.
“So you’re the schoolteacher?”
A woman. Raven-black hair and red lips. Black dress. Skin like porcelain and curves that needed a speed limit.
“Librarian.” I let Dash hold me up. He was talking to Gerry Jonson. Lot of numbers. Stats. I’d have kept up if this woman hadn’t assumed I didn’t want to hear it.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, sipping champagne from a flute. “How do you like being his good luck charm? Best thing ever, right?”
“Could be worse?”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I must have looked more conversational than incredulous, thanks to the wine, because she smiled comfortably and rolled her eyes.
“I know, right? The life.” She winked.
I smiled, but my chest cratered, opening from the center out, sand pouring in from the edges, wider and wider as the evening wore on until I thought I’d fall into it.
I was pretty sober by the time we got in the car. His hand rested on the gearshift, and I placed my hand over it.
“In a few days, you’re going,” I said.
He didn’t say anything.
“I know this was a hard limit for you. Maintaining this over the season.”
“Maintaining?” he snapped. “What’s that mean?”
Maybe the alcohol drain had left me vulnerable, or maybe the weight of all my denials had dropped on my shoulders, but I felt as if I’d been slapped. I had a ball of gunk to swallow, and I had to take my hand off his before he noticed it was shaking.
And of course.
Of course, of course.
That was the moment I realized I was in love with him.
thirty
Dash
I didn’t mean to snap at her, but I did, and I didn’t take it back. I didn’t soothe her. I didn’t grab her hand back when she took it away. I wanted to, but a high-minded part of myself stopped me.
Terror took over my body. The walls squeezing in on me. The season and her and everything I had to do to prepare and hadn’t. I was two years from free agency and could be traded at any time. Pulled out of the deck, paired with a third baseman and a relief pitcher for an inside straight or an outfielder for a winning hand. The disruption would kill me, especially if it happened in the middle of the season.
I had no control. None. Maybe she was shaking. Maybe she was upset when I snapped at her, but I’d been losing my shit for weeks. The moment she walked out, the moment I saw her again, and all the moments in between were a hell of anxiety.
“I can’t tell you what’s going to happen,” I said.
“You can tell me how you feel.”
“How I feel? I feel like the sky is eight feet over my head, a million tons and falling fast. I don’t know what you want from me, but I’m pretty sure I can’t give it to you. I tried. But I’m squeezed.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. I wondered if I could take it all back between now and the next traffic light. She was so soft, so vulnerable. I’d never do better than Vivian Foster, but the conversation was like quicksand. I was in up to the knees and getting sucked down.
“I don’t understand what this has to do with me,” she said, “or how I can help.”
Of course she wanted to help. She was that wonderful. I wanted to touch her. Take her home. Reveal the body under her clothes and crawl into it until her hurt was mine.
“I have my routines. If I break them, shit goes crazy. And already I’ve broken a lot. I have to put it back together. I have ADD, and I know everyone says they have it. Everyone blames the fact that they can’t pay attention on their ADD. Well, let me tell you this is different. Measurably different. I should be a failure at this sport. I shouldn’t be able to play, but I am. And the only way is through medication and managing my input and my distractions. I get up at the same time. I do the same things. I make sure that when I do something outside the routine, I’m prepared for it. The season is coming. I walk a tightrope six months out of the year. And I do it by keeping control of my environment. You turn my life upside down.”
“I get it.”
“You do?”
She nodded, and I took it at face value. I believed her. She was good. She understood. And that made the next suggestion seem sane and hopeful instead of insulting and demeaning.
“So we could just keep it geographic.”
“What does that mean?” She sounded hopeful, as if I’d thrown her to the wolves then told the wolves to take a cigarette break. I felt filthy.
“Well.” I had a moment to stop myself and say something else, but when I glanced at her, she looked so optimistic and beautiful I forgot who I was, and mostly, I forgot who she was.
Stop it, Dashiell. You’re going to lose her, and it’s going to hurt like fuck.
“We could do it this way.” Not being able to look at her while I drove made it easier to say. Stupidly easier. “I have mostly night games, and you’re off in the summer. I could fuck you senseless every afternoon I'm in LA.”
“And when you’re not in LA?”
I didn’t know what made me think she wouldn’t ask that or that it could be answered easily. Maybe I’d hoped she’d just know and be okay with it. But no. She was too smart for that, and I was too stupid to understand why.
“Well, when I’m not in LA—”
You’re really going to say it?
Dance around it.
Say but don’t say.
“Then we’re not together.”
“Meaning?”
Meaning she was going to make me say it.
Stand firm.
Everything is riding on this.
It hurts already.
“Meaning, I just… I have routines. Things I do to make sure I perform. And I can’t do them if we’re together.”
“Such as?”
Fuck it.
I came to a choice in the road, where I could go toward figuring us out or trying to go back to normal. I chose the hard-won routines that had made my career possible.
I continued south on Beverly Glen instead of turning east.
I knew that wasn’t just a direction on a com
pass. It was a decision made too quickly, under pressure, when all choices were cruel.
She didn’t look at me. When I glanced at the right side mirror to make a turn, I saw the back of her head. She lived close by, in her father’s house. He’d be there for her. That seemed important. If she was upset, she’d have someone who loved her better than I did because before it was even out of my mouth, I knew that even if she agreed to be my LA fuck, I wouldn’t do her the disrespect of allowing it.
“There are women I see,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything. Not like you do. But it’s a ritual, and I can’t stop because of you.”
“I see.”
“Look, you can’t come between me and what I’ve worked for my whole life. I love fucking you, but if I stop playing ball because of it—”
“I never told you to stop playing.”
“If I slump, I stop.”
“Everyone slumps.”
“I do not.” I roared it, pointing at her, leveling the truth. My truth.
If I stopped fucking pussy from the city I was playing, I stopped winning. I wasn’t turning back. Shit was going to get really blunt and really ugly if she pressed me. I was going to tell her where exactly I needed to come and how. Then she was going to cry.
God. This was a mistake. All of it. I hated anyone hurting her, and that night, I hated myself. I was repulsed by my own heart because it was small and mean and only had room for my own desires. I was a disgusting man.
“If I didn’t like you,” I softened it because I cared what she thought of me, “if I didn’t think about you every second of the day, I would have just left. But I can’t do this.”
“You intended this the whole time,” she said, looking out the side window.
“No. No, I didn’t.” I pulled up in front of her house.
