Out of His League

by Cathryn Parry

  He said nothing. Sat still, at her kitchen table. She bent over his splinted finger, and squinted into the light.

  She could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing, she was so close to him, their heads almost touching. She was horrified to find that she was matching her inhales and exhales to his.

  Stop it, she told herself. Switching into professional mode, she removed the bandages the surgical nurse had placed around Jon’s finger. The stitches beneath were small and even: expert. Typically, the residents stitched up the incision after the surgeon cut, but in Jon’s case, he had wanted to do everything himself, carefully and by the book; he’d even forbidden the team from playing music in the operating room.

  “Do you have any idea how much money this guy’s hands are worth?” Dr. Morgan had remarked to Elizabeth. At the time, she’d had no clue. Now, after watching that clip on television, she had a better idea.

  She kept her gaze on Jon’s finger, and on the sterile gauze and tube of antibiotic ointment she was opening. Jon said nothing, and that was worse than his teasing earlier in the night had been.

  He wasn’t throwing roadblocks in her way now. So why was she delaying sending him home?

  She drew in her breath. “Thank you for watching Brandon for me,” she said crisply, “but I see no reason for our continued acquaintance beyond tonight.” Her heart rate was elevated again, but she forced herself to continue. “I understand that Brandon and you may have formed an attachment, and I think that’s wonderful, but tomorrow Brandon goes home, and tomorrow you can take up the matter with my sister if you wish.”

  “I’m not interested in your sister,” he said quietly.

  “Don’t say that until you’ve met her,” she said beneath her breath.

  His ice-blue eyes seemed to bore into her. Seeing too much beneath the surface, more so than she was comfortable sharing with anybody.

  She made as much noise as possible, tearing at the packaging for the sterile gauze. Anything to distract herself from his presence.

  “Does she suck up all the attention, Liz?” Jon asked quietly.

  “What? No!” She jerked her gaze to him. “Stop questioning me. You have the wrong opinion of us.”

  “What’s wrong about it?”

  “You would like my sister. Everybody does.”

  “I’m not everybody.”

  He did not understand. “You in particular would like her, I mean.” Elizabeth slapped the bandage onto his hand. Or, she wanted to slap it on, but years of training betrayed her. Be gentle with the patients. “I’m saying that because right now she is helpless and in need of assistance, and you seem to be drawn to helpless women, one of which I am not.”

  He frowned, pulling back his hand. “You think you’re helpless with Brandon, don’t you?”

  “Did I say that?” she demanded. “Don’t put words in my mouth!”

  “You’re prickly.” He smiled. “I touched a nerve, didn’t I?”

  She really did not like him sitting so close to her, seeing too much inside her life. And yet, she had finished bandaging him and he wasn’t pulling away, despite what he saw of her. She leaned the tiniest bit closer, into his space again. It had to be the pheromones.

  She shook it off. Remembered why she was pushing him away. “You stayed here, Jon, and you took right over from me because you like being in situations where people are helpless. It allows you to be the hero. I can see it, and I don’t want that in my life. It goes against everything I’ve set up for myself.”

  He stared at her. “You are so wrong about me,” he blurted.

  Yes, she thought, that’s good. Get mad at me and then leave.

  But at the same time she felt sadness. She didn’t know why. Maybe she’d hoped he saw beyond the prickliness of her delivery into the truth of what she’d observed.

  She fought her own inner resistance. Pushed back from the table—from him—and grabbed the pizza box she’d bought him, which was quickly getting cold. She shoved it forward, against his chest. “Thank you for your assistance. Tomorrow I go back to my normal life and Brandon goes home to his. Please be careful driving home, and follow all the instructions on your postsurgical papers this time.”

  “I didn’t come here intending to help you with Brandon,” Jon said, standing to his full height and towering over her.

  “Maybe not,” she replied, looking up into his face, “but that’s the instinct that took over, isn’t it? Maybe subconsciously, that’s how you’re used to handling difficult situations.”

  Real anger flashed in his eyes.

  A textbook reaction—and she knew, because she’d completed a psychology rotation. Jon seemed to be experiencing classic denial symptoms.

  “Excuse me?” he said. “You don’t know me at all.”

  Perhaps, but she knew a textbook case. Psychology fascinated her. And why not answer his question? It’s not as if she would ever see him again after tonight.

  “You’re a pitcher, Jon, right? You play in the major leagues. That took years of training to attain—I’m assuming it was as long and as grueling as it was for me to become a doctor. I’m also assuming that in order for you to make the major leagues, and stay there, you have to love your sport the same way that I love my job. So if that had been me tonight in your shoes, I would have been watching that game very closely, and not at all caring about somebody else’s reaction to it. And yet, you weren’t even interested in watching that guy—Martinez, the ace pitcher—seeing how he did it. You were just staring at me.”

  “I’m friggin’ tired,” Jon said as he shoved the pizza box back at her, which was the first instance of hostility she’d seen from him. Maybe it was for the best. That meant he didn’t like her, either. That meant she had nothing to fear from him.

  “I had surgery and I was pumped full of chemicals today,” he continued. “Your chemicals.”

  She nodded vigorously, walking him toward the door. “And yet you came here to see us—to see Brandon. To help Brandon. As I said, you have a white-knight complex.”

  Those ice-blue eyes bored into hers. “Lady, you have no idea who I am.”

  Bull’s-eye, she thought. And it gave her no comfort to be right. That wasn’t why she was pushing him. Being prickly.

  “Why are you always so prickly?” Ashley often asked her.

  Because I want to be back on my own track away from everybody else, she silently answered.

  Jon Farell was...not good for that. He threatened her autonomy.

  She opened the door and stood beside it. She felt sad all of a sudden—lousy. Being prickly and irritable was not what she’d wanted. She was not a cruel person. But Jon was in her lair, and she wanted to be—needed to be—alone. She was yearning for it, in fact.

  “You’re right,” she said firmly to him. “I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. You were simply a patient to me. Please go and help somebody else.”

  He walked out and didn’t look back.

  Inside, she closed the door and leaned against it, her back to the cold, hard surface. Her hands were shaking as they curled around the edges of the now-cold pizza box. Her heart rate was elevated, and she appeared to be having palpitations.

  It was crazy, but a part of her still wanted him here with her.

  And she had blown that from ever happening again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SHE WAS DEAD wrong about him.

  His pulse throbbing in his neck, Jon yanked open his SUV door and fumbled with his key in the darkness in an attempt to start his engine. He had the key lined up, but damn it, he couldn’t turn it in the ignition easily with his right finger in a splint.

  White-knight complex? Give me a break. At the moment, he couldn’t even help himself out of a paper bag.

  Jon laid his head against the seat back and let the motor quietly run. Condensation covered the windows. It was a cool night after a warm day. Lizzy could probably explain the scientific reasoning behind the fog that blocked him from seeing where the hell he was.
In so many ways—education-wise, her doctor status, her aloofness to sports teams—she was out of his league. Made him feel inadequate. Tossed him around like nobody else did.

  He blew out a breath. He wasn’t an idiot. He was a self-aware person, smart enough to know that he’d been thrown for a loop over his cancer scare. That, and then the euphoria over learning he was cancer-free had sent him spinning, all in the course of a few hours.

  He’d wanted somebody to share his excitement and relief with, somebody genuine, a person who didn’t have any skin in the game with his career, and somebody who understood what he’d been going through. He’d thought that person had been her.

  Wrong. Lizzy wanted nothing to do with him, and she’d told him so from the moment he’d rung her doorbell. Maybe, for a brief time, he’d managed to change her mind. When Martinez had thrown his ninety-eight-mile-per-hour four-fingered fastball, low and in the corner, and had psyched out Bates into swinging too late, she had been hooked, and Jon had felt hope.

  But then...somehow her prejudices against him had kicked in, and the moment had gone to hell. He hadn’t managed the situation right at all. He’d blown it; he’d been the one to walk out in anger.

  No highs, no lows. The best fielding coach Jon had ever known had taught him that, early on during his rookie year in the minor leagues. Don’t get too far emotionally up, and don’t get too far emotionally down, the mantra meant, or you’ll ruin the game plan. If you wanted to win—at baseball and at life—then it was necessary to take everything as it came, with an even temper.

  He knew what he had to do. He felt calmer now. The windows were getting clearer.

  His stomach growled. He should have taken the pizza when he had the chance. Pride be damned, he was starving. Still, it wasn’t wise to go back up to Lizzy’s apartment to have her psychoanalyze him again, even if—in her defense—she was probably terrified over having him and Brandon inside her normally ordered, doctor world, and was making up theories in order to push him away.

  He was not drawn to helpless women. He never had been, and everyone knew it.

  He dug his phone from his pocket and scrolled the contact list to call up the number for Brooke. He would stay cool. His plan of action was clear: get your baseball life back on track.

  “Patch me through to Max,” Jon said to Brooke when she answered the phone. “I want a three-way call with all of us on board.”

  “What’s going on?” Max asked, his voice faint. “You’ve left me a few messages this evening.”

  “Yes, I have.” Jon’s SUV windows were clear now, so he pulled the Expedition out of the lot. “I need my contract signed for next season, and I need to get going on that as soon as possible.”

  “That’s...good. Brooke is sitting with me.” Max did sound weak. Why was that? “She was just about to send you a text message. Are you listening to radio sports talk?”

  “Ah...no. I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”

  “Jon...turn on the radio...and listen...”

  “Now,” Brooke said insistently. Jon could hear the radio playing in the background. “Turn it to SPK FM.”

  “Call us back in a few minutes.” Max disconnected the call.

  This was not good. But Max had never steered him wrong. Jon eased up on the accelerator and slowed for a traffic light.

  While the light was red, Jon took a swig of water from the bottle in his cup holder and then fumbled with the radio dial to find SPK. He would subject himself to the negativity for just one minute, and then he’d turn it off.

  “...he’s a local guy. What are you ragging on the local guy for, the only pitcher who won his last two games?”

  Jon almost spit out his water. That was Francis! His brother had called into the radio show. On top of everything else, this had to happen?

  Jon turned the volume louder.

  “...come on,” the radio host was saying. “Local or not, you can’t argue with his numbers. They’re terrible.”

  Great, Jon thought. The host’s gravelly voice made him sound like a tough guy, but Jon had met him in person. He was short, overweight and wore thick glasses. In high school gym class, he likely would have been picked last, every time. Maybe Lizzy would know if there was psychology that drew guys like him to working on these sports-team criticism shows.

  “Farell just did not have a good season,” the second sports host said. “I’m sorry, but you can’t spin the numbers. Overall, he was a disappointment to Boston fans this year.”

  That particular host had played in the big leagues. Jon actually respected his opinion, and that comment hurt.

  “But he won his last two games! You guys aren’t even considering that. It shows you don’t know anything. You don’t know what’s happening in that clubhouse,” Francis said again, spouting off, and Jon knew he had to do something, because this would not end well.

  When the light turned green, he hooked a left turn and drove the mile out of his way through thickly settled neighborhoods to his father’s house—Jon’s boyhood home—where Francis still lived in a bottom-floor apartment. Jon had even helped build and convert it for him. And when Jon got there, he would physically hang up the phone on his well-meaning but hotheaded younger brother, before he could do any real damage to Jon’s name.

  Fortunately, the show cut Francis off. Fuel added to their fire, the two hosts segued to a discussion about how they would like to dump the entire Captains starting-pitching rotation, front to back, and start over with new recruiting, because they thought that the existing attitudes were poisonous to the rest of the clubhouse.

  Jon switched off the radio. Talk like this could spark a revolution. The cries and calls from fans and press—especially in a big-market team like Boston—did affect management’s personnel strategy, as much as everyone liked to think it didn’t.

  This was worse for him than his evening’s troubles with Lizzy. He fumbled with his phone and dialed Francis’s number. “Don’t you ever do that again,” he said when Francis picked up.

  “I hate those jerks,” Francis sputtered.

  “Then why do you listen to them?”

  “How can you not listen to them?” Francis shouted.

  “Because it helps nobody,” Jon answered calmly. “Don’t you get it? They’re looking to cast blame. These guys live and die by their ratings, and they’ll be happy for any kind of outrage they can stir up to explain our lousy September—how we blew such a huge lead in the standings and lost so many games that we missed making the playoffs. If I were a fan, I’d be interested, too.”

  “Why did you lose so many games?”

  If Frankie was questioning him, then he was really in trouble.

  “In reality, Frankie, sometimes stuff like this just happens. For no reason. Okay? And then we deal with it and we move on.”

  “How are you dealing with it, Jon?”

  “By planning for the future. My agent and I have a plan.” Okay...not yet, but they would. “What I’m getting at is that I have to be irresistible to the team for next year so they’ll sign me again. And if people are bringing up my name in public in a bad way, then that can only hurt me. Do you understand, Frankie?”

  It was the bluntest speech he’d ever given Francis. There was silence on the other end of the phone. Hopefully, his brother was digesting the message.

  “Yeah, man,” Francis said, but in a smaller voice.

  “Look, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, man,” he said. “I appreciate you caring about me.”

  “I’m...sorry,” Francis said. He paused—it sounded like he was conducting a muffled conversation on the side. Jon couldn’t be sure, but he’d guess it was with a woman.

  A woman? With Francis? Since when?

  Jon glanced at a passing street sign. Just a few more blocks to go. “Don’t leave, okay?” Jon said, stepping harder on the accelerator. “I’m almost at the house. We’ll have a beer together in Dad’s kitchen when I get there.”

  “I’m, ah, not at home,” Fran
cis said.

  How could he not be at home? His life was at home. Him and their dad, home together every night after work. Why did Jon get the feeling that his life was quicksand all of a sudden?

  “Where are you, Frankie? Do you want me to drive over and pick you up?”

  “No, Jonny, I’m good. I just...don’t know what I’ll do if you lose your place with the Captains, okay? It’s...it’s...” He lowered his voice. “It’s the best thing in my life.”

  Jon gripped his hand on the steering wheel. There was something just so sad about that statement. Did his brother really believe that?

  Yeah, he did. And if Jon were honest, it had been that way since childhood. That, at least, hadn’t changed.

  “It will be okay, Frankie,” he said quietly. “You’ll see. Everything will turn out.”

  “I have to go,” Francis mumbled. “I’ll see you on the weekend, okay?”

  Before Jon could answer, the call disconnected.

  He tossed the phone on the seat. But now, he was there, at their dad’s house. Jon slowed the SUV to a stop.

  The porch was lit by a single bulb, and in the diminished light, the place didn’t look much different from when he was ten and Francis was eight. Back then, Jon had the weight of the world on him, because nobody in his family could pull themselves up from their sadness and their grief without his encouragement. He’d cajoled and helped his brothers and his dad every step of the way. And it had eaten at him. Some days, Jon didn’t know how they were going to all make it through to the end—himself included.

  A car came up behind him, high beams bouncing off Jon’s rearview mirror. The single lane street was narrow, lined on both sides by parked cars, so Jon had to either pull his SUV over or drive on.

  Shaking off the maudlin feelings, he executed a quick maneuver and backed the Expedition into the empty on-street spot beside the driveway. There was a pecking order with neighborhood parking spaces, and the local owners and tenants knew enough to leave this particular space open—for him or for his brother Bobby—or else face the pain of Francis’s wrath raining down on them. Not that Jon insisted on the spot remaining open—but Francis did. And they were a family, so Jon embraced it.