“Or maybe everything happens for a reason,” he says. “That should be a law, too.”
“Kessler’s Law,” I say.
He nods proudly. “I like the sound of that.”
I laugh and then my hand comes up to cradle the left side of my face.
“Hurts when you laugh, huh?”
“When I laugh. When I smile. When I talk. Pretty much when I do anything except watch TV.”
He gives me a look and then picks up the remote control and points it at the TV, turning it on. When he sees what channel it was turned to, a triumphant smile overtakes his face. He winks at me. “I’ll make a baseball lover out of you yet.”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “It seems kind of pointless. Most of the time when someone hits the ball, it gets caught. And sometimes a guy can swing a bunch of times before anything happens. I’m sorry, but it’s kind of boring.”
“Boring?” He grabs his chest like he’s having a heart attack as he backs up and falls into the chair in the corner. “You just invalidated my entire existence.”
I wince from the guilt. “I’m really sorry. But obviously tons of other people like it. The stands were full.”
“Yeah. Saturday games always get a great turn out.”
My phone vibrates next to me. I look to see it’s my agency calling. I check the time. Why are they calling me on a Saturday night?
“I’m sorry,” I tell Caden. “It’s my agency, I need to take this.”
My shaky finger swipes across the screen before I say, “Hello?”
Chapter Five
Caden
When she answers the phone, I take a moment to look around her room. Other than the flowers I sent, there isn’t any evidence that anyone else has been here. No well-wishing balloons. No get-well cards. No teddy bears. Nothing.
One thing’s for sure. Tony is a deadbeat asshole.
“It’s really not that bad,” Murphy says to whoever is on the phone.
“Well, yes, it’s broken, but—”
The person on the phone cuts her off, but I’m not close enough to hear what they are saying.
“Yes, that’s right,” Murphy says. “I will need to have surgery. But how do you know all this? Did you call the hospital? I didn’t think they were allowed to give information.”
“Who? One of my roommates?”
At this point in her conversation, the one beautiful blue eye I can see wells up with tears.
“Eight weeks, maybe less, but the doctor swears I will be able to cover the scar with makeup.”
Her tears spill over and stream down her cheeks. She’s trying to hold it together, but I can hear her voice cracking.
“Are you sure? Maybe if I—”
Apparently, she was cut off again. She nods as she listens, then she wipes her nose with her sleeve. “Okay. I’ll call you then. Thank—” She pulls the phone away from her ear and looks at it. Then she throws it across the room, shattering the screen.
While she sobs on the bed, I walk over to the phone and pick it up, shoving it in my pocket. I go into the bathroom and let her have a few moments to herself.
When I return, she’s sniffing and wiping her eye. “They’re horrible. Every one of them. Why did I think any of them even cared about me?”
“Who?”
“My agent. My roommates.” She shakes her head in disgust. “My agent wouldn’t come right out and say it, but I know it was one of my roommates who called her. How else would she know I was injured? It was probably Tori. She’s always had it out for me. But to be honest, I think any one of them would have called my agent if it meant they would have a shot at stealing my job.”
“Your roommates sound wonderful.”
“They are anything but,” she says. “But I had no choice. I didn’t know anyone when I moved here six months ago. There was an internet site that put aspiring models in touch with each other and that’s how I found them.”
“Where did you move from?”
“Iowa.”
“That’s a long way,” I tell her. “You must miss home.”
She shrugs. “Not really. I mean, I miss my mom. But most of my friends got married and moved away. And when Kelly … well, there’s just nothing left for me there. It was always a dream of mine to live in New York City and I did some modeling in high school and really liked it, so I thought, what the heck.”
“Going after your dreams. I like that. Most people would never have the courage to take that big a chance.”
She looks around the room. “Yeah, well, look where it got me.”
I feel like shit knowing I’m the cause of her misfortune. And she doesn’t even know about Tony yet.
As if reading my mind, she says, “And Tony still hasn’t shown up today.” She looks sadly at the clock. “He hasn’t even called. And now my phone is broken so I won’t be able to talk to him when he does.”
I hate to hit a girl when she’s down, but she needs to know. I sure as hell am not going to be the one to tell her, however. I pull out my phone and tap the screen a few times. “Here, look at this,” I say. “I got someone at the office to send me this video. You might not be ready to watch it, but it’s footage of my ball hitting you.”
She looks up in surprise. “It is? And you can see it?”
I nod. “Yes. The cameras always follow home run balls to see what the crowd does. It might be hard to watch, so don’t feel like you have to.”
“No. I want to,” she says, tapping the screen to play it. She watches the close-up of the ball hitting her face and knocking her out of her seat. “Oh, my gosh, it happened so quickly, it was hard to really see it.”
I tap on the screen to replay the video. “Here, you can slow it down if you want.” I show her how to do it.
She watches it in slow motion. She watches it several times. When her jaw drops and she says, “What the …” I know she saw it. She watches it a few more times. Then I snatch the phone away from her.
“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t want you throwing my phone across the room.”
“That fucking bastard!” she yells.
I go over and shut the door to her room, knowing it might not be the last curse word she yells. I know this, because I know what she saw on the video. I know she saw herself looking at her phone before the ball hit her. I also know she saw Tony run his hand down another girl’s cheek as the girl looked at him and touched him back in a way you don’t touch a guy if he has a girlfriend.
“That cheating bastard!” she yells. “And Kirsten. My own goddamn roommate. How dare she do that to me. What a slut.” She covers her head with her hands. “How could I have been so gullible? He said he loved me.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, pouring and offering her a cup of water. “Did you love him?”
“Yes. No.” She shrugs noncommittally. “I don’t know. I thought I did. He was always so nice to me. How was I with him for almost four months without seeing what a bastard he was?”
“Guys are good at hiding that sort of thing. Trust me, I know. There are plenty of guys on my team who have wives or girlfriends, yet they hook up with random girls when we travel. Hell, some even have a girlfriend in every city we visit.”
“Do you?” she asks. “Have a girlfriend in every city?”
I shake my head. “I don’t do girlfriends.”
“Oh, so you’re a player,” she says in disgust. Who can blame her given what she just discovered about her boyfriend.
I laugh. “No, Murphy. I’m not. I’m not saying I’m celibate either, but I’m also not looking for a girlfriend. In fact, quite the opposite. I rarely ever date the same woman more than a few times.”
“Sounds like the definition of a player,” she says.
“It might be if I went on a lot of dates. I don’t. I think I’ve only been on a dozen or so this year.”
She cocks her head to the side, studying me. “You’ve only been on twelve dates this entire year?”
“Or so,” I tell her. “
I guess I’m picky.” I don’t tell her the real reason. I don’t tell her I’m afraid of being trapped. Of being played for what I am instead of being loved for who I am.
“I guess I should start being a little pickier myself.” She lets her head fall back against the pillow as she sighs deeply. “What am I going to do? I have to go home tomorrow and face them. Face Kirsten. I just lost my job so I won’t be able to pay the rent. I stupidly quit my waitressing job, so Joe will never hire me back. I’ve made a mess of things.”
“Murphy, none of this is your fault. Tony is a douchebag and better you found that out now. Your roommates are back-stabbing sluts who you shouldn’t be living with. You have a few choices here. You could go back to Iowa, which you already said isn’t an option. Or you can make the best of the situation. You need to find a job and maybe another place to live.”
“Nobody is going to hire me looking like this.” She points to her face as if to add emphasis.
“Maybe not today, but my brother-in-law, Kyle—he’s a doctor here in the hospital—he said that after surgery, your appearance will rapidly improve, but you’ll have some restrictions about lifting things and leaning over. That may mean being a waitress is off the table for a while, but maybe there is something else we can come up with.”
“We?” she asks, skeptically.
“This is my fault, Murph. If there is any way I can help you, you can bet I’m going to do it.”
She looks at me sideways.
“What?” I ask.
“You called me Murph,” she says.
“Is that bad?”
“It’s just, nobody calls me that anymore. Only my mom and some of my childhood friends.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
She smiles. “No, it’s okay. I kind of like it. It reminds me of some good times in my life.”
“Well then, Murph,” I say with a teasing smile. “Tell me all about your job qualifications and we’ll see if we can come up with a plan.”
Chapter Six
Murphy
There are some advantages to not having a phone. Such as not being able to call my douche of an ex and scream at him. And not being able to text Kirsten and tell her what a slut she is. And not stupidly calling my agent, begging for any scrap of a job they would throw my way, even after she told me not to call until I was completely healed. In all those cases, I’m sure I would have said things I would later regret.
I still can’t wrap my head around what has happened to my life in a matter of two days.
I still can’t believe in a few hours, I have to go home and face my roommates. Maybe even face him—the douchebag ex.
Dr. Benson said I’m free to go today. He wants to see me again on Thursday to see how much the swelling has gone down, then he’ll decide on when to do my surgery. So, I’m pretty much out of commission for the next two weeks. What little savings I have will be quickly eaten up.
I was sure to keep enough money on hand for a plane ticket back to Iowa if I ever needed it. It was a crutch. A safety net. And, ironically, if I ever needed a crutch, a safety net, or a plane ticket out of here, it would be right now.
But something Caden said last night reminded me of what Kelly used to say. He said most people would never have the courage to go after their dreams. Kelly was the one who was always encouraging me to move to New York. She told me to not wait, because you never know what might happen in life. And in some sick, twisted, prophetic way, she was proven right.
Maybe this is my test. The hurdle I have to overcome to get what I want out of life. Maybe I need to give up the crutch and commit myself one hundred percent to making it on my own in the city I’ve always dreamed of.
A phone rings, plucking me from my thoughts, and I turn towards the sound to see Caden standing in my doorway. He looks at his phone and says, “Your mom is calling.”
He hands me the phone and I look down at it to see my mother’s face on the screen. I look up at him, confused. “What?”
He nods to the phone. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“Uh, no,” I say, looking at him like he’s crazy. “And why is my mom calling your phone. And why do you have her listed as ‘Mom’?”
“She’s not calling my phone. She’s calling your phone.”
“My phone?” I look over to the corner of the room where I threw my phone last night and see that it’s missing. “I don’t understand.”
“I took your broken phone in and had it replaced. Luckily, they were able to transfer all your contacts and data.”
My jaw drops. “You got me a new phone?”
“It was the least I could do, Murph.”
I try not to smile at his use of my nickname. “But I can’t possibly pay you back right away. Those things are expensive.”
“It’s my treat, considering I’m the reason you broke it in the first place.”
I scold him with my stare. “Caden, I wish you’d quit saying that. It wasn’t your fault.”
He shrugs off my words. “I hope you don’t mind, I added a new contact.”
I look down and scroll through my short list of contacts to see one labeled ‘#8.’
“What’s number eight?” I ask.
He walks over to the pile of gifts he brought me on Friday and pulls out the jersey, turning it around. On the back, it has Caden’s last name and under it, the number 8.
“Oh,” I say, embarrassed that I didn’t even pay enough attention to realize that was his jersey, and number eight was his number.
He chuckles. “You really do hate baseball, don’t you?”
“I don’t hate it, I just don’t understand it. It’s like physics—another subject I don’t know anything about but also seems complicated and useless.”
“Are you calling baseball complicated and useless? I think Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson just rolled over in their graves.”
“Who are Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson?”
A rich, throaty laugh bellows out of him. “Oh, Lord. I guess I have a lot to teach you.” He walks over to put the jersey down and pick up the tickets. “And I’m going to start teaching you on the 29th. That’s when you’ll come to a game.”
He hands me the tickets and I look at them as if they will bite me. I vehemently shake my head back and forth until my face protests in angry pain.
He must see the horror in my expression. He puts a hand on my arm to calm me. “Don’t worry, Murph. These are VIP tickets. You’ll be in a suite. Behind glass walls.”
I breathe out an audible sigh. “Oh, okay.” I shrug. “I’ll have to see.”
“What’s there to see?” he asks. “There will be free food, free booze, and no possible chance of getting hit by my home run ball.”
My lips turn up into a small smile. “You sound pretty confident. Do you hit one every game?”
“Ha! I wish. Let’s see, we play about one hundred and sixty-two games a season. This season is almost over and I just hit my twenty-sixth home run. That’s far from hitting one every game. Even the best home-run hitters don’t usually hit more than forty to fifty a season.” He smiles proudly. “And there you go, your first baseball lesson.”
“Lesson?” I ask.
He nods. “I’ve made it my mission to make you a fan. And to do that, you need to learn the game.”
“Isn’t that what Google is for?” I ask.
He furrows his brows. “Learning baseball from the internet? No way, you have to do it in person.” He points to the tickets in my hand. “And you can start in three weeks.”
I study the tickets. The game will be a couple weeks after my surgery. Dr. Benson said my face will be much better by then. And I’ll probably need the free food considering I’ll be living on ramen noodles until I can find a job. But then I realize there are two tickets. I don’t have someone I can take with me. Not anymore. There is not a single person in New York City that I can call my friend.
I am so pathetic.
I hand the tickets back to him. “It woul
d be too awkward. I don’t have anybody to bring with me.”
He gets out his phone and taps on the screen a few times. Then he pours me a cup of water. Then his phone vibrates and he reads his text and smiles.
“I have a sister, Lexi. She’s two years older than me and she loves baseball. She’ll go with you.”
“Your sister? What? No, I couldn’t possibly—”
He shoves his phone at me and makes me read the text. “It says right here she would love to. Trust me, you don’t want to disappoint my sister. She’s married to a doctor and has two little kids, so you can believe it when I tell you she needs a night out.”
“I … I guess. If you really think it wouldn’t be a bother.”
“There’s not a doubt in my mind. You’ll love her. Lexi is great.”
“Lexi is a beautiful name. How old is she?”
He gives me a cocky smile. “It’s short for Alexa. And is that your way of asking me how old I am, Murphy Brown?”
“Uh, no,” I say, sure a blush is creeping up my face.
Maybe.
Okay, yes.
But only because he’s the only MLB player I’ve ever met and I’m curious.
“And who’s Murphy Brown?”
“You don’t watch many reruns, do you?” He laughs. “Anyway, Lexi is twenty-seven and that makes me twenty-five. And now that you know my age, you have to tell me yours.”
“I’m twenty-three.”
“Good to know,” he says. He points to my new phone. “I want you to text me and let me know when you get scheduled for surgery. I’m heading out of town this afternoon and won’t be back for almost a week.”
“You want me to text you?” I stare at him like he’s crazy. Even though I don’t like baseball, I understand that he must be somewhat of a celebrity. I mean, after he left the past few times, the nurses were going crazy over the fact that he was here. Why would he want me to text him? Doesn’t he get texts from hundreds of people every day?
“Yes. I do.” He taps his pocket where his phone resides. “If you don’t, I’ll just have to call you. Or get my brother-in-law to break the rules and look at your records for your home address.”
Catching Caden (The Perfect Game Series) Page 3
