Reed fell in step next to him as they headed back to the clubhouse. “Shit. Didn’t that happen to you years ago?”
“Don’t remind me.”
Reed shrugged. “Okay,” he said simply.
And maybe nothing was simple, and it definitely wasn’t okay, but somehow it felt a little less awful.
THEY WON THEIR GAME, the only semi-decent part of an otherwise crappy day in the life of Tyler Ashe. Afterward, Joanna Liu and a number of other reporters were allowed into the clubhouse to shove microphones in the players’ faces to ask how it felt to end a six-game losing streak.
“It’s fantastic,” Ty said, robotically. “Always great to win at home, to give the fans something to cheer about.”
“What do you think changed today?”
Across the room, Gwen passed Strip the page of talking points, waiting warily as he read. Ty knew he shouldn’t watch her, shouldn’t want her, but it was impossible to look away.
“Um...” He cleared his throat. “Nothing changed. We just need time to gel together as a team. We’re, uh, we’re working on it.”
“Is that why everyone’s a member of Reed’s Readers?”
“That, and we all love to read, Joanna. You should join the group.” He smiled into the camera as he spelled out the website address. At his locker nearby, Reed gave a cheesy grin and a thumbs up.
“What he said,” he called.
“On a different note,” Joanna continued, clearly not wanting to join Reed’s Readers. “All-Star voting opens up tomorrow. You’ve started the game at short for the past three years—what are your hopes?”
Ty cringed inwardly at the mention of the All-Star Game, when fans voted their favorite players onto the roster for a one-night showcase of the best of the best in the league. He’d been a shoo-in for years, and now he knew he had no shot. Not only had the Thrashers gotten off to a brutal start, his own numbers were far less than impressive.
Gwen had slipped up behind Joanna and now mouthed a response to the question that didn’t involve any of the four-letter words Ty really wanted to use.
“My hope is for a great game,” Ty said with a smile he didn’t feel. “It’s always a fun time, and I can’t wait to watch.”
Joanna pounced. “Watch? Because you won’t be playing?”
“I can’t predict the future. But whatever happens, I’ll be okay. Thanks for your time.”
Ty turned back to his locker and heard Gwen step in, doing what Allison normally did when the reporters lingered and ushering them out of the clubhouse so the players could relax.
Of course he knew he wouldn’t be on the All-Star roster forever, just like he knew he wouldn’t be MVP every year or bring home a dozen World Series rings. It didn’t mean he liked the reminder.
“I’m going to vote for you,” Ibanez said, strolling past, buck naked, on his way to the shower. “I voted for you last year, the year before, and the year before. I’ve been voting for you since I was a kid.”
Ty tried not to smile. “You’re still a kid.”
“What about me?” Reed demanded. “You get what, five votes a day? And you waste them all on this guy?”
“Forget them,” Shawnee Lewis said, holding a towel around his hips. “Vote for me.”
Jae-Hwa Kim elbowed his interpreter, who piped up, “Please vote for Jae-Hwa too.”
“Vote for everyone on this team, motherfucker!” Girardi shouted. “You owe us for walking around with your dong out all the time.”
“That’s my gift to you,” Ibanez replied, shaking his hips.
The whole clubhouse gagged and covered their eyes, but somehow, Ty found himself smiling.
Almost instinctively, he glanced toward the closed clubhouse doors, knowing Gwen was somewhere on the other side. He grabbed his phone and started typing, then stopped.
Some things you had to do in person.
“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS,” Gwen said when she opened her door to find Ty on the other side. It was nearly midnight, and she’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt, but he’d seen the light on in the living room and knew she hadn’t been sleeping.
“Can I come in?”
“Why?”
“To talk.”
“We already talked, remember?”
Ty glanced around, in case a nosy neighbor was listening. “Please?”
Gwen huffed. “This better not be a booty call.”
“It’s not. Unless you convince me.”
“Ha.” But she stepped back to let him in.
He slipped out of his shoes and took a seat on the couch. The television was dark, and her laptop sat open on the ottoman. “You’re still working?”
“That’s my job.”
“Want to watch Baking Bonanza?”
“Don’t you have a television at home?”
He shot her a cautious smile. “I have four.”
She rolled her eyes but passed him the remote as she picked up her laptop. He was about to turn on the TV when he spotted the old magazine that had been hidden under the computer.
“What’s this?” he asked, even though he knew. Even though he’d recognize it anywhere. Smashed by Tyler Ashe! shouted the square in the corner of the cover, along with the picture of the brunette who’d secretly recorded their encounter then blackmailed him to keep the video private. Not that it had stopped her from selling every detail of their night together, some true, some less so. The fact that she’d been generous with her compliments didn’t ease the sting of the betrayal.
“What are you doing?” he asked, picking up the magazine between two fingers, like a dead mouse. It automatically opened to the first page of the salacious article.
“Working.” Gwen gestured to her laptop. The three stills from the email were on her screen, and even though she’d been up close and personal with his naked body yesterday, it was still humiliating to see them there.
Ty’s cheeks burned. “Would you close that?”
She minimized the windows. “Sorry. Allison asked us to review the photos to see if there’s anything in them to indicate when the tape was made.”
Ty felt his insides curdle. There were a lot of reasons not to get involved with staff members, but so the woman he’d slept with didn’t have to research a previous woman he’d had sex with hadn’t crossed his mind. “And?”
“And I remembered that article. There’s a line where she said, ‘Even though he’d gotten hit with a pitch earlier in the day, it didn’t stop him from picking me up and—’” She broke off. “Well, anyway, I looked up that game and you got hit on the left arm. And in this photo...” She brought up the shot of him sleeping, his left arm visible. Even in the grainy image, the dark blur on his bicep was clear, if you knew what to look for. “You have a bruise.”
“It’s the same person? But she—”
“Well, it’s the same tape,” Gwen corrected. “We don’t know if it’s her. Legal hired an investigator to look into it.”
Ty dropped the magazine and wiped his hands on his thighs. “Jesus. What a mess. One night that’ll haunt me forever.”
Gwen closed the laptop. “Yeah. No kidding.”
He glanced at her. “I’m sorry about this morning. Asking if you...”
“I know. It’s okay. I get it. Your life is really fucked up.”
Ty thought about what Reed had said earlier, about how hard it was to find someone to trust. He didn’t have many friends. His best friend was in prison and wouldn’t speak to him. He’d grown distant from his teammates. Everyone else he knew, he paid. Except Gwen. Who, even after the fight in a janitor’s closet, was awake at midnight, trying to find a reason to believe him. Believe in him.
“I really didn’t come here for sex,” he said.
“Good.”
“But I do want to watch Baking Bonanza.”
She smiled. “I know. You’re obsessed with Todd.”
“Well, I hate him.”
Ty turned on the TV and leaned back to watch the show. Beside him, Gwen
did the same, crossing her ankles on the ottoman, long legs distracting him from the entremets cakes the bakers were preparing. He studied her from the corner of his eye.
Maybe Todd wasn’t the only reason he’d come.
CHAPTER 13
“OKAY,” ALLISON SAID, glowering over the top of her dark-rimmed glasses. Brandon and Chad squirmed anxiously in their seats, but Gwen was still buzzing over the secret, sexy events of the past two days. Nothing could bring her down, not even a surprise mid-afternoon meeting in the ninth floor’s too-small, too-hot boardroom, with the baseball game playing outside and her not watching it.
One of the problems with not having any friends was that there was no one to tell she’d now officially had the best sex of her life. With Tyler Ashe. And then watched baking shows. With Tyler Ashe. Instead, the news stayed bottled up inside, where it was safe and best kept, burning a fizzy hole in her chest while she pretended to take notes, forcing her hand to write actual words, not just silly schoolgirl doodles.
She tuned in as best she could as Brandon outlined his suggestions for ways to get fans to cast their votes for Thrashers players to be selected to the American League All-Star team, and while each team would have at least one representative, three of the five Thrashers players who had gone last year had been traded in the off-season, one was in prison, and the other was struggling to fight his way out of a three-month slump.
“Well, that was discouraging,” Allison said, breaking Gwen out of her reverie. “At least the basket auction is on track. Gwen—you’ve got the items?”
“Ah, yes.” She stopped drawing a baseball shaped like a heart. “Almost everyone’s basket is done.”
“Who’s the holdout? Let me guess—Ashe.”
She hesitated, feeling guilty. “Yes.”
“Well, you’re popular in the clubhouse these days. See if you can’t inspire Ty to dream up some basket items. I want his list tonight.” Allison squinted at her phone. “Last item on the agenda,” she said. “Management has decided that the Thrashers need a new slogan. The ‘Hit It’ campaign has run its course, and, if you’ve been paying any attention whatsoever, you know the #hitit hashtag has become a joke. It’s time for something new.”
Brandon held up a hand. “How about—”
“No,” Allison said curtly. “They’ve decided that it would be a fun idea to open up the slogan pitch campaign to the entire organization. Each department is responsible for brainstorming new slogans, selecting the best one, and presenting it at a meeting later this season.”
Gwen narrowed her eyes suspiciously. The Thrashers, like all major companies, paid an advertising company millions of dollars to do exactly this type of work. The only thing this “fun idea” accomplished was saving management money.
As though she’d been thinking the same thing but had to put a spin on it, Allison sipped her water and squared her shoulders. “Obviously,” she said, “we need to win. It would be extremely embarrassing for the department responsible for promotions to lose to the accountants. That said, we’re also hugely overworked and under-staffed.”
Gwen breathed a sigh of relief.
“So,” Allison continued. “We’ll use our best resource: the fans. Rather, our access to them. We’ll make a public call for submissions, and choose the best one for our presentation. With the way the season has been going, fan attendance and engagement is way down, so this is a way to get them engaged again. We’ll dream up some type of prize later.”
Gwen had a tiny panic attack as she thought of all the negative comments the Thrashers social media accounts already received, without soliciting them. Opening themselves up to input was like asking to be flayed alive. Only an idiot—
Allison typed a note into her phone. “Gwen, you’ll be in charge of monitoring and filtering the submissions. You have six weeks. Make a list of the best ten, narrow it down to three, and decide from there. I’ll make the final presentation to the board.”
Gwen opened her mouth to protest, all the fizzy goodness in her chest evaporating. She’d lowered her wary guards for just a moment and this horrible task had slipped in.
“A new email account has already been set up,” Allison added. “I’ve emailed you with the parameters of the task, so you should have everything you need. You’re all dismissed.”
Gwen returned to her desk and stared out the window at the game below, one of the few things in life she’d ever truly loved. She didn’t like management’s approach to the slogan project, but she couldn’t deny that the #hitit hashtag had run its course. What was also undeniable was that opening yourself up to input often got you far more than you were actually ready for.
“This job was way more fun last year,” Chad muttered, filling his water bottle. “And I still hated it.”
“That’s because they were winning last year,” Brandon reminded him. “This year it’s a whole different, well, ball game.” He turned to Gwen. “What do you think Ashe will put in his basket?”
She tugged on her ponytail. She didn’t know what to make of the blurred lines of their relationship. She didn’t want Ty to think she was using their...friendship...to improve her job performance, but she couldn’t shy away from doing her job because of whatever they had going. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a split personality, and didn’t know how to be one person with him away from the field, and another in the clubhouse. “I don’t know,” she said, meaning it in too many ways to count. “What did he do last year? I spent so much time hunting down Korean milk and Italian pasta that I forgot about him.”
“You forgot about Tyler Ashe?” Chad laughed. “How’s that even possible in this building? In this city?”
Gwen hid a flinch. If they only knew.
On her monitor, the man of the hour approached the plate for his third at-bat of the afternoon. It was the eighth inning, the game was scoreless, and the fans were antsy. Shawnee Lewis had walked to start the inning, Reed had popped out in foul territory, and they needed to get something going. Lewis danced off first, trying to get a decent lead, and Ty took a few practice swings before stepping into the box to face the Yankees’ 6’4” relief pitcher.
Even from up here, Gwen could feel the energy in the stadium, the thrum of twenty thousand fans on their feet, cheering. Attendance was way down this year, but twenty thousand people doing anything was still infectious. She watched on the monitor as the pitcher wound up and threw, the ball spinning toward home plate at a hundred miles per hour. Then, instead of swinging, Ty turned, squared up, and bunted.
The gasp in the stands was audible. Or maybe that was just her.
The ball bounced softly off the barrel of the bat and rolled down the first base line. The Yankees were as unprepared for the bunt as the fans, and the first baseman was too far back to have a play. The pitcher regained his balance and charged the ball, bare handing it and firing to first, but Ty crossed the bag half a second before. Lewis was safe on two, and the stadium exploded.
“What did we just see?” the announcers asked each other. “Did Tyler Ashe bunt? When was the last time that happened?”
Gwen didn’t need to research the stats to know the answer. It had been four years since Ty’s last bunt.
Bunting was not an uncommon occurrence in the major leagues, but it was a task mainly reserved for hitters lower in the batting order. The guys in the three, four and five spots were there for a reason—to hit. They typically had the most power, the most home runs, and the most runs batted in.
“A bunt base hit from Tyler Ashe,” the announcer mused. “After last year’s impressive numbers, that is not something I expected to see.”
“And neither did the Yankees,” his co-host agreed. “They’re stunned. And for the first time all afternoon, the Thrashers have a runner in scoring position.”
The camera panned to Shawnee Lewis, who was doubled over with laughter at second, and Ty, who was deep in conversation with the first base coach, hand over his mouth to stop the cameras from catching his lip moveme
nts.
“What do you think?” the announcer asked as the camera cut to Strip, standing on the dugout steps, his expression inscrutable. “Did Strip make the call?”
“No way Rex Stripley ordered Tyler Ashe to bunt!” the other announcer replied. “I’d bet my year’s salary on it.”
“What do you guys think?” they asked the fans. “We’ll put a poll online, so let us know your thoughts. Did Strip give the go-ahead to bunt? And if not—or even if so—was it the right move? Do you want to see Tyler Ashe bunt? Weigh in now!”
Gwen kept one eye on the poll graphic in the corner of the screen and one eye on the game. The fans went crazy when Strip replaced the number four hitter, Escobar, with Ibanez, their best pinch hitter. In six pinch hit appearances so far this season, Ibanez had come up with two doubles and a home run.
The catcher jogged out to the mound to talk to the pitcher, likely going over the signs so Lewis at second couldn’t relay them to Ibanez.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Gwen muttered, chewing on a fingernail.
“Don’t bite your nails.” Chad leaned over the wall to squint at the game out the window. “Your finger will rot off.”
“That’s not—” Gwen stopped talking as Ibanez followed Ty’s lead and went after the first pitch, hitting a hard grounder through the hole on the right side. The second baseman dove, but the ball was well hit and bounced past. Lewis, the fastest guy on the team, broke on contact and was rounding third before the right fielder even had the ball. He made it home without a throw and for the first time in too long, the Thrashers had the lead.
The fans were on their feet, the roar echoing inside the building. Gwen, Chad and Brandon were also standing, noses pressed to the glass.
“That’s a good thing, right?” Chad asked. “That the guy touched the white thing?”
“I don’t know,” Brandon replied, scratching his chin. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen it happen.”
“Gwen, have you already found a slogan?” Allison asked as she approached the elevators. “Is that why you have time to gossip?”
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