Throwing Curves

by Carly Keene

  “If you came on my cock right now, that might be even sexier.”

  “You want me to come, Jock Boy?”

  “I think you mean Cock Boy.”

  And that does it. She laughs once, then throws her head back and grinds faster, crying out pleasure. I feel it when she comes. And then she rises up just far enough to slip my prick inside her, and rides me, our hands clasped hard together. It lasts a long time, and we finish together this time.

  I pull her down beside me and into my arms.

  “Stay,” she says, before I fall asleep.

  Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.

  We wake once more in the night, chilled until we get under the covers. We talk this time, caressing each other gently, letting our desire build slow this time. Marisha talks about how crazy her parents still are about each other, and how they were always sneaking off for a “nap” on Sunday afternoons which was not really a nap. I talk about my parents being rock-solid for each other and for me and my sisters. We talk about old boyfriends and girlfriends, and how they were never really right for us.

  We talk about our dreams, too. I really think I’m going to get called up soon—my pitching coach says so. Manager says he’s expecting it. My buddy Luis says he wouldn’t be surprised. Marisha wants to move to a bigger city and build a career for portrait photography.

  “Are you a fastball guy, or what?” she asks. “I don’t know that much about baseball, but I’ve seen some with my dad.”

  “Both,” I say. “My pitching coach showed me a technique a couple of weeks ago that’s making a huge difference in my ball speed. My fastball is topping 100 these days. I have a curve as well, about 20 mph off the fastball but still pretty speedy.” Then I start laughing. “Shit. Your curves are better than mine. And they really throw me.”

  I can hear her rolling her eyes even in the dark.

  “Stop laughing. You liked what I said.”

  “Maybe,” she says, tracing little circles on my chest.

  “If I get called up,” I say, “you could maybe go with me.” She doesn’t answer, but her fingers don’t stop either. “It could happen.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No, it could,” I insist.

  She just snuggles closer, her hair fragrant and soft on my chest.

  “Come to my game tomorrow night?”

  “Okay,” she says, so quietly it’s like a breath.

  The game goes well. Really well. I peek out from the dugout in the first inning, looking for Marisha. Row B, in the section behind the plate—and she’s wearing a Broadway jersey in Rowdies red and black, which she must have bought herself. I get a stiffie right there on the bench, glad I don’t have to wear a cup like Luis does. (I probably should. I don’t. It messes with my wind-up.) I wave. She waves back.

  I throw fourteen strike-outs in the first six innings.

  Yeah.

  My teammates give me fist bumps. The team manager gives me a smiling nod. I pitch through seven good innings, and then I get sent to the showers, since Jose has decided to switch to the relief pitcher and save my arm. We’re up 7 runs to 1, and it’s good odds.

  I’ve barely finished my shower when Jose sticks his head into the locker room and gives me the news.

  I’m going to the show.

  I’ve been called up to the major league franchise in Las Vegas.

  And I have to leave tonight.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Marisha

  Danny’s gone. Already.

  I just met him—was just learning to trust him—and he’s already gone. I could cry.

  I have six voice mails on my phone and countless text messages from him:

  I miss you. I hate that I had to leave so fast.

  Come join me? The team put me up in this nice little apartment, but there’s plenty of room for you.

  I’ll send you a plane ticket to Vegas.

  You can find work here. There are lots of photographers here, some looking for help.

  Please, Marisha.

  I really miss you.

  I don’t answer. I’m torn.

  This is what he was meant to do. He pitched a game for the Vandals four days after he left Rivertown, and he won. Nine strikeouts, which is pretty impressive for his first six innings in the majors. It’s his destiny.

  And me? I was just a minor flirtation. One fabulous night.

  Adera comes by the studio to see me one afternoon, after she’s finished up with her juvenile court cases for the day. “Stop rotting, Risha,” she says, hands on her hips. I shoot her a suspicious look. This is not like Adera at all.

  “Did Vi put you up to this?”

  She shakes her head. “No. This is all me. But I happen to know that she’s worried about you, too.”

  “It’s only been a week,” I point out.

  “Yes,” she points out, tossing a lock of blonde hair over her shoulder. “But this is the real thing. A day, a week, a month—it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s real, what’s between you and Danny.”

  I roll my eyes. “What was between me and Danny was some mutual antagonism, and then pretty much nothing, if you count that one night.”

  “Sex isn’t nothing,” Adera says.

  “Well, one night isn’t enough to make me believe in a whole life together! I’m not leaving home for some fickle baseball guy, who is probably having girls flung at his head morning, noon and night these days.” My mind flashes a picture of Danny surrounded by sexy women in Vandals jerseys. Hot women, by which I mean “thin women with big tits,” because that’s what the world means by “hot women.”

  Adera sits down in the customer chair, looking like she just figured out a logic puzzle and is super proud of herself. “You’re scared,” she says. “You’re just so scared.”

  “Hell, yeah, I’m scared,” I say, feeling tears threaten. “I’m not stupid.”

  “But you wanted to move to a big city anyway,” she says. “For your art.”

  I think about that. “Yeah—but New York’s best for art. Not Las Vegas.”

  “So move to New York then.”

  I make a psshh noise to demonstrate the ridiculousness of this idea. I don’t know anybody in New York. It’s expensive. It’s crowded, and not just full of ordinary people: throw an empty Coke can up in the air anywhere in New York, and odds are good that when it comes down, it will hit an aspiring artist, an aspiring actor, an aspiring writer, or an aspiring musician. I’m not all that special.

  “So you’re scared,” Adera says again.

  “I said that already.” Now I’m really getting crabby.

  “And you don’t think you’re worth it.”

  I blink. “No. I mean, I don’t think that.”

  “You do.” She gets up to come put her hands on my shoulders. “Look, Risha, you and Vi are my best friends. I know you. And I can tell you that you really are worth it. Have you talked to him?”

  I shake my head.

  “Call him.”

  And then she turns to walk out the door.

  “Wait, Adera.” She pauses, looking at me over her shoulder. “What if—what if I get out there and everything goes to absolute shit? What if he’s not the guy I want him to be?”

  “Then you’ll come home,” she says serenely. “Or you’ll find your way in Vegas. Or somewhere else. But, see, Marisha, you’ve got this. You are talented and lovable and worthy and I’m not surprised Danny keeps pursuing you from halfway across the country.”

  “How did you know?” I ask, mystified.

  She smiles. “Luis. Danny asked him to check on you, and Luis asked me.” Then she’s out the door, ignoring me no matter how many times I yell for her to come back.

  I collapse into the client chair, thinking. That confident woman looked like my friend Adera, but I’ve never seen Adera so sure of anything in her life before. So what’s changed? Has to be Luis. Has to be something there.

  And while I sit there, befuddled by the change in her, my boss Dave comes in.
“Hey,” he says, “we have a booking for a wedding in August. Last-minute thing. Are you up for it?”

  I hesitate. “Let me get back to you on that, Dave, okay?”

  He shrugs. “Whatever. The bride really wanted you. She loved your portraits of couples, you know the ones where you went outside and used natural light for chiaroscuro? I like those too, by the way. So don’t wait too long.”

  At seven o’clock, I finish setting up the studio for a bridal session tomorrow. As I step out of the studio and make my way to my car, I hear the roar of the crowd at the Rowdies’ stadium, and I can’t help thinking of Danny. How comfortable he looked under the hot lights, and how happy he was to be there. How happy he was to see me there, too.

  I remember the sparks that flew between us at our first meeting, how those sparks didn’t fade over our night together.

  I call my mom, and I tell her everything. (Almost everything!) And finally I ask her: what should I do? What would she do, if she were me?

  She laughs, and hugs me tight. “Well, it does you no good for me to tell you what I’d do, does it? I’m not you. I would’ve dated that boy for weeks before I kissed him. I would’ve married him before I slept with him. But honey, that’s me.” She smooths my hair back and looks right into my eyes. “And I have been lucky to have your dad. Even when times were hard for us—when we weren’t making much money and we were living in that crappy apartment, when every family gathering had somebody upset that Roland married a white girl, or I married a black man? We had each other. It’s been worth it.

  I hear Danny’s voice in my head: You’re worth it.

  “So I think you should go,” Mom says. “Pack a few things and get a plane ticket. Take your vacation from work and go out to Vegas. Give it a shot.”

  Dad comes in from the garage and hugs me. “I heard you talking with your mama. Listen to her.” My cheeks must be red, because he smiles a little and says, “I plugged my ears during some of it. But I mean it: if he’s worth it, you’ll know. Set your value high.” He reaches into his pocket. “Need a little cash for the trip?”

  “No, Daddy, I’m okay.”

  “Take it anyway,” he says, and winks at me. “You can bring me a ball cap, if you like. Go get him, honey.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Danny

  I’m sitting on the bench in the Vandals’ dugout, watching the game and wishing Marisha was here in Vegas with me. I'm not on the roster for tonight. I don’t have to pitch for another three nights, and by the time I get back on the mound, we’ll be playing another team, so all I have to do with hang out with my new teammates. I’ve been asked more than once why I’m looking so glum, and all I’ve been able to say is “girl trouble.”

  “Girl trouble” is nothing like the pain in my heart. I just found her, and then I had to leave her. I don’t get a day off for the next three weeks, and even then I’m supposed to be doing a training thing. I can’t skate off to Rivertown to see her, not even for an afternoon.

  My teammate Dominguez elbows me, pointing to the scoreboard. “Hey. You got a serious fan already, dude.”

  The message on the scoreboard says, “BROADWAY DAN, I CAME! SECTION 116 MARISHA”.

  My jaw drops. She’s here.

  “Is that the girl?” Dominguez asks, interested.

  I nod, thunderstruck, and leap to my feet to peer out of the dugout to the sections just above it. There she is, waving, wearing her Rowdies jersey. I hold my arms out to her, still too jazzed to even try talking. She blows me a kiss out of a face split nearly in two by her wide, white smile, and that breaks my silence. “I love you!” I yell at her. It’s loud in the stadium, but maybe she’ll hear. “I love you, Marisha!”

  I sure can’t hear her, but her lips are easy to read. She yells, “I know!” back, Han-and-Leia style, and I can’t stop smiling.

  I talk stadium security into sending her a players’ lounge pass with a note asking her to meet me there after the game. My phone’s in my locker, or I’d have sent her eight million texts already; I’ve probably missed a bunch from her, if she got here in time for the game. I think about how much she might have spent to get a good seat, and how much it costs to put a message up on the scoreboard, and how much it costs to get a flight from Rivertown to Vegas, and I’m overwhelmed. So yeah, it took her a while, but it doesn’t matter. She’s here now.

  Hugging her after the game takes a lot of the pain away. We yak at each other nineteen to the dozen, me telling her about my week without her, and her telling me about all the crap she went through just to get here. I introduce her to everybody who doesn’t already have a sportscaster’s microphone in his face, and she gets to meet a lot of players’ wives and girlfriends, and she keeps smiling her wide happy smile.

  “We got to get you a Vandals jersey, lady,” Dominguez says to her. “Rowdies are small-time.”

  “It’s my home town,” she says, shrugging, and smiles at me. “Doesn’t mean I want to live there forever. Especially if you’re not there.”

  My heart’s full. But all I say is, “Yeah, we gotta get you a Vandals jersey.”

  We get a rideshare to my apartment, and it’s then that I notice she only has a small overnight bag with her. “How long are you staying?”

  “A week?” she says, and bites her lip. “Or maybe longer. Maybe. Depends on you.”

  “You’re staying forever,” I tell her. “I need you with me. And that reminds me, I’m paying you back for your trip out here.”

  “Oh yeah?” Her beautiful milk-chocolate eyes sparkle in the glow of streetlights passing by. “You’re that flush with cash?”

  “You’re that worth it.”

  Then we’re kissing, hot and sweet, with our hearts in it. The minute we’re inside my place, I pick her up and carry her to my bedroom, still kissing her. We don’t stop kissing the whole time we’re taking clothes off. “I love you,” I tell her, stroking the curve of her full breast. “Please stay.”

  “You think we’re going to make it?” she asks, running her hands down my chest to pull my boxers off.

  “Yeah.” I kneel between her generous thighs and caress her wet pink folds. She’s so ready for me. “Oh yeah. I’m yours, you’re mine. What’s to stop us?”

  “Nothing,” she says, and reaches to guide my hard cock inside her. “Nothing can stop us. You and me, babe. You’re worth it.”

  “No, you are,” I echo, feeling her heat, kissing her sweet mouth again. “You and me, sweetheart. Forever.”

  EPILOGUE

  Marisha, two years later

  Danny's still pitching for the Las Vegas Vandals. He’s just been selected for the All-Star game, which is pretty exciting. Baseball has been really good to us: we’ve bought a house, and I’m able to concentrate on my portrait career—the art part of it, not just the making-money part. And last Christmas, Danny gave me a big ring.

  “What’s this?” I said, stunned, staring at the three-carat diamond. “I mean, is it—what’s it for?”

  “It’s for you,” he said, coming to the easy chair where I was sitting and kneeling in front of it.

  I could see him holding back laughter, and it made me cranky because I didn’t understand what the ring meant. “What?” I snapped, and he broke into snorts.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be—”

  “Tell me!”

  “It’s your baseball diamond,” he said, and then wound up rolling on the carpet, laughing so hard tears leaked out of his eyes.

  I was not amused.

  “Get it?”

  “I get it.”

  “No, seriously, Rish, do you get it? Baseball paid for that. It’s your baseball diamond.”

  “I get it.”

  I must have sounded like I wanted to kill him. (I admit that the thought did occur. You don’t live with someone for 18 months without wanting to kill them, at least a little tiny bit, over the way they crunch their chips. Or squeeze the toothpaste wrong. Or never ever fucking put a glass in the dishwasher,
even though it would take them ten seconds.)

  Ahem. Sorry.

  Anyway, Danny must’ve caught my agitation, because he rolled back to his knees in front of my chair, made a speech about Leia and Han (which completely left out the part where they spent a lot of time away from each other and raised a murderous Dark Side kid, but I digress. Again.), told me he loved me more than life or even baseball, and asked me to marry him.

  I said yes.

  Duh.

  Because crunchy chips and mangled toothpaste tubes and glasses on the counter don’t matter in the larger scheme of things. Having someone there for you, that matters.

  We went down to the all-night chapel on New Year’s Day and did it, and then we threw a party for family one June day when Danny didn’t have to pitch. We danced. We ate great summer picnic food. We hugged all our friends. And then we kicked everybody out at about 2 a.m. and came upstairs and made love. He held my hands and told me I was magnificent and I deserved a great lover like Danny Broadway.

  I rolled my eyes so hard they nearly fell out. And then, a little later, he made me come so hard my eyes nearly fell out again, so everything was okay.

  Tonight is special. I have a surprise.

  The Vandals start a six-game road trip tomorrow, and I’m going to follow the team to Sacramento and then Seattle before they come home. But tonight is the last night of a home stand, and Danny is on the rotation, so tonight will be special.

  I put on my Vandals jersey with BROADWAY on the back, and I stash the gift bag in my backpack, and I go through the gate and into the Family section, waving at other baseball wives and getting a good chat with my friend Mia, who’s married to a Vandal outfielder. “You’re glowing, honey,” she says, gesturing at my face. “What are you so happy about?”

  I want to show her the gift bag, but I’ll just have to tell her about it later.

  In the sixth inning, when it looks like the manager is about to go to his closer and send Danny to the showers, I get the security guard to deliver the gift bag to the home team dugout. He peeks in it, raises his eyebrows, then smiles at me and takes it over there.