The Hot Streak

by Cecilia Tan

  “Well, thank God for the cell phone then,” he said. “Hey, I’ll see you in the city. You take care until then.”

  “I will.”

  After all, Thursday was only four days away.

  Chapter Four

  Casey arrived at the hotel around lunchtime. She’d had a nice ride on the Amtrak train into the city, and Tyler was standing in the lobby waiting for her when she came in. He had his sunglasses on, and was wearing a sport coat, which she didn’t expect.

  “There you are,” he said, tucking his cell phone away and twirling her into a hug. “Right on time. Want to go grab something to eat? There’s everything here, of course. Oh, wait, let’s put your bag away first.”

  “All right.” She would have been content to carry it if he’d wanted to go right then; it was just a backpack with one change of clothes and some toiletries. But she figured she might as well leave it off. They rode the elevator up to a small but nice-looking suite, the bedroom separated from the sitting room by a set of French doors. She plopped the bag on the couch. “Where do you want to go?’

  “Everywhere!” he said, throwing his arms wide. “Off days are so rare, and off days that aren’t spent packing to go somewhere are even rarer. I’m glad this worked out.” He held out his arm for her and she took it as they went back to the elevator. “Today I get to pretend to be a normal person. Let’s go to Times Square, eh?”

  “Sure.” It wasn’t Casey’s first trip to the city, or Tyler’s either, but there was something about New York that made each visit new, and yet the same. They ate in a Thai restaurant they stumbled across on one of the side streets a few blocks from the hotel, then wandered through the throngs of spring tourists in Times Square. Tyler haggled with a street vendor over buying an “I Love New York” T-shirt, and Casey wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but it ended up with him buying an entire case of the shirts for about fifty bucks, and some kid on a bicycle trundling off to the hotel with the box strapped on the back with bungee cords.

  “That was totally like… Third World,” she said, watching the kid struggle to pedal away.

  “Yeah, wasn’t it?” he said, putting his sunglasses back on. “I went on this good will baseball tour to China when I was in college, saw a lot of stuff like that.”

  The question was out of her mouth before she had a chance to wonder whether she cared about the answer. “Oh? Where’d you go to school?” Stupid. Asking him about the trip to China would probably be better.

  “Oh, University of Texas, for the baseball program, of course. Couple of places tried to recruit me. I picked the one with the warmest weather.”

  They moved on through the crowd, past a giant toy store with a small Ferris wheel inside it. “I never finished. Once I got drafted, I didn’t go back. They say I still could when my career’s over, but can you imagine me at forty years old, sitting in a classroom with a pencil behind my ear trying to do algebra or something? Doesn’t seem likely. And it’s not like I need a college degree or I’ll end up scrubbing floors somewhere. Or selling T-shirts and electronics on the street.”

  She nodded, wondering if she should be avoiding the subject of salaries and money, or if those rules didn’t really apply, when she’d read in The New York Times online that he was making $10.5 million this year. “So where to now?”

  “You want to see if we can get tickets to a show or something? Phantom of the Opera? Man, it’s so weird not to have a game.”

  Casey hooked her arm through his as they walked. “Don’t you get a couple of months off, though, in the winter?”

  “Yeah, but once the season starts… you just have to be in the mentality that there’s a game every night. If you wish you had days off, you won’t be mentally ready to play. But then it feels weird when you don’t have a game, like you’re skipping school or something.”

  “But I thought you only played every fifth day anyway.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “But there are things I do on each day between starts, part of my program to get ready for the next start. Kind of like how football teams have stuff they do all week between games, except I’m just one guy. The rest of the team has to go out and play every night. You just… you get kind of addicted to it, almost, and then you miss it when it’s not there, even just for one night.”

  He stopped walking then and turned to face her. “But don’t get me wrong. Having an evening out with you is… I’ve been thinking about it all week. So what do you think? Broadway show?”

  “Do you think we can still get tickets this late?”

  “Hang on.” He took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed. “Hi, yes, this is Tyler Hammond in room 1253. Heh, yeah, thanks. I was wondering, what are the chances you could get me two tickets to… uh… ” He motioned to Casey to say something.

  Casey racked her brains trying to think of a show she wanted to see. “Chicago?”

  “Chicago,” he said into the phone. “For tonight. Oh, that would be awesome. Great. Call me back if there are any problems. Yeah.” He gave his number and hung up. “God, concierges are great.”

  She grinned. “I wish I had one in everyday life.”

  He laughed nervously. “Uh, yeah.”

  “Tyler, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m embarrassed to admit I do actually have one. A concierge desk, I mean. I’d never have stuff from the dry cleaners in time or anything without them.” He was actually blushing.

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “I just didn’t want you to think I was lazy.”

  She punched him in the arm and they went back to walking. “So the show’s not until later. What should we do until then?”

  “We could take a boat tour to see the Statue of Liberty, we could go up the Empire State Building, we could go to a museum. They have dinosaurs at one of them, don’t they? Or the planetarium. There’s supposedly fun shopping in Greenwich Village… ”

  Casey laughed. “You sound like you’d rather see the dinosaurs than shop.”

  “Well, that’s true… ”

  “Can we just hail a cab and say ‘Take us to the dinosaurs?’”

  “Probably.”

  * * * *

  Four hours later, they had seen the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History and ridden a horse cart through Central Park, during which ride the carriage driver had told Tyler he needed to come play for the Yankees. He outlined all his points, including how the Yankees were surely going to be the ones to offer him the most in free agency, had the most players in the Hall of Fame, and so on. Tyler had demurred, saying that was all in the future and right now, he wasn’t even in the American League.

  That prompted Casey to finally ask what was up with the leagues. She understood there were two separate leagues, the American League and the National League, going way back to the dawn of the 20th century. “But I looked at the schedule and you play some of the American League teams.”

  “Yeah, they’ve been doing that for years now. Inter-league play. It means we’ll get to play the Red Sox later in the summer. That’ll be fun, won’t it? Boston is such a sports-crazed town. They’ll have to declare martial law to keep people from rioting.” Even though the Robins had only moved into Boston a short time ago, they already had quite a following. “What do you say, buddy? If I sign with the Red Sox, I won’t even have to move.”

  “Man, the Red Sox suck,” is all the driver would say to that.

  They then rode the subway down to Soho and Casey convinced Tyler to come with her into some art galleries, and he even seemed to like some of the cool modern art she showed him. “Yeah, when I think art, I think of paintings of vases of flowers and fat women,” he said, without any trace of meanness. “But this stuff is cool. I think I like the sculptures the best.”

  Casey was tempted by a sculpture that looked a bit like a giant crescent moon, only it was iridescent colors, made of metal with a pitted and scarred surface. On its chest-high pedestal it stood as tall as Tyler, a grand almost-circle almost like the
horns of a great ox. She looked at the price tag. Not only would the piece be totally out of place in her rundown apartment, it cost easily a third of her annual salary after taxes.

  The gallery owner chatted with her about the piece anyway. “God, it’s really beautiful. I really like it, but I don’t have room for something like this in my tiny apartment,” she said, trying not to mention that it was priced light years out of her reach.

  Tyler came up behind her, steering her aside from the owner. “But it’d look great in my ultra-modern place, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah, with those huge ceiling you have and the… wait, you’re not thinking of buying it, are you?”

  “I want to buy it for you, but you can keep it at my place, and you know, visit it there. Until you move somewhere bigger, eventually. Right? After you learn to play golf and get into management?”

  She groaned. “You can’t buy me something that expensive.”

  “Why not? I bought my mother an entire house and two cars. It’s not like I’m going hungry, right? What’s money for?”

  She looked up at him and he looked really earnest, like if she said no, he might actually be hurt. “Are you sure?”

  “Are you sure?” he asked back. “If you really like it, it’s yours.”

  Her palms were starting to sweat. “Yeah. I really like it.”

  “Awesome. It’s going to look so cool in the sitting room. I’ll have to invite people over on the next off day at home for cocktails to look at it.” He grinned like a boy getting a new puppy. “Uh, miss? Ma’am?” He flagged down the gallery owner and set about buying it and having it delivered.

  Casey didn’t listen to most of the details, just stared at the piece with a hand on her cheek, feeling it burn. But it was a pleasant burn.

  When they went back out onto the street, Tyler was holding her hand. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m just kind of stunned.”

  He smiled. “Look. Whatever guy you go out with, each one has something different about him, right? One guy’s maybe really handy with the fix-up stuff. One guy’s maybe really smart and can, like, do your taxes for you, right? Well, you happen to be going out with a jock who makes more money than he knows what to do with, so, you know, this kind of thing happens.”

  She laughed at that. “Okay.”

  “So, what do you think it was a sculpture of?”

  “Of? Well, I think it’s supposed to be abstract. You interpret it how you want to. But I saw it as a kind of crescent moon. You know how sometimes it almost looks like it could go all the way around but it doesn’t? That’s what it made me think of.”

  “That’s really cool. Now I really think we should grab a snack before the show, and just have a late dinner after. Maybe room service. Got to love the twenty-four-hour room service. It’s half the reason the team stays where it does.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  * * * *

  They were walking back to the hotel from the theater when Casey put her arm around Tyler’s waist, pulling him close as they walked in step with each other. He smelled more like aftershave than she usually preferred, but under it she could still tell it was him, just a hint of something that reminded her body of how his skin tasted. It was a nice feeling, wanting him, and not feeling either guilty or pressured about it. It just felt, well, nice.

  “Are you having a good time?” he asked as they turned the corner into a stiff Manhattan wind.

  “A terrific time.”

  “I’m not just an excuse to get away from the office?” He grinned.

  “And what if you are? Going to kick me out of bed?” She grinned right back.

  “No, ma’am,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “So I guess I know what we’re doing when we get back to the room?”

  “Unless you have a better idea,” Casey said, half daring him to suggest something.

  But that was the end of the jokes. He pulled her into a hug, and she could hear the satin lining of his sport coat hissing against his other clothes as he enveloped her in his arms. “I’m glad.”

  “About what?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “Mm, just, you know, some girls wouldn’t be so nice to me.”

  Casey didn’t really understand that comment, but she wasn’t about to start trying to pick it apart now. Maybe she could ask Missy a bit about Tyler’s previous girlfriends next time she saw her. Nice to him? What was the point of going out with a man who was the epitome of sex on wheels, then holding out on him? Maybe some of them really only wanted him for his money? That seemed quite possible.

  She slipped her hands into his trouser pockets and felt not very subtly for his erection. He was only half hard, but as her fingertips brushed him, she felt him stiffening. She kept touching him until it seemed he was fully hard and he groaned.

  “Soooo nice to me,” he said.

  “Just be nice back,” she said and stepped back and tapped him on the nose. “Come on.”

  * * * *

  In the lobby, they ran into Mad Dog and a few of Tyler’s other teammates. He introduced her to Madison, and Casey shook his hand, finding it huge and rough. “I’ve met your wife,” she said. “In the stands. She’s great.”

  “Isn’t she, though?” Mad Dog said. He glanced at Tyler, seemed to read something there, before adding, “If you come on more road trips, I’ll try to get her to come along, too. You guys can hang out.”

  “Sure.” She gently pulled at Tyler’s hand then, trying to be obvious without being too obvious about wanting to go upstairs now.

  “Don’t stay up too late,” Mad Dog said to Tyler as they were walking away. “Big start tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Tyler said, and pulled Casey into an open elevator. “Ignore him. Catchers always think it’s their job to nursemaid pitchers.”

  Casey looked at him. “Should we not stay up too late, though?”

  He snorted. “The early bus to the park doesn’t leave here until two thirty in the afternoon. I think we’ll manage. It’s not even eleven now, is it?”

  “Nope.”

  In the room, they discovered a cheese plate, a bottle of champagne, and note from the reservations manager saying, “Go Robins!” Tyler eyed it suspiciously. “Okay, now, see, if it were the night after I pitched, and I won, then it might be okay. But it might all be a ploy on the part of some Mets fan to put me off my game tomorrow.”

  She sniffed the cheese. “Well, why don’t we just save it for tomorrow? If we keep it in the ice bucket, they won’t throw it away. We can stick the cheese plate in the mini bar and test it for contamination later.”

  He laughed. “All right.”

  Casey put the plate away, tucking it into the mini bar on top of the jarred peanuts. Then she drifted into the bathroom and brushed her hair, which had gotten a bit tangled in the wind. She knew Tyler was watching her as he went to hang up his sport coat and take off his shoes.

  She was suddenly nervous, butterflies in her stomach. How was it going to go this time? Was it going to be as good as before? She was really, really starting to like him.

  He came up behind her then, lifting her hair to press a kiss against her neck. “Now if I remember right, you have a spot,” he said, his lips brushing her skin as he talked, “somewhere, right about… here… ”

  She pressed back against him with a gasp as his tongue found that place that seemed connected directly to her clit. She wondered what that warm velvet would feel like down there and she moaned aloud.

  “Bed now,” she said.

  “You sure?” He moved to the other side, lips and tongue searching for the matching spot there, his hands on his hips and the firm press of his erection against her backside. “You sure I shouldn’t just lift you up on the bathroom counter here and slip it in you?”

  She moaned again, not knowing whether he meant to do it or just use the idea to arouse. His hand slipped around to the front of her, grazing over her mound with light pressure.

  “I can make you come just a
s many times in here, you know… ”

  “Bed,” she said more firmly, then squealed with laughter as he lifted her up with another “yes, ma’am” and carried her through the French doors to the enormous bed. He half-tossed her onto it so she bounced a little, then started dragging her pants and panties down. He got one leg free of her clothes and then put his shoulder under the bend of her knee, pushing her onto her back and spreading her legs.

  One of his hands spread her lips gently and then she felt a long, slow swipe of his tongue up one side of her labia. It was too deliberate for him to have just accidentally missed her clit. Then he did the other side and she groaned, grinding her hips toward his face.

  “Now now,” he scolded. “You know it’ll be better if you let me take my time.” He bent his head again, this time flicking his tongue butterfly light all around her clit, but still not touching it directly except for the occasional brush.

  She chuckled inwardly. Sex, and maybe Tyler, too, was a pile of contradictions. He was in such a hurry to go slowly that he hadn’t even taken her pants all the way off, or even touched her shirt. Just went straight for the “good part.” And yet it didn’t feel like he was rushing or neglecting her at all, the way it might have with another guy.

  His tongue snaked over her clit and she gave a long moan. That was the funny thing, she thought. The guys who were in the biggest hurry were the ones who really didn’t know how to turn her on like this. She was completely ready for Tyler to fuck the living daylights out of her after just that little bit— she was ready even back in the bathroom. But when was the last time she’d spent all day with a guy thinking about, and knowing, they were going to have sex that night?

  He brought her all the way to the edge of orgasm with his tongue, then eased her back down to a lower plateau of pleasure before lifting his head, his chin glistening. “So, you want to come now? Or you want me in you like last time?”

  “Um… ”

  “Or there’s this… ” he said, waggling his eyebrows as he slipped a finger into her and tickled her g-spot.