by Julie Kriss
“Thailand,” he replied. “That’s the last I heard, anyway.” I turned and saw that his expression was blank and a little bit angry. “I knocked her up at a party when I was nineteen,” he said bluntly. “We were both drunk. I actually had a condom on me and forgot to take it out and put it on. That’s how drunk and stupid I was. The whole thing took about twenty minutes.” He sighed. “She didn’t tell me she was pregnant. By the time she had Dylan she was twenty, and she decided she was too young to be a mother. She left him with her parents and went on a backpacking trip to find herself.”
Something sour turned in my stomach, thinking of that sweet boy out on the baseball field.
“Her parents kept Dylan until he was four,” Ryan continued. “They started to have health problems, and a toddler was too much for them. So they showed up and dropped him off one day. Surprise, you have a son, here you go, have a nice day.” He shook his head. “That was a surreal day, I can tell you. And every day since has been just as weird.”
“I can’t imagine. Didn’t you ever wonder…” I stopped myself. It was rude and none of my business. I bit the words back.
But Ryan guessed them. “Didn’t I ever wonder if he was actually mine?” He frowned and crossed his arms, watching the field and thinking. “In those first few days, maybe. And then after a while it didn’t matter. Everyone believed he was mine, and he had nowhere else to go. I definitely remember fucking Amber without a condom, so I did the crime.”
Ugh, I thought. Amber.
“Besides, now that he’s older I think he looks like me,” Ryan said. “Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said honestly. “He looks a lot like you.”
“So who cares?” Ryan shrugged. “He’s my kid.”
I stared at him. “So this… Amber never came back from her backpacking trip?”
“No. Her parents say she ended up in Thailand with some guy.”
Unbelievable. “Does Dylan know?”
“I had to tell him. What was I going to say, his mother was living in an enchanted fairyland or something? I told him his mother moved away to another country.” He lifted his baseball cap, scratched beneath it, then put it on again. “He’s had questions. He’ll probably have more. I have no fucking idea how to answer them.”
I’d never heard Dylan mention his mother. There were no photos of her anywhere—there was only one photo in the Riggs house, a printout of Ryan and Dylan in a selfie in a park somewhere, both of them smiling into the camera. It was stuck to the fridge with a piece of tape and I looked at it every day. That photo made me feel… something. I wasn’t sure what it was yet.
On the field, Dylan had spotted his father in the stands. He raised his hand once, quickly, excited but trying to be cool about it in front of his teammates. Ryan gave him a cool wave back, the two of them a mirror image.
I reached next to me and picked up the baggie of animal crackers I’d brought with me. I crunched one and Ryan held out his hand. I gave him an elephant.
“Your turn,” he said.
“My turn for what?”
“To tell me something.” He popped the cracker into his mouth. “Tell me why you slept with me five years ago when that isn’t something you usually do.”
I felt my face go red, even though he wasn’t looking at me. “How do you know? Maybe I do that all the time.”
“Nope,” he said, so confident that I wanted to punch him. “You don’t. Though you told Dylan you go on dates.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Maybe you were lying.”
I stuffed another animal cracker into my mouth. “Okay,” I said. “The truth is he asked me once why I wasn’t married. You know how innocent he is. And how do I explain modern dating life to this little kid? So I told him I go on dates, because that’s what you do before you find someone to marry.”
Ryan was amused now, probably picturing my awkwardness in this conversation. “Not bad. Go on.”
“Well, then he wanted to know whether I would date you. And he seemed all worried about it.”
“Dylan has a total fear that I’ll get a girlfriend,” Ryan said. “I think he thinks I’ll abandon him if I do that.”
“So that’s why you don’t have one,” I said. Fishing. I was totally fishing. I had no shame.
He didn’t seem to notice. “That, and the fact that I’m basically a fucked-up mess,” he said easily. “But tell me the rest.”
“So I told him no, I’m not dating you. I’m dating other guys. Lots and lots of other guys.”
Ryan looked at me. “You said lots and lots?”
I dropped my gaze and looked for a giraffe in the baggie. “I may have gotten carried away.”
“That explains it. He told me you have all these boyfriends. Tons of them. He wanted me to be really clear about that. I couldn’t figure out why you’d say that to him when it wasn’t true.”
I dropped the baggie back in my lap. “It could be true!”
“Kate, Kate.” He shook his head. “Give me a little credit here. I haven’t had one in a long time, but I know women. I especially know women who sleep with a lot of men. They used to be my specialty. You weren’t one five years ago, and you aren’t one now.”
It was that phrase that made my throat dry: I haven’t had one in a long time. Because I’d been wondering. I wouldn’t admit I’d been wondering—even to myself—but I had. I needed something to do with my nervous hands, so I unwrapped one of the juice boxes I’d brought for Dylan. At this rate, the kid would go hungry and thirsty.
I poked the straw into the box and said, “Okay, so I cut loose for once that night. I admit it.”
“I know. So tell me why.”
I sucked back some apple juice, thinking of how to word it. It was actually a relief to talk about that night, because I’d never told anyone in my life about it. I’d never been able to gossip about it like you always see women on TV do. It had always been a thing I didn’t talk about.
There was literally only one other person on earth who knew it happened, and he was sitting next to me right now. Because he’d been the guy in bed with me.
“I’d been dating this guy,” I explained. “We were in a relationship for about a year. My parents wanted me to marry him.”
“And?”
“And for a long time I just assumed I would do it. I’d spent my whole life doing what my parents wanted. They had rules, and I followed them. That’s what you do.”
I glanced at him. He was frowning. After what he’d told me about his own life, I guessed that following rules wasn’t a big part of his childhood.
“Anyway,” I said, “I realized that I was going to marry someone—actually marry someone for the rest of my life—without thinking too much about it, because my parents said I should. I just woke up one day and thought: What the hell am I doing? Who even does that? And I didn’t want to marry him. He was a nice enough guy, but I didn’t want to marry him. He hadn’t even asked—that was just something else everyone assumed. We would stay together, he would ask, we would get married, the end.”
“What a load of shit,” Ryan said.
“It was. It was!” I sipped the juice box again. “It was terrifying, but I broke up with him. Everyone was shocked. My parents wouldn’t speak to me. And I realized that except for finishing college, I didn’t want to do anything they wanted anymore. It was like I found my rebellious streak at age twenty instead of when I was a teenager like most people do.”
“But you found it.”
“It was so freeing,” I said. “Like, incredible. Scary and fun at the same time. I could do anything. And then one night Amanda offered me a ticket to the benefit she couldn’t go to, and I took it. And I met you.”
He was quiet for a long minute. I wondered what he was thinking.
I hoped he remembered it as good. Because I did.
I remembered it as amazing.
The juice box crinkled as I finished it. “Your turn,” I said. “Tell me why, in a room full of wom
en who would gladly sleep with a baseball player, you picked me.”
“That’s easy,” he said. “You were the hottest woman there.”
I gaped at him—sitting there in my shirtdress, my glasses on, juice box in my hand. “No, I was not.”
He rolled his eyes, like I was being ridiculous. “I have very high standards, Kate. You think I was settling?”
How he could be so hot and so punchable at the same time? It was an eternal mystery to me. “I think you’re bullshitting,” I said. “I bet you don’t even remember what I was wearing that night.”
He looked at me, and his gaze took in my face, my throat, and landed on my mouth, hot and dirty. “A black dress with a strap on one shoulder. The left one.”
“Okay.” That was right. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Then the crowd stood up and cheered, and an unintelligible voice came over the loudspeaker, shouting. The game was over. It was time to go home.
Nine
Ryan
* * *
Week Ten
* * *
My washing machine was broken. I could fix it, but I’d had to order a part. So it was August, it was hot as fuck, and I was at a laundromat in the fine city of Detroit, sweating my balls off and trying to force quarters into a machine that had been installed when Bush Two was president. It was a Thursday at two o’clock in the afternoon, and it seemed like everyone in Detroit had no job and no washing machine, because every single one of them was right fucking here.
Kate had taken Dylan across the plaza to the variety store to get something cold. She’d told me when I hired her that she didn’t do laundry, but she didn’t know me very well. One of the things you learn when you grow up in the Riggs house is how to wash your own clothes, because no one is going to do it for you. Water and soap isn’t that hard. Of course separating lights and darks is for losers, so you lump it all together and suffer the consequences. You also wear everything you own until it falls apart at the seams.
But Kate’s bossy Post-It notes were sinking in. I had separated lights and darks today, which meant I had two machines. I had just gotten one going and was trying to get my quarters to work in the other one—the machine kept spitting them out—without knocking over the cup of soap I’d gotten from the vending machine. Ryan Riggs, world’s number one father.
I was balancing a quarter in the slot when a voice said, “Mr. Riggs.”
I turned. The quarter dropped and rolled across the floor. Three machines down, a guy picked it up and put it in his pocket. I wasn’t about to fight him for it.
The man standing next to me wasn’t here to do laundry. He was wearing a pressed dress shirt and brand-new jeans. His dark hair was neatly trimmed and he had wire-rimmed glasses. The top half was a corporate look, but the jeans shouted league rep. Guys who work with athletes—but aren’t athletes—always dress the same way, like I’m corporate but I’m also cool. I’m sporty, but I wouldn’t be caught dead dressing like an athlete does.
I recognized him. He was the league rep who’d been trying to get me to a meeting for weeks now. What the fuck was his name? Will, maybe.
“What are you doing here?” I said. I had sweat running down my neck into my worn-thin T-shirt. I was wearing jeans, but they weren’t nice ones like his. I’d worn them when I tried to fix the washing machine, and you could tell.
“I’ve finally caught you,” Will-or-whoever said. He looked me up and down briefly. The Bad Boy of Baseball wasn’t looking so hot today. I felt a slow rip of pain start at my right shoulder and work its way down my back, like an earthquake creating a fissure. “You’ve been avoiding me for weeks.”
“How did you know I was here?” I asked him.
“Well, someone said that you have a nanny working for you. And since we couldn’t reach you, we thought perhaps she could help us find you.”
I closed my eyes. Kate. They’d tracked down Kate. “My nanny is none of your business.”
“Nevertheless,” Maybe-Will said, “I finally have you in person. Since you won’t come in to the league offices, we’ll have to do this meeting here.”
I grunted and turned back to my washing machine. Put another quarter in the slot and gently boosted it in. The machine ate it without spitting it out, so I fished in my pocket for another one.
“We haven’t received any medical updates since May,” Maybe-Will said. “You know that we’re supposed to receive weekly reports.”
“There’s nothing to report.” The pain had worked its way across my spine now and was digging into the flesh of my lower back. I had painful tingles starting on my right arm. I positioned the quarter very carefully, trying to mostly use my left hand. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Mr. Riggs, it’s August,” the rep pointed out. “We’re mid-season here. We’re aiming for a playoff spot, and if we get it we need to know if you’re in.”
The quarter went in and the machine lit up. I opened it and dumped my soap in before it could change its mind. We’d hit the playoffs the year before I got suspended. We hadn’t won, but those had been some of the best games I’d ever pitched. “Listen,” I said to him. “If I could pitch a ball, let me tell you, I’d be pitching a fucking ball and earning a paycheck instead of standing here doing this. Talking to you.” I looked at him. “Get it?”
“I get it,” Who-Cares-If-He’s-Will said. His jaw went tight. “So I guess I’ll just have to give you these.” He reached into the briefcase at his feet and handed me papers.
I looked at them. I didn’t touch them. “What’s this?”
I knew what it was. Of course I knew what it was. But I couldn’t just make it easy for him.
“Mr. Riggs, you need to read this over and sign it. In light of the fact that you’ve been absent from the team and unable to fulfill your duties—”
“What’s that?” a woman at the washing machine next to me said. She was black, wearing a bright orange halter top in the heat. She looked over my shoulder at the league rep and narrowed her eyes. “Is he a lawyer?” she asked me.
“No, I’m not a lawyer,” Maybe-Will said.
The woman huffed. “I wouldn’t sign anything in a laundromat,” she said to me. “Not a damn thing.”
“Is it alimony?” said another woman, craning her neck to see the papers. “If it’s alimony he should sign it and pay.”
“No alimony,” I said. “I’m a baseball player and they’re kicking me off the team.”
“That isn’t exactly true,” the rep said. “There have been severe and repeated breaches of—”
“He sounds like a lawyer,” the first woman said. “But he’s kicking you off a team in a laundromat.”
“I’ve been avoiding him,” I told her. I could feel my shirt sticking to my skin and sweat on the back of my neck. Fuck, it was hot. “If I don’t talk to him, he can’t kick me off. He finally found me here. Unfortunately.”
She huffed again. “Makes sense to me.” She turned back to her washing machine.
The second woman was still watching me suspiciously. “You look like the kind of guy who’d have alimony,” she said. “Alimony and child support.”
I looked past her out the window to the parking lot. Across the plaza, the door to the variety store opened and Kate and Dylan came out. Both were holding popsicles. Dylan was gesturing with his, telling Kate a story he was excited about.
Fuck. He was going to fire me in front of my kid.
“Just say it,” I said to the rep. “Get it over with, for fuck’s sake.”
He blinked. “Mr. Riggs, the league is discharging you,” he said. “You’re off the roster. You need to sign these papers of resignation.” He handed me a pen. “Frankly, you’re lucky we kept you on this long, especially after you bloodied Bennett Harding’s nose on the field.”
The first woman turned from her washing machine, intrigued again. “You punched a brother in the face?”
“His name was Bennett Harding,” I said, taking the pen. �
��I mean, come on.”
“Yeah, I get it,” she said, turning away again. “I’d punch that. I still wouldn’t sign anything in a laundromat.”
But I did. Kate and Dylan were almost at the door now, so I put the papers on top of my vibrating washing machine and signed them. The pain had its claws in my back now, and my arm was throbbing. My hand and wrist were almost numb. My body was mocking me; the idea of me pitching a game, getting any team to the playoffs and on to victory, was a joke.
I signed the papers and shoved them back at Maybe-Will, along with the pen. He took his time putting everything back in his briefcase. When he finally picked it up and turned around, Kate and Dylan were coming through the laundromat toward us.
Dylan was talking, but Kate’s expression went very still. She had her hair twisted up off her neck in the heat, and she was wearing a sleeveless white V-neck shirt and dark green shorts that showed off her hips and legs. The curves of her calves alone would have brought me to my knees, but she was oblivious to it. She held a pink popsicle in one hand and looked at me with wide eyes full of serious concern.
Will-Whatever took his shit and left, sweat darkening the back of his nice dress shirt. “Oh, no,” Kate said to me in a low voice so Dylan couldn’t hear her over the sound of the laundromat. “Is that the guy who called me? I shouldn’t have said anything. He said it was important.”
“It’s fine,” I said. The words came out tight, and I realized I sounded angry. Actually I was in pain. I took a deep breath and said more softly, “You didn’t do anything wrong, Kate. He would have found me anyway.”
She was still watching me, not buying my bullshit. “It’s bad, right?” she said. “It’s really bad.”
“Dad?” Dylan said, picking up on the vibe. “Was that man mean to you?”
“Nothing I can’t handle,” I said to him. “Did you get me one?”