“That’s not true. I wouldn’t have taken you out or tried to get to know you…or even brought you back here if that were the case. I’ve never cared about her that way, and I’m willing to bet the feeling’s mutual. Give me a chance to prove it to you.”
She hesitated by the door, still ignorant to my limp arm at my side. “Is there even a point?”
I dug the fingers of my right hand into the tender spot between my neck and shoulder. “You’re experienced, right? I mean, with guys? Dating? Sex?” It didn’t appear she’d taken too kindly to my last question. Then I realized I’d basically asked for confirmation that she was easy…which wasn’t at all how it sounded in my head before I’d spoken. “You get what I’m trying to say, Charlene. All my experience with dating has come in the last two years. And most of that time has been spent in practices or training or games. I have very limited knowledge when it comes to how to talk or what to do with anyone other than Ellie—and that doesn’t mean everyone else is a third wheel. It just means I’m used to one thing and haven’t really been given a chance to learn anything else.”
Finally, her posture softened, and I could see the understanding in her eyes. “I get it. I’m willing to give it a chance to see where this goes. I want to believe you’re just naïve, but it would be a lie if I said I wasn’t worried.”
“About what?”
“That I’ll completely fall for you, only for you to wake up one day and realize she’s the girl you want to be with. And where would that leave me?”
The panic in her tone caught my attention, and in an instant, the pain in my arm was forgotten. I was on my feet, in front of her, with her hand in mine, our eyes locked on one another’s. “I’m fairly certain that would’ve happened by now if it were true.”
She dropped her forehead to my chest and mumbled into my shirt, “You really are dense, Coby Kyler.”
“It’s part of my charm. I’m smooth like butter and dense like a rock.”
At least it made her giggle and lift her gaze to mine.
“So you’re willing to give me a chance?”
“Yeah,” she said on a soft exhale. “Just don’t make me regret it.”
I smiled and wagged my brows. “Does this mean you’ll stay?”
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea. Not tonight. Let’s try it again in a couple of days.”
“Spring Training starts Monday.”
“You have a phone, right?” When I nodded, she pressed up on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against my cheek. “Then we’ll talk. We were doing just fine before we tried to graduate from conversation to sleepovers.”
She had a point. We’d connected well over phone calls and the three dates we’d been on, and aside from tonight, none of those ended with us in a bed. Maybe I was better with women when sex wasn’t a possibility, considering that was the basic dynamic of my relationship with Ellie, and we worked perfectly together. However, I wasn’t exactly looking for another friend. I wanted a partner to eventually share my life with. But I guess I had plenty of time to figure that out. There was no need to rush anything—other than my desperate need to feel some sort of physical connection with another person.
I said goodnight to Charlene at her car, where we shared a chaste kiss before she left. After walking back inside, rather than heading to my room, I crossed the house and invited myself into Ellie’s…without knocking. She was in bed with a magazine open in front of her face. She peered above the tops of the pages and tracked my movement.
“It’s a good thing I wasn’t doing anything inappropriate. I’d say you should knock first, but considering I’ve been telling you that for at least ten years, and you haven’t learned yet, I think it’s a safe bet to say it’s a lost cause.”
I threw myself onto her bed, next to her, and curled up with her extra pillow like I’d done so many times in the past. Lying on my side, facing her, I said, “Even if you were doing something inappropriate, it’s not like I’ve never seen it.”
Ellie slung her arm over and hit my shoulder, making me wince inwardly to keep from alerting her to the pain I’d had off and on for months now. “You’re gross. Is that why Char left? Did she figure out how disgusting you are? Or did you already hit it, minute man?”
No matter how many years it’d been since our night together, hearing her tease me about my stamina still stung. Not in a “cry myself to sleep” kind of way, but more in an “I think my balls just got offended” sense.
“Nah. The timing wasn’t right.”
“What? Did you run out of your vanilla-scented candles?”
“Laugh all you want, but those babies work wonders after a stressful day.” I closed my eyes, not realizing until that moment how tired I was. If she stopped talking for too long, I’d end up asleep in her bed, which didn’t bother me at all. Still, I was sure my future dates wouldn’t appreciate hearing about it.
Meaning, I’d have to stop telling them.
One of these days, I’d learn to keep my mouth shut in regard to my relationship with Ellie.
“So why were you home tonight? I thought you had plans with Ry-Guy and company.”
“Ryan hates it when you call him that.”
“That’s why I do it.”
She huffed, which set in motion the vivid images in my mind like a movie reel. Ellie’s eyes fluttering with feigned annoyance, her lips pressed together with the corners curved down into a frown. But I knew her better than anyone, and the heavy exhale through her nose, coupled with her pursed lips and tight scowl, was her way of holding in laughter. She could’ve fooled anyone except me. I’d seen that expression more times than I could count, and no matter how it looked, she couldn’t hide the truth.
“Shea and Melinda had some sort of drama, and I wasn’t feeling up to going out, anyhow.”
“Your period that bad?”
“Don’t you find it disturbing that you know this much about my cycle?”
“This coming from the girl who was aware of when my balls dropped.”
“Coby…your voice went from sounding like Miss Piggy to the Terminator. Everyone knew when your balls dropped.”
“Ellie…” I paused for dramatic effect, making sure she heard my next words. “You go from bee-bopping around like a cheerleader on crack to a crying, sobbing wreck worthy of a Midol endorsement. Everyone knows when you’re on your period.”
Chapter 6
Coby
Spring Training had started, and with my shoulder giving me more and more problems, it proved to be the hardest pre-season yet. But with the addition of a new player on the roster, Gage Nix, my injured arm went seemingly unnoticed by the coaches. There were a few times I’d been questioned, but those were on particularly bad days, which I was able to pass off as such, blaming sleep or overdoing it during the previous practice.
Gage came on like an earthquake—unexpected and bringing along plenty of damage. The San Antonio Riggers had traded him, and had I been consulted in this deal, I would’ve told them they were getting the short end of that stick. He wasn’t a bad guy from what I could tell, but when a club practically giftwraps a player with shiny paper, it’s because they want to deflect from what’s inside the package. And as it turned out, that’s exactly what had happened.
But of course, I hadn’t been consulted.
And we ended up with a teammate who thought women should’ve been served to him on an all-you-can-eat buffet. It wasn’t that he was a crap player. In fact, he had impressive stats and proved to be an asset to our batting lineup—the team joked that we had to bring in someone to make up for my incredible record for striking out. They’d often made mention of my induction into the Hall of Fame for worst batting average. In all honesty, it wasn’t like I had much of a defense. Douglas Kirk, the pitcher for the Greenville Gators, had better batting stats than I did—and he was part of the American League, which meant he had a designated hitter…in other words, the dude never had to hold a bat.
But enough about my inepti
tude…Gage’s liability came from his time off the field. After being on the team for a week, he’d already found himself in the middle of a scandal. Some woman he’d spent the night with claimed he’d played her. From the reports being printed in every local magazine and paper, he’d fed her lies to get her into bed, and then dismissed her as soon as he got what he wanted. It wasn’t big news, nothing that should’ve rocked the team, other than the woman was the wife of Andrew Clemmens—the shortstop for another team. In the end, it made our games against them more interesting.
At first, it had pissed me off. I wasn’t the type of person who got caught up in the rumors. I was here to throw balls and pray I could hit at least one per season. The who-did-what game had never interested me in the slightest, so when Gage had brought so much of it with him, it made me dislike a teammate for the first time in my young career.
It felt like high school all over again. And considering I hadn’t even attended my own graduation, it was evident how little I tolerated it. However, in an ironic turn of events, I came to appreciate the womanizer and his promiscuous ways.
“You’re dropping your arm too early,” Steve, my pitching coach, scolded me for the millionth time today. “Keep it up, Kyler, and instead of the entire team being blasted in the tabloids, you’ll have your very own unsavory headline.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked with disdain dripping from my tone.
“Oh, you haven’t heard?” When I shook my head, Steve let out a hardy, humorless laugh. “I figured someone would’ve said something to you by now. It seems our boy has done it again. But this time, he’s managed to throw half the team under the bus.”
“How so?” He had my undivided attention. The prospect of having my name dragged through the mud, or the names of the few people I cared about, set me on edge. I’d prided myself on continuing to live a private life, out of the heated spotlight of sports fame, so the idea of the entire country having personal information about me that had yet to be made public sickened me, making me so angry I could’ve lashed out at our newest teammate.
“It’s all a bunch of bullshit if you ask me.” Steve strapped a pack of ice on my shoulder while continuing to elaborate on this newest curve ball our club had been hit with. “It’s in one of those trashy tabloid magazines, so there’s only a hint of truth to any of it, but it’s enough to prove he’s talked to someone about the players.”
It was an unspoken rule amongst every team that we were a band of brothers. Locker-room talk was left behind when we exited the building, and nothing that happened on the road, the field, the bus, or in hotels was to be used as pillow talk. Obviously, some of the players had wives, and without admitting to it, we all pretty much understood that those relationships were unofficially exempt from the rule. There wasn’t anything I didn’t share with Ellie, but I also knew she’d never repeat any of it. So I never had to worry about going against the team in that regard.
“What all was said, Steve?” I pressed, needing him to tell me before I ran out and purchased my own copy to get the answers. “How bad is it? What are we looking at here?”
Steve nonchalantly waved me off, but I could tell he was bothered by this as much as I was. As much as we all should’ve been. “Stupid shit about Mark proposing to a drag queen after a night at Cheeseburger Sally’s. It was played up like more happened than did. It was either stated or implied that he’d gone home with the fella.”
My stomach knotted, recalling the night the entire team decided to go out for a bite to eat and a few drinks after a particularly long stretch of games against a team that should’ve given us three easy wins. But that wasn’t the case. We ended up taking them, but it hadn’t come undeserved. The Denver Diamondbacks had put up one hell of a fight and made us earn that celebratory dinner at the infamous Cheeseburger Sally’s. Yes, Mark had dropped to one knee and asked Madonna to marry him, offering her a ring made from a paper straw wrapper. We’d all joked for months about how Mark had raised the bar on wedding propositions, and any girlfriend of ours wouldn’t settle for anything less. But once we’d managed to pull him off the stage, we all headed back to the hotel. Mark hadn’t gone home with anyone other than us—and I would’ve been aware, considering he was my bunkmate.
It also wasn’t hard to recall that night because I’d just laughed about it a month earlier with Charlene during our last date, the same night she’d left me with the promise of giving us a chance after I’d nearly ruined the prospect of any relationship together.
“What else?”
Again, Steve spoke with no enthusiasm, as if having our team’s secrets shared publicly was no big deal. “Apparently, Henry tested positive for enhancement drugs, but the club paid the lab to reprint the official report that had been sent to the league. If any of these allegations cause issues with the team, it’ll be that one. I wouldn’t be surprised if Leo’s in his office right now, fielding questions from the League.”
“Are you kidding me?” Of course he wasn’t. I’d done nothing but waste my breath by even asking. “We all knew that test was going to come back negative. I don’t think there was a single member of the entire Major League who thought otherwise.”
And they hadn’t. It was comical that Henry even needed to be tested, considering he was the second most straight-laced player on the roster—obviously, I’d reigned over the number-one position for that title. And the only reason why he’d been tested was that some “anonymous” source had called in suspicions to the commissioner. Leo, the owner of the Titans, ended up ordering the assessment—after Henry volunteered to take it—just to end the ridiculous chatter between the teams. And just like we’d all predicted, it came back clean.
“We all know that, but I’m sure they still have to follow up on it, regardless.” Once we made it back beneath the shade of the dugout, Steve lifted his mirrored sunglasses to the top of his head and took a seat. He showed signs of his aging with the drawn-out exhale that rushed past his lips when his back hit the wall. It almost seemed as though he regretted bringing it up to begin with. “Like I said, Kyler, it’s all bullshit. I’m sure no one’s paying any attention to what was written in that fabricated article, and those who are will forget about it in a week when Nix goes and does the next stupid thing with the next foolish woman who believes his lies long enough to give up the goods.”
“Who else was mentioned?” I needed to know if my name had been dropped, and if so, what had been said.
“Cason had a few lines toward the end, but it was nothing worth remembering.”
“And me? Was I in there?”
He stared at me so long I thought he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open. “You’re a good kid, Kyler. One of the best pitchers I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. You take direction better than a blind man, and the pride you have in this sport, in this team, and in yourself shines every night you step onto that mound.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Actually, it did. His deflection told me I had been mentioned; now I only needed to find out what had been written. And I wouldn’t give up until I did, even if that meant I had to read the damn article myself.
“Nothing most people aren’t already aware of. When you were named as the first selection of the draft, then again when news broke of you taking a seat on the team’s roster, it’s no secret the sports community made a big deal over the Cinderella story about the high school graduate who couldn’t hit a ball if it were on a tee.”
That was the truth. Suddenly, everyone in the country who even remotely followed baseball knew my name. My picture was on every ESPN channel, the cover of countless sports magazines, as well as a few shout-outs from nightly news stations. With the physicals I had to undergo just to enter the draft, my vision wasn’t a secret. But there was more to the article than that. Steve wouldn’t have continued to deflect if that’s all that had been printed about me.
“Cut the shit, Steve. Either you tell me, or I’ll go ask one of the guys. Or hell, it’s no
t like I can’t find a copy of this piece of shit and find out for myself. One way or another, I’ll end up hearing or reading about it. And I’d rather it come from you.”
His shoulders slumped, and he ran his hands over his thighs as if drying his sweaty palms on his pants. “Fine. It mentioned your girl.”
I saw red. “Ellie? What the hell did it say about her?”
“You don’t want to know, Kyler. Just leave it alone.”
“Like hell I’m going to leave it alone!” As my hands fisted at my sides, a sharp pain attacked my left shoulder, the same agonizing burn I’d grown used to. The cold pack didn’t do anything to ease the ache, and in an instant, an icy sensation trailed along the back of my arm, down to my left hand, leaving my fingers tingly and numb. But I pushed past it, focusing on Steve and the answers he was about to provide.
“Before I say anything more, you need to understand it was a minor mention. In fact, your name was never used, but considering I know you and your family, I was able to figure out who it referred to.”
“Just tell me.” It came out like a plea through clenched teeth, but in reality, it was nothing more than the pain I desperately tried to ignore making its way into my words.
“It talked about how one of the players was unknowingly in a sexual relationship with his half sibling. They said their source refused to give the name of the player, but went on to talk about how his father had impregnated two women around the same time, and after his mother had passed away when he was young, the other woman had stepped in to raise him, and therefore, he and his half-sister grew up together, never aware they were related.”
“You think they’re talking about Ellie and me? That my dad had cheated on my mom?” My stomach rolled. Even though it wasn’t true, and it couldn’t have possibly held any validity, it still made me sick, acidic bile scorching the back of my throat. “There’s no way.”
Third Base Page 10