“Well, I do know,” she stated with a handful of popcorn. “Jake Napleton has huge, long fingers, and you are curious how they would feel wrapped around your...wrist…or something.”
“Uh, no, what I was really wondering is how they would feel gripping between my—” I realized what I was saying and brought a swift hand to my mouth to stop myself.
“You really know how to leave a girl with a cliffhanger!” she remarked and took another sip of her wine. “Are you embarrassed? He’s super hot. I don’t get it. Any normal girl would be thinking exactly what you’ve been thinking. Why are you holding back? You think it’s part of the whole conservative upbringing thing you were talking about the other day?”
I sighed and reached for my glass of wine on the coffee table.
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe it is. I do know I feel scared. I just feel like if I let myself cross the line, I’ll ruin everything I’ve worked for. What if I do hook up with him, and then we break up? What if people found out? How am I going to be able to get a job in sports PR again? I’ll just be another notch on his belt. And what if he doesn’t even like me in the first place? What if it ends up being exactly like Grant? I can’t go through something like that again.”
Amy ran her finger around the rim of her wine glass, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Grant really did a number on you, didn’t he?”
I felt like my stomach was about to collapse inward. “Yeah, pretty much,” I said quietly. “We’ve been over for nearly a year, and I just stopped thinking about him three months ago.” My last year at Tennessee State, Grant’s face had been everywhere since he was the touted number one pick for the draft. He was still the golden boy, but after graduation back in May and getting this internship, it’d felt like a fresh start.
“You can’t live in fear,” Amy said sternly. “He’ll win. You deserve to have fun and be happy.”
I nodded, agreeing but still glum. “Finally, I was moving on, and then—poof. Now he’s back on my mind.”
“I mean, he plays for the Bulldogs. You’re in sports PR. It’s hard for you to totally avoid him, especially since their series with the Jags is for the rest of this week.”
“I know. Uggh. It’s just all so stressful.” I sank further into the couch. “Why can’t I just be a normal girl who finds a normal boring accountant guy who just plays a little softball on the weekends? It’s all so difficult.”
Amy narrowed her eyes at me and tilted her head. “What did Grant do to you that was so bad?”
My heartbeat sped up again. “Sorry, I just…really don’t want to talk about it. I don’t mean to wall you off, but it’s been a really stressful night, and I don’t want to get into it.”
Amy nodded and went silent for a moment, her eyes darting around the room. Eventually, her gaze found her way back to me. She grabbed the wine bottle on the coffee table, smiled, and shrugged.
“Sounds like you need some more wine.”
I smiled and stuck out my glass.
“Yes please. Did I mention how glad I am that I met you?”
She took my glass in her hand and filled it up. “Hey, there is nothing quite like a wine night with a non-judgmental friend to get you out of a funk, am I right?”
“I don’t care what you have to do,” Steve was saying. Wednesday morning I was back in his office, getting reamed. I was seated this time, because this had gone on for over twenty minutes now. “I need you to find an angle. Something. Anything that portrays Jake Napleton in a way that isn’t a dumb fucking asshole who drinks and parties too much. Have you seen the latest viral meme?”
Of course I had seen it. Everybody had. A picture of Jake with his eyes half open and a beer in his hand had made the rounds on Twitter and was up to over a million shares. It was taken last night. Apparently, after I’d ditched him, he’d called up some buddies and painted the town red.
“That picture was so ridiculous anyway. He wasn’t even drunk in it. The shutter just happened to flash when his eyes were just partway open. And it was posted by a third party. We should be suing for them to take down the photo. It’s bunch of bullstuff.”
“Did you just say bullstuff?” He arched an eyebrow at me.
I shrugged. “Why is it such a big deal that I don’t like swearing?”
He smiled. “It’s just cute, that’s all. Anyways, you got me off topic with your clean language. You know what we have to do, right? I need you to stalk him.”
I cleared my throat. “Stalk...Jake?”
“Yes. Where does he mysteriously go after games? Why isn’t he accounted for? His teammates sure aren’t telling, and the coaches have no clue. Neither does his agent. Obviously, it’s bad if he’s being this secretive. Is he doping? Maybe we shouldn’t even be taking him on as a client. If he’s a sinking ship, it’s in our best interest to cut him loose.”
I got defensive, and I wasn’t exactly sure why. Even though Jake had neglected to go into detail about his background, I felt protective of him. Something told me his frat boy drinking image was the tip of the iceberg, and there was a lot more beneath the surface. “No way is Jake doping. And he’s not a sinking ship. Although yes, he can be a little reckless sometimes.”
“Well, if you can’t find an angle, we’re going to have to drop this account.”
“I’ll find an angle. Trust me.” I stood up.
“Just do it. Do whatever you have to do. We clear, Andrea?” he said, dismissing me as his eyes went to his laptop.
Numbly, I nodded and left without a further word.
“Is your aunt picking you up again tonight?”
I leaned on the hood of my car, a blue Dodge Challenger I’d bought the day after I’d gotten my first multimillion-dollar contract four years ago. I wasn’t the type who needed to roll around in a six-figure car to compensate for any below-the-belt insecurities.
I had that department covered, anyhow.
“Yeah, she’ll come,” Tate said.
I’d been waiting with Tate again after our late afternoon game. The ironic thing about being suspended was that it allowed me to coach a Wednesday game. We’d won, but kids at this age didn’t care. There hadn’t been any pizza tonight, and now we were playing another kind of game that we had both become accustomed to: waiting for this “auntie” of his I had never seen. I was beginning to think she was a ghost.
“Bet she’ll be here any second,” he said. He didn’t glance down at his ten-dollar digital watch that looked like it came from Walmart. The kid had almost convinced himself of his own lie. I wondered what Tate would do if I wasn’t here to call him on his bluff. Would he walk home? At this time of the night? In this neighborhood?
I shuddered, flashing back to all of the times I had walked home alone from my games on the South Side of Chicago, taking certain streets to avoid running into certain gangs who wouldn’t hesitate to pull a gun on you for no reason. And even then I’d still get in at least one fist fight every week, it seemed. Hell, at least it had a way of toughening a man up.
Came in handy when I had to throw down on the mound, too.
“All right, well, what do you say we wait five more minutes, and if she doesn’t come, I’ll take you home.”
“Home,” he repeated. “Okay.”
Something about just leaning against the hood of my car, waiting with the kid, made me feel so damn at peace. I think Tate didn’t mind it much either, because he always seemed disappointed when I told him he had to go home. Then again, “home” wasn’t always a fuzzy warm feeling for everyone, and when someone paid any attention to you in a positive way, it felt like the best thing ever. I knew. Tate was living it now, and I couldn’t be careless with that, even though it felt foreign to me.
I glanced around, noticing how quiet it was, at least right now. Only a few lingering people were around the park. The night was warm but not bad. The brassy lights from the field competed with the dying rays of the sun, but it was pretty, the harsh contrast of false and real light. I smiled to mysel
f when I saw Tate looking around too, copying me.
Since I was MVP of the league last season, there weren’t a lot of places I could go and just relax without worrying about being in the public eye. It seemed like every second of my life, someone was snapping a picture of me and putting it on Instagram without my permission, or taking some stupid thing I said out of context and throwing it on Twitter.
It was also the reason I didn’t tell anyone what I did after games. The last thing these kids needed was an army of paparazzi showing up to their Little League games because of me. The blue-collar parents who actually showed up to games seemed to understand that, and they hadn’t posted one pic of me or alerted the press. I could be myself, not fighting the image the media portrayed me as. One I didn’t exactly rush to correct.
You spend your whole life chasing a dream, you get it, and then you’re pissed because people won’t leave you alone. The irony was as thick as a steel beam.
I glanced down at my phone, at the clock at the top of the screen.
Andrea had emailed me a couple times yesterday about setting up a meeting at her office. I hadn’t emailed back a response because I didn’t really want to talk about my social media re-branding or any of that crap. I wanted to talk about Grant, and why that asshole had smiled triumphantly at me when Andrea practically ran out of there. I hadn’t cared about the looks from people. I’d just been so stunned by her sudden change in mood. We’d gone from talking business to getting somewhere good. I was touching her and she was letting me. I’d liked talking to her about baseball, and the look on her face had been worth it. She had been slowly getting comfortable around me. And truthfully, I hadn’t felt comfortable with a woman like that in a while. My last girlfriend, if I could even call her that, had been more about appearances and her dating a baseball player. Our relationship had felt a little…fake and superficial after the initial few weeks. But just being with Andrea had been nice, unexpectedly nice. As much as my guard was up, hers were equally in place. Didn’t that make us a strange couple?
I almost laughed out loud at that thought. Couple. I hadn’t had a truly serious girlfriend since Dani, and that’d ended disastrously. Aside from my sister, I’d had no one to trust my whole life. The one person I thought had my back, didn’t. And it’d reminded me that I only had myself.
I looked at Tate, who was right next to me now and watching me stare off into space, thinking about adult problems. I wondered what problems were swirling in his miniature noggin. “You doin’ okay, little man?” I asked him.
He almost smiled but then nodded. “I like being here,” he said, almost in a whisper, like he was afraid if he said it too loudly, it’d be taken away from him.
I knew that feeling, too. I smiled back and ruffled up his sweaty mop of blonde hair. “Me, too, Tate, me too…”
My phone beeped again and I looked down. I had dozens of missed calls, emails, texts, and alerts. But I immediately tapped on the newest email from Andrea, asking if I’d gotten her earlier emails. Her contact info had been in Green PR’s outline for my image rehab, and I’d put her number in my phone and called it a couple of times since our dinner date, curious what had happened last night. Her emails from today had been brisk and professional, not hinting at anything other than impersonal business to attend to. Since I was still suspended, the team had played on without me, and I’d had to watch us lose to the damn Bulldogs. Our four-game series ended tomorrow, with an off-day on Friday. Then we had the Jacksonville Firebirds starting on Saturday, which was a very tough team we needed to defeat to stay comfortably at the top.
I hated to admit it, but I couldn’t deny that I might have screwed our season up. Not that one man made the difference, since our offense was outstanding, but I sure as hell wasn’t making it easy for our team to get to the World Series. And we deserved to play in it, given how hard we had worked to get here the whole season. I thought back to Andrea’s speech at dinner, her plans and strategies. It’d been cute listening to her talk about what she does best, just as I’d enjoyed talking baseball. However, controlling my temper had never been my best skill, and it’d been my hot head that had gotten me to where I was. But I could understand what she meant. What they’d all meant, even though I still didn’t think I was entirely wrong. I sighed, rubbing the spot between my eyes, and caught Tate watching me unblinkingly. Did he think that if he blinked too often, I’d suddenly disappear?
When an extra couple of minutes passed, I called time. “Tate. Been ten minutes. Can I drive you home, buddy?”
“Uh,” Tate started, his brown eyes looking up at me thoughtfully. “Yeah, Coach. That’s cool.”
He showed little emotion as he jumped into the front seat of my car and buckled up. I did the same and turned the ignition. I had the AC on low and no radio with annoying hosts armchairing the game or music I didn’t understand at all. I pulled out of the parking lot.
“So, big guy, we going to Altgeld Gardens tonight?”
“Nah, my auntie moved.”
Odd how he’d worded that. Not, “We moved.” It was like his aunt moved and hadn’t meant to really include her nephew. “So where we going?”
“Uh, 2837 Blue Island.”
My heart sunk. Christ almighty. This little blond-haired, brown-eyed white boy was living in the heart of the murder capital of the U.S.
I felt an anger swell up inside me, not against anyone in particular, but at the mere fact that places like this existed, and that an innocent kid was being carted around from a crappy neighborhood to an even crappier one. I knew exactly what he was going through, and I hated it because there was nothing I could do about it. Tate was stuck, just like a lot of people were.
The funny thing was, he probably didn’t realize how shitty of an upbringing he was having. And it was better this way. Truthfully, I was hoping he didn’t realize it for as long as possible, because maybe this mystery aunt did love him. Maybe she couldn’t show up because she was working four jobs to make ends meet so she could take care of a growing little boy.
“No pizza today, huh Coach?” Tate asked, a few blocks out. Hand on the steering wheel, I glanced over and heard his stomach growling loudly.
Motherfucker. The kid was starving. His scrawny size was telling enough but, shit, even as a foster kid, I’d usually had enough to eat most days.
I ground my teeth. “Buddy, let’s make a quick stop. I need to get some coffee real quick. You can tag along.”
He brightened up. “Can I have coffee, too?”
Shit. The kid had no idea that coffee wasn’t food. “No, but you can help me eat a huge plate of bacon and waffles at Debi’s Diner. I can’t eat it on my own, so you’re gonna have to do your part, ‘kay?” I told him, glancing over and giving him my serious look.
His eyes were big, probably already imagining it. “Okay…”
“You need to call your aunt and tell her you’ll be a little late?”
Tate’s answer was immediate. A shake of the head and no words.
If I did anything worthwhile this week, I was going to get this kid some real damn food. Pizza was good and all, but if cheese, bread, and tomato sauce was the only square meal he was having in a week, we were in trouble.
When I looked over at him again, he smiled, the first smile I’d seen from him since he’d gotten off the baseball field. I turned down 24th Street.
We had been driving for a few minutes when we pulled up to a stoplight, and I noticed Tate had been staring into the side-view mirror for a long time.
“What is it?” I asked, curious what had grabbed his attention.
“We got a follower,” Tate said.
I scrunched my face up at him. “A follower? What do you mean?”
“That’s what my cousin calls them,” he answered. “White Prius behind us for a few miles now.”
The kid was eight, but he already recognized the specific make and model of a car that was following him. Something told me that checking in the rearview mirror was a regular occur
rence for Tate. I hadn’t noticed, at least not yet. Getting out of here had been the best thing ever, but it meant I’d lost some skills, and this was one I hadn’t really missed.
I glanced behind and saw someone with glasses and a baseball cap through the shadows.
It was either paparazzi or it was a gangbanger. Either way, this fucker had no idea who he was messing with.
The light turned green and I sped off. The Prius stayed close enough so that he wouldn’t lose us, but far enough away that he wouldn’t arouse suspicion in most cases. Little did he know, I apparently had a future detective on my hands sitting next to me. However, most gangbangers didn’t drive a Prius. Then again, criminals were changing up the game all the time.
I pulled off the road and into the worn down parking lot of my favorite 24-hour diner, and sure enough, the Prius followed, parking several yards behind me.
“Stay here,” I said to Tate, unbuckling my seatbelt.
“What you gonna do, Coach? You gonna rub his face in the dirt?”
Christ. I really did need to get Andrea to clean up my damn profile. And maybe start listening to her advice.
“Don’t worry about it. Just stay put. Keep the doors locked. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said, and sank down in his seat a little bit. I only left when I heard the car lock automatically.
I approached the car, ready to throw down. My blood boiled, and all I could think was that he better be after me and not the kid, whoever the hell he was.
As I approached the car, it started to drizzle a little bit, and visibility became low. All I could see was a silhouette inside the car. I rapped vigorously on the driver’s side window.
As soon as the window was half open, I started ranting.
“Listen buddy, I don’t know who you are, or why you’re following me, but all I ask is that you leave the kid out of it. Do whatever the hell you want with me—I don’t care. But you bet—”
I paused in mid-sentence, and my mouth was agape at the woman I saw as she rolled the window all the way down. She took off her cap, and I had to look at her for a full five seconds before I registered I knew her.
Playing Dirty: A Bad Boy Sports Romance Page 8