Hardball

by CD Reiss

  The cold burned my lungs, and I tried to focus on my steps, my breath, the rhythm of my body.

  Limits and lids. I imposed limits and kept the lid on emotional highs and lows. Five years of it, and I had it down to a science. No media attention on my personal life because it effectively didn’t exist. No distractions from the game because that was all I had to pay attention to. Beautiful women were easy to find, and I could spot one with a dirty mouth who liked getting a pink bottom. We kept it short and sweet. A series in Baltimore where Eva liked to be bound so tight she couldn’t move. A two-week stay at home in Los Angeles, then to Pittsburgh, where Joanna preferred my belt to my palm. All good. Just to relax. Just to maintain the feeling of control I had on the field. When things went off the rails in my personal life, it affected my performance, and I’d worked too hard, given up too much to let another human being fuck with me.

  I was sure I was right.

  But I liked talking to her.

  I felt as if I was bending the rules anyway.

  I was at war with myself.

  My front door led to the stairs to the house. Opening it, I stepped into an outdoor area that seemed infinite. When I’d been looking for a house, I didn’t like seeing the stadium from the front steps, but eventually I got to like it. I wasn’t seen. I was only seeing.

  I turned on the lights. Music. Opened the windows to the cold. I was still coated in sweat and breathing like a runner. My thoughts were disorganized. Unusual after a run.

  She had felt safe.

  I’d let my guard down with her. She may or may not have intuited that, but I knew it, and it was disruptive. I grabbed a ball and fingered the stitches. I had them all over the house. None had seen a game. I just wore them down with my thumb and fingertips. I juggled them, three, four, five. I had a way of letting things fall through the cracks in favor of new sensory pleasures. I could focus while juggling baseballs, and I had to focus right now on one problem I’d avoided solving.

  The glove.

  One, two, three balls in the air, and my hands hit a rhythm my thoughts had to follow. I let them flow instead of trying to organize it all. There was a relief in letting go of the pretense that I had to remember any of it.

  I had to stop texting Vivian. Cop to wanting to fuck her. Okay, I want to fuck her she’s not going to work out with Youder because he needs to re-up with Los Angeles is not the place for a girl who’s serious and has told you so when she said you shouldn’t finish Cornell, and you should just do what you love because how old are you now? How many years before you break a bone or cartilage or a heart like your own, which is made of tight knots, and spanking an experienced girl who oohed and aahed was nice, but a buttoned-up librarian begging for my cock in the filthiest terms possible, mouth open, lipstick on my cock, mascara running up and down the hill twenty-five times hold on to everything. No more slipping no more slipping no more slipping she’s not a plaything.

  I dropped a ball and caught the other two. Turned one in my right hand. I’d done my signature real big on her ball because I thought she was hot and it was my stupid way of letting her know. So it was my fault from day one.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was a fucking infection.

  The look on her face when I’d told her how many times I was going to make her come. Shocked. Scandalized. Aroused. All of it. Saying it and watching her expression had been like plowing new snow or knifing the satin-smooth top of a new jar of peanut butter.

  I could fuck her maybe. A few times. Just to crack the label.

  Before I’d been diagnosed with ADD, I did crazy shit for the sake of doing it. I broke crayons to hear the snap of the wax. Punched a kid two years older than me because the buildup of energy needed a place to go. Yelled too loudly when I lost and slapped my own face when I struck out. I was a balloon that constantly filled to bursting. I had to release the energy. I had no choice.

  The meds started when I was twelve, and the feeling of control was such a relief I almost cried on that first day.

  To get her naked in front of me and tie her hands behind her back. To watch her adjust to my control. To accept it as she’d never accepted it from anyone else.

  The space between second and third was mine, and nothing got past it. Nothing. My domain. The first season I got control of my fielding, after Daria’s death, that was the year I stopped feeling the eyes on me from the stands because they didn’t matter. Nothing had felt so good as seeing them as a wall instead of people.

  Getting a girl like Vivian to kneel when I told her to would be that difficult, and feel that good. But I didn’t have space in my life to be master of two domains. And I wasn’t giving up the field. I’d worked too hard for it.

  So she’d have to move on her way. No more texting. I couldn’t give a woman more than a minute’s attention during the playing season because I didn’t have enough attention to give, and she’d need more. She might not be clingy or crazy, but I couldn’t fuck with her. Couldn’t break her in then break up with her. She wasn’t a plaything—that was obvious.

  If I could stick with one decision, that would be great.

  I was going to start this damn day over.

  fourteen

  Vivian

  I sat in my car and turned the glove over in my hands. I pressed the opening to my face. The place where his hand went. Pure man. Adrenaline and endorphins. Sex.

  Going to his house with the glove but not the pin was dangerous. I didn’t know how he’d react. But I parked halfway down the street, where the curb wasn’t red. Engine running, glove in my lap, sun setting over the city at the end of the block, I wondered one thing.

  What did I want out of the guy?

  I asked myself that question the entire half-a-block walk up to his door. I didn’t even know if he was home. Looking up at the house, I saw all the lights were out. I knocked, confident no one would answer, then emboldened by the silence, I rang the bell.

  Nothing.

  Relieved and sad at the same time, I waited another second. I couldn’t leave the glove there. The mail slot was too small. I could have it sent. That was the wise thing, of course.

  I walked back to the car, staring at the glove. What had the pin looked like in there? How had no one noticed it? Maybe he wore the pin backward?

  The impact as I crashed into him yanked the last breath from my lungs. I jumped. He jumped.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “You found it!” Dash held out his hand.

  He had on a Dodgers cap, grey sweatpants, and a grey T-shirt even in the cold. His arms were slicked with a sheen of sweat, and his breath came faster than it should have. He’d been taking a run. I’d almost missed him.

  Great and not great.

  I didn’t give him the glove. “I have something to tell you about it.”

  “Okay?”

  “The girl who took it, she’s sorry. Her parents are really strict, and they want to offer their apologies. They’re disciplining her.”

  “They don’t have to.”

  “I’ll tell them you said so.” It didn’t matter what he said. They had their own way, and they didn’t make their poverty an excuse for bad behavior.

  “They’re not beating her or anything?”

  “No, no. Just no TV. That sort of thing. She’s their only girl. They have big expectations. Dash, I—”

  “There’s no pin,” he said when I stalled. “I can see from here.”

  I handed the glove over. I couldn’t look at him. “Her brother found a princess pin offensive and flushed it. I’m so sorry.”

  He turned the glove around in his hands as if the pin would appear. I wanted to die of shame.

  “You know in The Grapes of Wrath, the way the Joads lose everything?” He looked up from the glove at me. “And it’s not all at once, it’s just piece by piece?”

  Was I supposed to tell him he wasn’t close to that level of poverty or apologize again?

  “Yeah,” was all I could say. I was getti
ng cold, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the warmth of his body against mine.

  “This isn’t anything like that,” he said. “But it feels like it, you know?”

  “I do. I don’t know how to make it right.” I made some gesture toward my ratty car as if I had to go, which I didn’t. I didn’t have a thing to do after this silly sidewalk conversation, but he probably did, and I didn’t want to keep him in the middle of the street.

  “You’re probably busy,” he said.

  “Not really.”

  “Do you want to come in? I won’t bite unless you ask me to.”

  A little twitch of his eyes, a stiffening of his lips, a swallow after he said it made me want to ask for his mouth on my body. A bite. A kiss.

  It took me too long to answer. He was reading me like a book, looking into my eyes and seeing the filthy images behind them.

  “I won’t ask then,” I said.

  He held out his hand, indicating the house on the corner, behind the gate. We walked back up the hill. Again I asked myself what I was doing, and I didn’t have an answer. Then he opened the gate, and I was committed to being in the same room with him.

  The house didn’t face the street but the city, and the front yard was a steep slope down into the basin. To the right, the steps up led to the house, and to the left, a little plateau with a set of chairs around a fire pit seemed like a pedestal over the city. It was only five at night, but the sky was already just a few shades lighter than navy, and the air was frigid.

  “This is nice,” I said.

  He was halfway up the steps, looking down at me. “Yeah. It’s quiet. Do you drink coffee? I have a pot on a timer, but it’s caffeinated. I have decaf instant.”

  “Caffeine doesn’t keep me up.”

  “Me either.”

  We went up the stairs and into the house. It was Mission style with thick walls, a tile roof, and arched windows. The inside was floored in tiles and dark wood.

  He dropped his keys on a thick-legged side table and faced me with his glove tucked under his arm. “You look nice.”

  His words were flat and noncommittal, but his voice and gaze were laced with sex.

  I looked down at myself. Button-down floral shirt. Slacks. Sensible flats. Work clothes. I’d tucked my hair into a clip before I arrived and made sure none of my lunch was still stuck in my teeth, but my appearance wasn’t worth mentioning.

  Last night, I touched myself thinking of you.

  “What’s a girl got to do to look like crap around here?”

  He trotted over to the kitchen, which was open to the living room with a stone bar counter and stools. I sat on a stool. He dropped the glove on the bar and got two mugs from a cabinet. Sitting still, without the wafting winter air from the open door, I smelled the coffee as it gurgled in the machine.

  “Be somebody else, I guess.”

  His hand on the cup, the other on the pot. Would I ever compare another man’s hands favorably to his, with his powerful wrists and long fingers? Every digit was articulated and active. Not an ounce of fat on them. No roundedness. No tapering at the tips. No softness at all.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said, looking at the bottles of vitamins behind the glass cabinet doors. The juicer. The calendar on the fridge. Anything but the way his jaw squared when he smiled.

  He held up a cup. “How do you take this?”

  “Black is fine.”

  He took his black as well and came around the counter to drop the cups in front of us and sit next to me. I wrapped my hands around my mug and sipped. The coffee was thick and strong. He had his glove. Pin or no pin, that was our connection right there on the kitchen counter. There was no reason for us to talk anymore.

  “How will it be without the pin?” I asked.

  “Who do you want to answer? Mr. Reasonable or Mr. Real?”

  “I know what Mr. Reasonable would say.”

  “Mr. Real is panicking.”

  “Why?”

  “This whole game is built on luck. If you have a run of bad luck and you can’t get out of it, you’re fucked. Well, I’m having a run of really shitty luck, and all the things I do to give me good luck are falling apart. Pin included. My fucking avocado tree. Jack Youder going up for free agency. I’m sunk.”

  “Will you not do that thing anymore? Where you twist around and throw to Youder behind your back like this…” I twisted my arm around, my shoulders followed, and I looked over my shoulder in a cheap imitation of a move he made mid-air.

  He laughed as if I’d embarrassed him. “Yeah. That’s the thing. Doing stuff like that, I’m an injury waiting to happen.” He waved his finger at me. “One injury. That’s all it takes. One.”

  He put his foot on the low rung of my stool. It didn’t put his body any closer, but I was aware of his encroachment into my space. The inches between us shrank, and what I saw was nothing compared to the scent of him fresh after a run. Not gross or sweaty, he smelled like cool air outdoors.

  “I’ve realized something about you,” I said.

  “What’s that?” He put the glove down next to me. He was closer with each move. Now the coffee cup, putting it where he had to reach in my direction.

  “You’re very risk-averse.”

  “Off the field, maybe.”

  “This deadline for us?”

  “Yes?” He leaned toward me.

  How did he get so close I could see every hair on his jaw? Every lash? The brown fleck in his left eye?

  “It’s risk management.” My voice barely worked.

  “And? What about you?”

  What about me? With the safe job. Living with my father. Driving a Nissan. “I’m not a big risk-taker.”

  “And that’s why you don’t like the deadline.”

  “Yes. And you can get in my space as much as you want. I’m not changing my mind. I was hurt once. I like you, but I’m not walking into it again.”

  He bit his upper lip then relaxed his mouth. He took a long time to answer, as if deciding not just a response but a course of action.

  “That guy?” His voice was husky and low, suggestive without even suggesting anything. “He’s an asshole. He fucked you like a middle schooler.”

  I gripped my cup with one hand and held onto the stool with the other. I was so close to going liquid. So close. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I said it even though I knew it wasn’t true. He seemed to know exactly what he was talking about.

  “I do know what I’m talking about. I can’t stop thinking about you. Imagining you with this little blouse off, these no-nonsense trousers dropping. I can see the shape of you under these clothes.”

  “No deadlines.” My voice was no more than a breath.

  “Reconsider. Take it back. When I fuck you, I’m going to take it slow. You’ll come twice before I’m even inside you.” He put his hand on my knee and slowly moved it up, pressing harder with his thumb. “First with my fingers, then I’m going to lick your pussy until—”

  “Stop!”

  My back had straightened as much as it could while still keeping me on the seat, and my underwear… well, I wanted to weep for them because they’d taken a deluge before the word “fingers” left his lips.

  “It’s working. All right?” I put my hands on his shoulders, intending to push him away, but the pushing part didn’t happen. “It’s working. I haven’t even done half the stuff you’re telling me you’re going to do and—”

  “I haven’t even said anything yet.” His voice was full of promise, as if he hadn’t gotten to the good part.

  I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to look at his perfect face and held up my hands as if warding him off. “I’ve been with one person my whole life.”

  “Wait.” He leaned back. “What did I say that you haven’t done?”

  “The licking thing.”

  He stopped. Crossed his arms. Tilted his head as if trying to solve a math problem above his grade level. “The lic
king thing?”

  “Yes. That. TMI?”

  “He never ate your pussy?”

  I got hot everywhere. The bottoms of my feet and the top of my head. I must have been a sunburned shade of red. I looked away and crossed my own arms, but there was no hiding.

  “It’s not TMI,” he said. “Just tell me.”

  I huffed. Why should I tell him? I didn’t owe him an explanation. I’d never even told Francine, and I’d known her since sixth grade. But there was something about Dash Wallace that felt safe. Maybe it was the way he’d shut down all the fuck talk to hear what I had to say, or maybe it was the way he never made me feel as though he was doing me a favor by wanting me. So I blurted it out.

  “He thought it was gross.”

  I wanted to cry. I was ashamed that I’d let Carl say that and that I’d repeated it. I felt gross. I felt awful inside and out. God, I shouldn’t have said anything. Because Dash’s eyes had gone wide and his lips parted a little, then a lot, and his tongue was fidgeting with his teeth.

  “Stop looking at me like that.”

  “I’m stuck,” he said.

  “Stuck? What does that mean?”

  “Between wanting to punch him and wanting to eat you out until you scream. I don’t think I can do both at the same time.”

  “Well, he has a point, I mean—”

  Dash reached for me so fast I couldn’t finish and put his hand over my mouth. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you say it. You taste like heaven, and I’m going to prove it to you. You have no choice now. You’re going to see me. You’re going to let me take you out. I’m going to put my face between your legs and experience how delicious you are.”

  I’d die of course. And I was going to tell him that if he did, I’d explode into a hundred twenty pounds of pleasure pieces, but he moved his fingers and kissed me. His lips were on mine, but the space between my legs blossomed with the promise of what he’d just described.

  “No expiration date,” I said, low and firm. Amazing since I’d gone soft and molten inside.