by CD Reiss
“Yeah,” he said, flipping through channels. It was after midnight, and the pickin’s were slim. “They send her to the worst customers. By the time they walk away, they’re smiling.”
He settled on one of the ESPNs, on some statistical yackety yack involving a players’ strike that wasn’t going to happen, and I didn’t even think to ask him to change it. I didn’t know what I was going to do over the course of the season, if seeing him on the field was going to hurt me too much or if even in the breadth of the stadium I’d feel the heat of his body.
But it wasn’t the season yet. I had time. I had Dad’s party the next day, and I had to get the library in shape for a funding drive, then I had summer vacation. I didn’t expect to be over Dash Wallace by then, but I didn’t have to figure out if I had to start rooting for Anaheim just yet.
That was why his face caught me off guard, landing in my throat like an olive I couldn’t swallow. First in a rectangle in the corner of the screen, still and perfect, with a predatory look outward, with the header Spring Training Report.
Dad fussed for the remote while the announcer droned about something, but his hands were swollen and stiff. He couldn’t find the button to change the channel.
“Sorry, sorry,” he grumbled to my broken heart.
I hadn’t said a word because it was crazy, but the sight of him brought it all back. When the picture flipped to clips of the Arizona practice field and Dash’s body running across it, my sorrow hit a new low.
He couldn’t catch a freaking ball to save his life. Tape of the pathetic drills looped over and over. Error. Error. Error. It was freakishly bad. I’d never seen him play like that. It was as if a Little Leaguer had stepped onto the field for a charity match.
“Stop,” I said to Dad, leaning over so he couldn’t change the station.
Scouts and sportswriters are calculating the odds that the current world champions will be in fourth place by the All-Star Game without Wallace’s A-game. With Randy Tremaine’s slugging percentage at a career high, there’s speculation number 19’s moving down to the bottom of the lineup.
They shot a second of him close. Profile. Walking off the practice field with his head down. He knew people were watching. He wanted to hide. He was ashamed.
How did I know?
I just did.
He’d hurt me. I knew he was sleeping with other women. I knew he’d forgotten me. I knew what we had together wouldn’t be repeated, but I felt no joy in his failure. I was sick to my stomach for him.
The next morning, prepping Dad’s twenty-five-man roster ball, I placed it in the little glass stand with Dash’s big blue name facing up. I wanted to remember that confident player. That king of the Elysian. I wrapped the box in blue paper and immersed myself in decorating the house and entertaining the guests while Dad was out.
“They’re here!” Aunt Bette said from her spot by the window.
I was in the center of the room because I lived there, so I didn’t have to hide.
Sylvia and I had arranged it. She was going to let Dad walk in first. Tie a lace on her shoe or something. I’d left the door unlocked as usual.
“Wait,” Aunt Bette whispered sharply. “Who is that guy?” She glared at me. “Didn’t you say not to come after seven?”
Aunt Bette was always a little stern. I walked to the window amid the whispers behind the furniture and peeked through the seam between the curtains.
“Shit,” I said.
“Mouth!” Aunt Bette shot to me.
Fuck her. My life had just exploded.
Dash.
Dash Wallace.
Three-time Golden Glove shortstop with a .380 career average and the gentlest filthy mouth was in my driveway with a huge bouquet of pink roses, opening the car door for Sylvia. I put my hand over my mouth. My lips remembered his, and my fingers told them about the sweet silk of his cock. It was my heart that shouted the loudest. Screamed for him to make me laugh, soothe me, goad me into those moments when I didn’t worry about anything but how to please him. My nose and eyes tingled with the threat of tears, and my throat closed around a big lump.
Dash and Dad exchanged words. I couldn’t hear them, but they were pointing at Sylvia. She laughed and waved. Dad sniffed the roses and shrugged. Dash pulled one out and gave it to Dad. He passed it to Sylvia.
“Who is that?” Aunt Bette hissed.
“Dash Wallace,” I said, “He’s a—”
“The shortstop?!” My eleven year-old cousin stood ramrod straight from behind the couch.
“Get down!” three people said simultaneously.
His father pulled him down.
“Friend,” I finished.
The three of them came up the front walk, Dash and Dad talking seriously and Sylvia trying to stay behind. Dad wouldn’t let her. Goddamned gentleman.
Well, the original plan had changed, and I was bursting out of my skin anyway, so I opened the front door. I was supposed to have eyes only for my father. It was his birthday. I was supposed to get him in the house. Shout surprise. Make sure he didn’t have a heart attack. Give him a fraction of the love he’d given me over the years.
But I only had eyes for the guy with the flowers.
Don’t cry.
“Hey,” I said.
He was ten feet away and three feet below, all dressed up in a suit like the day he had waited outside my library. My heart sighed. I hadn’t dared to hope he’d ever be in my driveway again, so seeing him flooded me. Joy first, then pain. Acceptance then rage. Forgiveness then bitterness. What had he been doing for the past few weeks? Who had he been sleeping with? Was he in for the weekend? Was he trying to make me his LA girl? I guarded my heart with tinfoil armor. It was the strongest thing I had against him.
“Your dad said you made potato pancakes,” he said. “And I like potatoes.”
“There’s plenty,” I replied. I wasn’t going to ruin Dad’s party with drama, so I stepped aside and made room. “Birthday boy first.”
“Ladies first,” Dad said.
“Oh, I left something in the car,” Sylvia said with her lilting Honduran accent.
Dad, of course, started back to get it for her. The slapstick comedy of chivalry in the front of the house was maddening.
“Dad, can you let Dash help her? I have an emergency with the matzo soup. I know you told me not to make it, but I had to try.”
Sylvia was already at the car, waving for Dad to just get on with it.
He did. His knees still ached, so he was slow up the steps, but he finally got in the door.
“Surprise!”
The shout went up without a hitch, and Dad laughed and whooped right after. I heard it all, but I didn’t see it. Dash had stepped into the doorway, and he filled my vision with his piercing blue eyes and talented lips. I couldn’t tear my eyes from his face. His body. The heat coming from it. The smell of grass and summer. The tinfoil was crumpling.
“Can you forgive me?” he said softly.
“Not if you ruin my father’s birthday.”
He leaned in to kiss me.
And… no.
I pushed him away gently. “It’s not that easy.”
He stepped back. Nodded. Handed me the roses. “First step: I’m an asshole.”
I took the roses. “Good start because you’re leaving Sylvia standing on the steps.”
He looked at her as she stood, waiting, then he smiled in that way that turned me into jelly. We got out of the doorway and joined the party.
When he came in, Francine’s eyes went birthday-cake big. I shrugged, letting her know that if she was stunned, emotional, elated, curious, I was all that and more.
thirty-five
Dash
In a way, I’d spent the last six weeks planning to see her again. In another way, I was playing it completely by ear.
I’d tried implementing new routines in Arizona. This thing, that thing, then the other. The shame of going back to her with my tail between my legs was too much to bear
. If I did that, I’d have to tell her everything. I’d have to have the guts to change my life around.
Every grounder I missed, every time I was caught looking, the walls closed in.
I flew back a month into spring training for an exhibition game.
The game didn’t matter. I was a complete cockup. I was letting everyone down. I couldn’t even pass a ball to Youder for the double play. He was ten feet from me. If I fucked up the season before his free agency, he was going to be offered a bag of shit. That was on me. I didn’t want him to go, but I didn’t want to fuck him over either.
I had to do this better. I had to get control.
I dug out the stairs on the slope. Turned out the roots of the avocado tree had been holding the mountain up, and now the ground was going where water and gravity told it to go. So I could shore up the hill, which I did, but I had to unearth the steps. Otherwise, the only way to get down was to slide and slide.
I stayed back half a day and drove to her school. I watched the library windows for a sign of her. Stayed in my car and waited for her to walk to her crack-pipe car. The rear passenger tire needed air. I took the pump out of my trunk and filled it. I noticed it was as bald as a turnip and hustled back into my car like a criminal. I wondered if I could change it completely before she got out.
I missed my opportunity. She left with that guy. The one from the Petersen. He touched her shoulder when he said good-bye, and I wanted to rip out his arm. I opened the door to do just that, getting a foot on the pavement. She got in the car and was far away from him before I even stood straight.
This was me.
This was the core of me. Slow. Misdirected. Impulsive. Unaligned with the rhythms everyone else walked to.
I hadn’t fucked Janice at the Mesa Westin, and without that, the rest of the preseason rituals were forgotten or rendered meaningless. The last time I’d felt right was when I was with Vivian.
I had to go back. All the way back, before I’d built anything. I was running out of time. I had to accept that I was obsessed with her, ask for forgiveness, and rebuild around her. Without her, I’d not only be worthless all season, I’d be plain worthless.
When I saw her in the doorway, I knew I’d done the right thing. Anxiety molted off me. I left it on the sidewalk like an old skin.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I didn’t touch her. Barely spoke to her. The room was populated with Dodger fans, and they were all very nice. I talked about the previous season and the upcoming one. Showed one of the kids how to throw. Caught her glance whenever I could.
Her father opened his signed ball after dinner.
I signed hundreds of balls a year, and I had no idea what they meant to anyone. I didn’t know if they went in the trash or on solid gold pedestals. But I did know what happened to that ball.
He turned it over in his hands a few times, looking at all the signatures. I couldn’t see his face.
“All twenty-five from last season,” Vivian said, wringing her hands.
“You give me such naches,” he said. “I’m kvelling.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but a collective aww went up in the room when he put the heel of his hand to his eye, rubbing away a tear. Vivian hugged him, and he clasped her as if she was about to run away.
I sat with my drink in my fingers and knew why she didn’t want an expiration date. She couldn’t just take her pleasure and go on with her life. She had a bare minimum expression of love, and it was the love her father had for her. She wouldn’t take anything less.
And why should she? She deserved the best a man had to offer.
An hour later, I got a taste of it. I went to the kitchen to drop my plate in the sink, and her dad was there, pouring himself a glass of water.
“I didn’t get a chance to wish you a happy birthday,” I said. “My timing was terrible.”
“Thank you.” He popped open a clear plastic pill box and emptied it into his palm. I started back into the living room, where I had been having a great conversation with his brother on pitch counts and foul balls, when he stopped me. “She’s not a plaything.”
“I realize that.”
He looked as though he didn’t believe me, and I didn’t blame him.
“I don’t want to be that dad who gets in his daughter’s business where he’s not wanted…” He tossed the pills back and took a big gulp of water. “But don’t be a fucking putz anymore.”
“I won’t. I don’t know what a putz is, but I’m sure I can stop being it.”
“It’s a man who takes women for granted is what.”
“I won’t. Not Vivian ever again.”
“Good. Now stop making eyes at her and ask her if she needs anything.” He winked.
That was a relief because I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with Vivian if her father wasn’t on board.
thirty-six
Vivian
I’d used paper plates, but on the buffet, I put out the good serving trays. None fit in the dishwasher, so I stood over the sink, washing them by hand. The water was near scalding, and my hands were wrinkly. I could see the yard from the window in front of the sink. The remainder of the guests were around a table outside.
Dash drank from a water bottle and laughed at something my uncle said. He’d talked baseball with anyone who asked, took some pictures, signed some stuff, but had become part of the furniture in the first hour.
That was, if whenever I looked at the furniture, I had to check to make sure my buttons were fastened. He managed to catch my eye from across the room, over cake, while telling the story of his game-winning hit in game four of the World Series, and every single time, he didn’t break the flow of whatever conversation he was having. Not a millisecond. Yet I could feel his thoughts tracing lust all over the surface of my body. He was an exceptional multitasker.
I hadn’t mentioned the Spring Training Report, and I wouldn’t. I didn’t yearn for his stats. I craved his touch and his laugh, his Shakespeare quotes and his attention. Even his awkwardness. Everything.
I turned away from the window to dry the oval serving tray and stack it. When I turned back to the sink and looked out the window, Dash wasn’t at the table.
I saw him in the glass’s reflection and felt his lips on the back of my neck. With a reaction that was no less instinctive than breathing, I tilted my head to expose my skin to his kiss. He let it linger, moving to my shoulder, warming me with his breath. Every cell in my body vibrated for him, and every sinew of my heart cried foul.
“My body says yes,” I said, “but I want you to listen to my voice.”
He drew his lips along the edge of my ear, and I leaned into him.
“Stop,” I whispered, hoping he’d ignore me.
“Stop what?” He slipped his hand under my dress.
“Messing with me.”
“I’m not.” His finger curled under the edge of my underwear.
I was wet, soaked, and he was a quarter second to feeling it.
“I want you. I want to watch you come.” His face was so close to me I heard him swallow. “I miss you.”
Just those three words said softly, with his fingers between my legs, opening my heart and body to him, and the lump that had been wedged in my throat all night nearly choked me.
I turned to face him. He removed his hand from my underwear. I put my hands on his chest, keeping a barrier between us. “Dash—”
“No.” He pressed two fingers to my lips. “Let’s do this fast before I take your clothes off. I made a mistake. A big mistake. When you drove away, you took my destiny with you. I felt like my future was pulled out of me.”
I leaned back on the sink and crossed my arms.
He took his fingers from my lips. “I know what you’re thinking, and there are no other women. None. There’s only you and the ways I’ve failed you. You don’t have to give me a second chance. I know that. But I want you to. I’m going to beg you if I have to.”
I’d thought the tinfoil over
my heart would crumble, but it didn’t. In the flame of his words, it was blown open, charred black, and turned to flakes of ash.
“You can’t do this again,” I said. “I’m fine without you. I want you, but I won’t be hurt repeatedly while you figure yourself out.”
“I’ve figured it out. It’s you. You’re the end of all the figuring.”
“That all you got?”
“‘The very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly to your service.’”
Shakespeare. He was full of shit. He had to be. But my mouth and my tongue found his, colliding in a crush of need. My arms uncrossed and went around him, embracing the fresh-cut grass scent, the attention of his lips, the fire that dropped down the base of my spine and settled between my legs in an explosion of desire that was close to painful.
Dash hitched my knee over his hip and pushed his erection against me, and my pussy remembered what my brain had tried to forget. I gasped and groaned, eyelids fluttering, body shifting into him, his breath on my face a reminder of how close he was.
I was going to say something about the people outside. How they could come in any minute. It was getting late, and someone could walk in and see me putting my legs around him so I could feel the length of that gorgeous cock against me.
But I didn’t have time. Not a second. He got a hand under my ass and picked me up. I wrapped my legs tighter around him.
“Which way?” he asked.
Which way?
Down, of course. Inside. Hard.
I heard a chair scrape outside and the rhythm of voices.
“Down the hall.” I pointed. “Through the den. Door to the right.”
By the time I said “den,” he was already carrying me through it. He threw me on the bed. Tape and wads of wrapping paper and ribbons bounced with me as he shut the door.
Was I breathing? Yes, I was. So hard and fast I couldn’t even feel it.
He stood over me, pants tight in the front where his dick was hard, and yanked his belt open.
I asked myself if I trusted him. If I let him in and he hurt me again, the wounds would be in a different place. He’d open me where the hope lived—the hope that he’d come back, that we’d have a second chance, that what we had was meaningful and real. I couldn’t imagine the pain of it.