He narrowed his ridiculously stoned eyes at me. “Of course I know. Truth is not hard to find here.” He held his arms out to his sides.
Kelsey worked for a cult leader. I knew she had a flaw somewhere, but I didn’t have time to play this game with donut-munching Helter Skelter.
“Why’d she leave? And where’d she go?”
“Oh, I believe you should point a finger at yourself, to ascertain the reason for her departure.”
“She left because of me? Like she was going to go find me?”
He shook his head and took a bite of the sweet nectar.
“Oh no, sonny. Do you remember a time when a king of kings was ousted from his throne, because he had reached the highest level of glory, but one man found he had cheated?”
I started to worry I might fail my MLB drug test just by standing in the room with this guy for five minutes. My patience wore thin and I shook my head. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You don’t understand metaphors that involve your beloved profession?”
“That shit was a baseball riddle?”
“I feel enlightenment may not be out of reach for you on this glorious day where the goddess of water blesses and enriches the earth.”
I had to solve his goddamn riddle, because this was getting me nowhere. “Okay, so someone cheated, let’s see—Black Sox, Pete Rose, and pretty much every player in the nineties.”
Twilight grinned as if he was happy someone was finally trying to understand him.
I continued to think through the riddle out loud. “King of kings, what the fuck? Ousted? Like thrown out of the league.”
“Your guess is close in proximity, a stone’s throw one might say.”
“Thrown out of a game?”
“Eureka!” He did some form of Latin dance steps and then spun around like Michael Jackson and shot his arm out to the side.
Fuck my life. Kelsey could drive to Los Angeles before I figure this shit out.
“Okay, a king of kings got thrown out of a game.” King of kings? I stared up at the ceiling of the place and it hit me. “Was he a Royal?”
“Eureka!”
“Okay, okay. Oh! The pine tar incident?”
“I doff my invisible cap to you, fine sir.” He pretended to remove a nonexistent hat and did some kind of curtsy maneuver like a teen debutante.
Part of me was a bit ecstatic I’d figured it out, and part of me wondered what the fuck that had to do with Kelsey. “So what does that have to do with anything?”
“Do you recall when George Brett ran from the dugout?”
“Sure. Every baseball player and fan has seen the tape on that.”
“You saw the raw energy and emotion on his face, yes?”
“Yeah, he was a pissed-off son of a bitch. I thought he was going to put that guy in the dirt.” I still didn’t understand what the fuck he was getting at.
“Your life mate—yes, I have seen your spirit energies, and they are in harmony—ran from this very spot.” He nodded to a spot a few feet in front of him. “She dispersed with the same energy and appearance as the aforementioned.”
I glared him down. “You put me through all of that, just to compare the looks on their faces?” I started toward him.
Twilight didn’t flinch or even look concerned that a pissed-off man twice his size was headed in his direction. “Your energy was off-color, sonny. It was necessary.”
“Why was she mad?” I stopped a few feet away and looked down at him over my nose. “And how do you know so much about fucking baseball?”
He glared at me like I was an imbecile. “Because I’m an American.” He bowed his chest out.
It was probably the most violent thing he’d ever done in his life.
“But why was she mad?”
Twilight held up an index finger and walked sideways over to a large stereo system that appeared to run all the speakers in the store. He turned it on.
Voices blasted through the speakers, an AM channel. I recognized it the second it came on the air. It was an ESPN talk radio show.
She knows.
My blood ran white-hot and my body started to tremble with anger.
Twilight walked over and waved his hand in a vertical loop like he was outlining me. “This energy field is unusual for you, sonny. It needs to be regulated back to homeostasis before you will find the results you crave.”
“Are you telling me to calm down?” I gritted my teeth.
“Never reason with emotions. Your aura is out of equilibrium.”
“No shit!” I shook my head and looked around the room for a moment, the place Kelsey loved more than anywhere else in the world. As much as I hated to admit it to myself, the nutjob beatnik in front of me was right, even though he could’ve said it all in about a tenth of the amount of words.
Fuck it.
“So what, then? How do I return my, what—aura or energy field—back to equilibrium?”
“First, just breathe. Exhale the anger and fears from your person.”
I caught myself about to be frustrated with him again, and I exhaled a long breath and tried to ignore all the goddamn riddles. “Okay, so I need to be calm to think through this and reason it out before I go see her? Anything else?”
His mouth turned up at the corners. “There is one other thing that can aid you.”
I stared into his half-hooded Cheech-and-Chong eyes. “And that is?”
He twirled around and reached for something I couldn’t see, and then completed the spin with an arm stretched out in front of my face. It was a glazed donut and he held it up in the air like Frodo about to chuck the ring into the fires of Mount Doom.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
He smiled his ass off, almost as if he knew he was fucking with me. Maybe there was a hint of normalcy in him. “The nectar will guide you to what you seek.”
I shrugged. “Fuck it. It can’t hurt.” I snatched the donut from his hand and took a bite. Something in it tasted funny. The sugary sweetness covered it well, but I swallowed before it registered in my mind. “No, you asshole, I—”
He cut me off. “It will be right, and truth shall find you. The bread of the earth will no longer be with you in the third fortnight from whence your agreement shall be signed in the blood of your pen.”
“What the? What is a fortnight?”
“A fortnight is fourteen revolutions of the goddess mother earth.”
“You mean a day?” I did the math and he was actually spot on. I wouldn’t be drug tested for six weeks after I signed my new contract. Still, now if I found Kelsey I’d be high as a fucking kite, because whatever this dude was on was not some weak-ass shit that high-schoolers smoked. I started to protest and he waved a hand in front of my face.
“It will guide you.”
“Do you know where she went?” I tossed the donut back in the box. One bite would be plenty enough fucking nectar of the gods.
“Put yourself within her mind.”
“Jenny?”
Twilight smiled.
I froze and looked down at the floor.
“What are you waiting for, brother?”
“I don’t know. This all hit me at once.” I balled my hands into fists and took in deep breaths in an attempt to compose myself.
Twilight walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. “Look at me.”
He actually sounded normal for once, and I almost bought into it until I looked up at his stoned eyes and saw his bearded face. My legs were Jell-O at the thought of hurting Kelsey.
“Do you love her?”
I nodded immediately.
His bony fingers bore down into my shoulder and he smiled. “Then what are you waiting for, brother?”
I bolted for the door and hauled ass through the rain. Once seated behind the wheel, anxiety smashed into me once more from every possible angle.
I can’t drive if I’m high.
I sat there for a brief minute. Eating weed wasn’t the same as s
moking it. The shit had to take a while to kick in. Ethan’s house was only ten minutes away, no highways needed. If Kelsey called Jenny, she would’ve left work. It’d be the most likely place to find them.
I hauled ass in that direction.
—
I pulled up in front of Ethan’s house, and Kelsey’s car wasn’t in the driveway.
Shit!
I beat a fist on my steering wheel and the horn went off by accident. “Fuck.” I looked straight ahead, just staring at the garage door and noticed the blinds pop up and down in the corner of my eye. It was in one of the upstairs rooms.
Someone is here.
I ran up to the front door and buzzed the high-tech intercom shit Ethan had. There was a camera up above and I looked up at it while I shoved both hands in my pockets.
It was like watching a movie on repeat, only last time I’d brought Jenny to the house to reconcile with Ethan. A rustling sound and some static came through the speaker.
“Who is it?”
“You know it’s me, Jenny. Can you open the door?”
“Matt, I’m sorry. She doesn’t want to talk to you right now or see you.”
I heard a sniffle in the background. It had to be Kelsey, and she sounded hurt. My stomach churned.
“Please. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
I looked back up at the camera and suddenly my body started to feel heavy, and everything started to play out in slow motion. For a second I thought I could actually hear the rain cutting through the air.
Fucking nectar.
“I’m sorry, Matt. It’s not up to me, and she just doesn’t want to see you right now.”
I heard Jenny attempting to hold her hand over the mic. It almost sounded like she was pleading with Kelsey to talk to me.
My eyelids grew heavy. The weed was kicking in full force. I shouldn’t be here. Not in this condition.
I pushed the button to speak. “I, umm…” Fuck, why didn’t my words work?
“Yeah, Matt?”
“I have to go. I don’t feel so great. I need to leave my car in the driveway.”
I heard a “What the hell?” in the background.
“I’m so sorry. I have to go.” I stumbled by my car and grabbed my phone out of it. I tapped on the Uber app and there was a driver a block up the road. I somehow managed to pay and walked up the street to meet him.
By the time I got there I was fully baked, at like 10 in the morning. I climbed in the back and told the guy where I lived.
Chapter 16
“Till now I always got by on my own. I never really cared until I met you. And now it chills me to the bone.”
—Heart
Kelsey Martin
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I glared at Jenny, who had her arms wrapped around my neck.
She leaned back and put her hands on my shoulders. “I couldn’t, legally. And I honestly thought he’d told you by now.” Jenny sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ve been caught up in this wedding and—it’s no excuse. I should’ve dropped some hints. I honestly figured you knew. Looking back on it now, I should’ve picked up on it.”
“Why could those guys on the radio talk about it, then? If it was some big secret?”
Jenny wrapped me back up in a hug. “Those shows are speculation, even though they’re often right. They have sources everywhere. But they don’t represent Matt, so they play by different rules.”
“So is he going to New York?” My stomach did a backflip thinking about Matt being gone.
Jenny shook her head. “I really don’t know. Nobody can answer that but Matt. Ethan doesn’t even know for sure and he’s not sure Matt even knows.”
“Why would he leave? Everyone is here. His family. Why is he even considering it?”
Jenny exhaled a sigh. “There are lots of reasons. Baseball reasons. Money reasons.”
“So he’d choose money over the people he loves?” I didn’t believe that for a minute.
“Kelsey, it’s not that simple. You know Matt.”
“I thought I did.” I scoffed.
Jenny stood up from the couch and held up a finger at me. Great, I was about to receive a lecture from my best friend when I was the one who’d just been blindsided.
“You know I love you, so don’t take any of this the wrong way.”
I shook my head. “Great, here comes the part where it’s my fault somehow.”
“Hey!” Jenny’s voice morphed into bitch mode, but she stopped and composed herself. “Sorry. It’s just—you know I’m on your side. But Matt is a great guy and he’s been through a lot the past few months, Kel. So you need to know all the facts before you start making judgmental statements like that.”
My mind tried to go into defense mode.
Jenny had to have noticed because she held a finger up at me again. “Just let me finish.”
“Fine.” I folded my arms across my chest.
“Try to see some of this from his perspective. I know it’s hard and like I said, I’m not taking his side. He should’ve told you.”
I nodded. “Yeah, he should’ve.”
“But we both know—”
I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself.
Jenny’s eyes narrowed. “We both know you wouldn’t have given him the time of day.”
My jaw clenched tight and I looked away. She was right on that, but this still wasn’t something you hid from somebody. “Why did he even try to date me?” My eyes started to leak and the fact that Matt could make me cry was like swallowing battery acid. I turned back and stared at Jenny. Tears streamed down my cheeks. “Why’d he have to come in the store and make me this way?” My voice cracked at the end.
Jenny rushed over and wrapped her arms back around me. I trembled in her embrace. I’d never felt this way over a guy before. I wanted to tear down the walls of the house and at the same time curl up in the corner and just cry for days.
“I don’t know. Maybe he was looking for a reason to stay.”
I shook under Jenny’s embrace. “So-so y-you think he’s going to go?”
“I think he’s hurting just as much as you are right now. And I think he’s about to make the biggest decision of his life.” Jenny squeezed me tight. “What do you want? Really want, Kelsey? You love him, right?”
I knew she could see the answer in my eyes. I nodded at her and burst into tears. Jenny’s hand stroked my hair while I sobbed into her shoulder. “If you love him, you need to be there for him. It won’t be the last time he screws up, either. You can’t lock him out. You have to be able to forgive him.”
I nodded against her. “I know.” I sat up and wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. “I know. I just need time to think some of this through, when I’m not like”— I pointed to my puffy eyes—“this.”
Jenny glanced to the ceiling and then back to me. “I hate to bring more bad news, but he only has a few days to make a decision. They’ve already set up the press conference.”
“Great.” I shook my head.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I just—I don’t know. I need to think. And I still don’t get why he’d consider going there.”
“This really is a conversation he should have with you. But it’s the Yankees. They’re like, umm, the Led Zeppelin of baseball teams. And Matt has a lot of charities that could do amazing things with the extra money they’re offering him.”
“You’re right. I hadn’t thought about any of that.” I wiped a tear from my eye.
Jenny nodded. “Okay.” She took a step toward the kitchen.
“Hey?”
Jenny froze and turned back around. “Yeah?”
“Can umm, can anyone go to the press conference? Where he signs his new contract or whatever?”
Jenny failed at hiding her smile. “If you want to be there, I’ll make sure you can get in.”
“Okay. I’ll think about it.”
“I think that would be good. And he would want you there, so if you made
it I think he’d appreciate that.” She turned her back to me once more.
“Hey, Jenn?”
She sighed playfully. “Yes?”
“Thank you.”
Jenny walked over and pulled me into a hug. “You’re welcome.”
Chapter 17
“When everything feels like the movies, yeah you bleed just to know you’re alive.”
—Goo Goo Dolls
Matt Stallworth
My whole world was turned upside down. I stared at myself in the clubhouse bathroom mirror that spanned the length of the wall.
God, I look like shit.
I hadn’t eaten in two days and had maybe slept a total of eight hours the previous week. Somehow I’d managed to find the energy to at least shave and get dressed. I pulled my phone from my pocket and stared at the screen.
I’d called Kelsey four times and left two voicemails. I swiped through to my messages where I’d sent eight texts.
Nothing.
I wasn’t sure how I’d get through the press conference. This was the moment. The big one in every baseball player’s career where the hard work finally paid huge dividends. I didn’t care about the money or the prestige. I’d have traded every bit of it to talk to her for thirty seconds.
I loved baseball, but not the way I loved Kelsey Martin.
The door flew open and Ethan followed, holding a jersey and hat behind his back like I couldn’t see it. “Sorry, bro. They want you to try this stuff on for the photo op after you sign.”
“It’s fine. I get it.” I held out a hand to receive both items.
I laid the jersey out on the counter and held the hat in my hand. With one finger I traced the N and the Y on the front.
“Gonna be a Yankee. Play for the same empire as Ruth, Gherig, Mantle—pretty wild.” Ethan attempted to appease me.
“Umm, yeah”—I turned to look at him—“pretty surreal.”
Ethan clapped a hand on my back. He knew. I knew.
Baseball was the furthest thing from my mind at the moment.
“Has Jenny talked to her?” I stared at the pinstriped jersey on the counter.
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