There was really only one choice.
“No means no,” she said finally. “If he doesn’t want to do it, we shouldn’t force him.”
Ty looked smug. “Thank you.”
Allison’s eyes widened murderously. “What?”
“But,” Gwen continued, when Ty started to leave. “Maybe we could find him a different relationship.”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU volunteered me to mentor Ibanez,” Ty complained, not for the first time, when Baking Bonanza went to commercial.
“He needs a mentor,” Gwen said, also not for the first time. “And I need to keep my job. It turns out I don’t hate it as much as I thought.”
They were at his place, watching television in his bed. She still had a key, so he couldn’t really be that mad, despite his non-stop whining.
“It was cruel. You know he doesn’t like to wear pants.”
“Then tell him to wear some. He adores you. He’ll do what you say.”
“I guess we’ll find out. No thanks to you.”
Gwen rolled onto her side to face him. “It’s not my fault, if you think about it. I was an innocent bystander. I mean, why did Allison even ask me? She should have asked Brandon or Chad or the janitor—they’ve been there longer.”
“That’s because Brandon and Chad got their jobs because of their fathers. You got your job because you’re good at it. And you’re cruel.”
“What can I say? It’s a gift.”
Ty scowled at the television. “You know who else is cruel? These judges. How could they send home Marianne instead of Todd? That ass hat’s going to be in the finale. I don’t want to watch him for another month.”
Gwen shrugged. “Shows maintain their tension when they have a villain. People need someone to root for, and someone to root against. The other contestants look better because Todd’s on the show. It’s actually good for them.”
He looked at her with raised brows. “Why do I feel like you’re trying to make some obscure point?”
Gwen sat up. “Have you been online tonight?”
“No. Did you send me naked pictures?”
She laughed. “No. But Ibanez is everywhere. The clip of him shouting ‘Do you know who I am?’ is blowing up.”
“It should. He sounded like an asshole.”
“And you know who’ll look less like an asshole standing next to him?”
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“You!”
He shook his head, but was trying not to smile. “That’s very flattering.”
“You’re the hero, Ty. That’s your new role. The leader. The mentor. Not the guy who dates teenagers or makes sex tapes or talks about threesomes—you’re a grown up now. You’re a man.”
Now he did crack up. “You had me at hero.”
“Make the best of this thing with Ibanez. And be sincere about it. The better he gets, the better you look. I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t think it would benefit you both.”
“Uh, you suggested it so Allison didn’t kill you.”
“That too.”
Ty tugged her down and tucked her into the crook of his arm, her cheek resting on his chest as he skipped the commercial until the show came back on.
“Ugh,” he muttered as the bakers revealed their plans for the final challenge. “Todd’s going to use matcha because Etsuko used it last week and won. Matcha’s so last week, Todd. Everybody hates you.”
They watched the rest of the show in companionable silence, and Ty’s prediction was accurate. Todd’s use of matcha made him the Bonanza Baker for the week, and only Todd seemed happy about it. Even the host was having trouble maintaining a smile.
Gwen waited for Ty’s rant to begin, but instead she heard a faint rattle in his chest and realized he’d fallen asleep. She lifted her head and watched him for a moment, his face soft and sweet, his trademark cockiness momentarily melted away. She knew she should go, but she really didn’t want to. They always arrived at his apartment separately and rarely spent the whole night together, Gwen slipping away under the cover of darkness in case a rogue photographer should spot her there outside of work hours. Or ever. The team’s winning streak and Ty’s fame—or infamy—only increased the risk.
Still. She wasn’t ready to go.
But try as she might, Gwen couldn’t fall asleep, either. She turned off the television and lay in the dark, listening to Ty’s soft snores and the hum of the air conditioning, feeling his solid weight at her side. She told herself to get up, but she couldn’t. She told herself to sleep, but she wouldn’t. She’d finalized the slogan presentation that afternoon, but had stopped herself before hitting the “send” button on the email to Allison.
Ty muttered something in his sleep that sounded suspiciously like, “Stop that, Todd,” and Gwen’s heart rolled over in her chest. They hadn’t put a label on whatever this thing between them was, but his declaration of “I’m more than your fucking friend” still fell far short. She knew what was happening between them, and she was just as afraid of it as she was powerless to stop it.
Gwen tried valiantly to go to sleep. She counted sheep. She counted Ty’s snores. She recited all his stats for the last five years. But that just made her think about him more.
Finally she gave up and got out of bed. In a T-shirt and underwear, she padded down the hall and into the kitchen, climbing onto one of the stools at the marble island. Ty kept his laptop there, and now she powered it up and went online to her Thrashers account, where the draft email with the presentation waited. She thought about opening it up and playing it again—she’d lost count of how many times she’d done so already—but it was too risky. Watching the digital slideshow in the quiet of Ty’s kitchen felt just as declaratory as hiring an airplane to trace a giant heart in the sky. She couldn’t deny it, but she wasn’t ready to admit it, either.
Still, she took a deep breath, and, with a shaky hand, pressed send.
“What are you doing?”
Ty’s confused mumble nearly knocked her off the stool. Gwen caught herself on the edge of the counter and whirled around guiltily. He stood at the end of the hall looking too adorable in his monogrammed briefs, hair tousled, rubbing his eyes.
“Working,” she said, somehow managing to form words around the lump lodged in her throat. “I couldn’t sleep.” She logged out of her account and closed the program, like he could somehow guess what she’d done.
“I thought you left.”
“Um, yeah. I’m going to. I’m going now, in fact.”
He squinted at the time on the microwave. “It’s one o’clock, just come back to bed. You can go in the morning. And you can come back after the game. And go in the morning. And come back after. Are you sensing a pattern?”
She leaned against the cool stone of the island as he approached, his sleepiness turning predatory, a tiger waking up.
“I’m sensing an increased risk of being found out,” she said. “That redhead in your lobby gave me a strange look today.”
“She just thinks you’re pretty.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I think you’re pretty.” He dipped his head to nuzzle her neck, his stubble making her squirm.
“Ty.”
“And I think you’re smart and funny and nice and in the wrong room right now.”
“Ty—”
He boosted her up, her legs folding around his waist, and used his shoulder to hit the light switch as he exited the room, following the moonlight to his bed.
“But don’t worry,” he said, placing her carefully on the sheets and following her down. “I’ll keep showing you the way back until you remember.”
She moaned as his hand slipped into her panties. “I remember,” she said, biting her lip.
Ty grinned and kissed her. “Then maybe I just like to be reminded.”
CHAPTER 18
IT WAS AUGUST AND THE Thrashers were on fire. Not just because the recent heat wave had sent temperatures soa
ring into the hundreds, but because they’d won twenty of their last twenty-four games and clawed their way to third in the American League East, just four games back of second place, and seven games out of first. And perhaps most importantly, they were now fifth in the American League Wild Card race. The Wild Card would allow the two teams with the next best records who didn’t clinch their division to play a one-game series to determine who filled the fourth play-off berth. The hope that had been slowly building since June was reaching a fever pitch.
To compensate for the day’s brutal heat, the day’s post-game interviews were being held in the clubhouse hallway, where the air conditioning was turned up to high. Ty leaned against the wall next to an oversized painting of the Thrashers logo, and smiled for the cameras. The crowd had grown exponentially in the past several weeks, bringing back the skin-tingling feeling of last year’s success. Ty was sweating profusely, his ankle throbbed from an awkward slide into second, and he had never been happier.
“Ty,” called a reporter in the back. “You have nine home runs in the month of August, and it’s only the fifteenth—what’s your secret?”
“There’s no secret,” he replied. “Just a good swing and a little bit of confidence.”
A light flashed and another reporter pushed forward.
“Ty, you and Denzel Reed have combined to score nearly eighty runs since July first—stats no one expected from you with Connor Whitman gone. What are you two doing differently?”
Ty flinched at the mention of Connor, but he forced another smile. “We’re just wearing good socks,” he replied calmly.
He’d been doing this for a decade, and knew how to handle the questions. Plus, Allison was lingering somewhere nearby, ready to throttle him if he said a word out of place. With the Thrashers’ season turning around at a rapid speed, she’d been working overtime, and, according to Gwen, the cracks were starting to show. She’d missed two goat yoga classes and was even scarier than usual.
The confused reporter was knocked aside by another microphone and a blinding flash bulb.
“The slow start to the season was attributed to the Thrashers needing to figure out how to work better together,” someone called. “What have you done to gel as a team?”
Ty looked in the general direction of the voice, blinking dancing lights out of his vision.
“Success takes time and patience and lots of hard work,” he said. “Everyone in the organization is committed to doing whatever it takes to get the Thrashers back to the World Series, and it shows. We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.”
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Jorge Ibanez. We see you warming up together, talking more on the bench. What are your hopes there?”
That question was harder to answer. Jorge was like an energetic kitten—cute for five minutes, tolerable for five more, then exhausting. But the kid had promise, and Gwen’s prediction hadn’t been wrong—the mentoring relationship had gotten Ty’s nagging sponsors off his back and replaced his earlier less-than-positive publicity with a better, more charitable story.
“With Ibanez, we’re mining for gold,” he said with an admirably straight face. “We know it’s in there, and we’re bringing it to the surface. With practice and the right guidance, I hope to see his talent shine in say, five to eight years.”
The group laughed. “Is that your retirement plan, Ty?”
“We’ll see how things progress. I’m in it for the long haul. Thanks, everyone—”
“Ty, one last question. We heard you’ve been traveling to Wayland Prison to visit Connor Whitman. How’s he doing?”
In the throng of people, Ty couldn’t even see who had asked the question, but it came out of the blue like a blow to the head. It was probably just the heat from the game and his desperate need for a cold shower and some pain killers, but he was reeling. He felt sick and the crowded hall was starting to blur a little bit. Through the din of the mob he was vaguely aware of Allison’s sharp voice as she pushed her way through. A million small PR fires had sprung up over the past month, and she was spending more and more time putting them out.
“He’ll pull through,” Ty said, wiping sweat out of his eyes. “He always does. Thanks—”
“A lot of people think Whitman leaving the team is what caused it to crash and burn so spectacularly at the start of the season. What are your thoughts?”
Where was that voice coming from? He couldn’t see twelve inches in front of his face for all the microphones and cameras shoved in it.
“All teams have their ups and downs,” he heard himself say. “There’s no one person to blame for the struggles, and no one person to credit for the success. Now, I’m going to go—”
“Excuse me,” Allison snapped, her voice getting louder, though Ty still couldn’t see her. “Excuse me, let me through. That’s enough for tonight.”
“How does he feel about you and Denzel Reed not just filling his position on the team, but excelling at it, and becoming friends off the field on top of it?”
Allison’s anger was clear. “Would you move—Ow—Who is saying that?”
Ty’s instinct was to tell them he was most definitely not becoming friends with Reed, but he stopped himself. Not just because he didn’t want to sound petty and mean, but because it wasn’t true. Somehow, over the summer, he’d grown to like the guy. He’d grown to like most everybody, actually. And saying otherwise wouldn’t be just a betrayal of his friend, but of his team.
Another voice rose over the noise of the crowd, preceded by a cloud of cologne so intense it all but forced the reporters to move a safe distance away.
“Ty’s friends with everybody,” Ibanez announced, slinging an arm around Ty’s sweaty neck before he could escape. He wore two thick gold chains and no shirt, but had at least put on pants. “He doesn’t abandon them when things get tough, and he believes in everybody, even me. See? He helps me mine for gold!” He rattled the chains and the reporters laughed, though the mirth faded when Allison finally reached the front.
“The question and answer period is over,” she said through her teeth. “Tomorrow’s questions are relegated to the field only. No one has clubhouse access.”
Joanna Liu, the only person brave enough to stand up to Allison, drew herself up to her full five feet, two inches. “I beg your pardon—”
But Allison was ready to snap, and it showed in her flushed cheeks and uncharacteristically mussed hair. “No one,” she gritted out. “Now go.”
Ibanez used his broad shoulders and force field of cologne to barrel a way through the crowd, and Ty limped along in his wake, sneezing into his hand as he dodged questions and microphones until the security guards parted and they reached the clubhouse doors. He didn’t take a full breath until they were safely inside and Ibanez was a good ten feet away.
“Fuck,” he muttered, slumping onto the nearest couch. “What was that?”
“Heat stroke,” Ibanez said, handing him a bottle of water and kindly not bringing up his reaction to Connor’s name. “That’s all. You’re overheated. And your ankle’s busted.”
“It’s not busted, it’s bruised.”
“It’s twice the size of the other one.”
Ty glanced down, and while “twice” was an overstatement, his left ankle was definitely much thicker than his right. He’d stretched a single into a double in the bottom of the ninth, whacking his ankle bone on the base in the process. But it had been worth it when Escobar followed up with a single that cashed in both Reed and Ty, and the Thrashers won again.
He winced as he rolled down his sock, and winced even more when he saw the red and purple swelling. The last thing he wanted to do was sit when the team was winning, but when Strip strolled up with Roger Loop, the head trainer, he figured he was in trouble.
“You’ve got tomorrow off,” Strip said, and Ty knew better than to argue.
“He has heat stroke,” Ibanez piped up.
The unsolicited insight earned him a glare from the mana
ger. “Go take a shower. You’ve been warned about that cologne.”
“I put it on to rescue Ty. In small doses, it brings in the ladies. But in large doses, it can clear a room.”
“It clears a room in small doses,” Blanche said, passing by. “Or maybe that’s just your personality?”
“Definitely the personality,” Girardi chipped in.
“Fuck all of you,” Ibanez replied, unoffended.
Ty couldn’t help but smile, even as Loop gently prodded his swollen ankle. “We’ll get an x-ray,” he said, “to be on the safe side. See me after your shower.”
“Lady coming through!” called one of the security guards, and everyone who wasn’t decent quickly covered up.
The doors opened and Allison slipped in, looking for all the world as though she’d outrun a pack of wolves. She grabbed a pink electrolyte drink from the fridge and drank half in two swallows, then slumped on the couch next to Ty. She closed her eyes, a pink moustache dotting her upper lip.
“How’s your foot?” she muttered.
Ty shrugged, though she couldn’t see him. “It’s fine. We’ll get an x-ray. I’ll sit tomorrow.”
“You did good with the questions out there.”
“Thanks.”
A shadow loomed over them. “How’d I do?”
Allison sniffed and cracked open an eye to see Ibanez waiting for his praise. She shook her head in irritation, but her mouth twitched. “Not terrible,” she said.
He nodded smugly. “Sweet.”
When he was gone and they could breath again, Allison took another drink and sat up straighter. “You’re doing a good job with him. He’s learning.”
“It’s not like I had a choice.”
“You always have a choice. You just don’t always make the right one.”
Ty swallowed the pain killers Loop passed him. “I do my best.”
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