Team Player

by Julianna Keyes

  Now she winced as a buried rock dug into her knee, then curled her fingers into the dirt and clawed it out, tossing it aside. She’d bought two flats of succulents, plants that promised to require minimal care and never die, and even though they wouldn’t actually enhance the curb appeal of her house, it should be enough to shut up the beautification committee. Either that or she’d just tell them to shut up, once and for all.

  A car door slammed somewhere behind her and Gwen pushed a stray strand of hair off her forehead and felt herself scowling even before she heard the footsteps. Wilson, the self-appointed head of the self-appointed committee, had been a particularly annoying nuisance, and was mostly likely coming by to offer more of his unsolicited advice. She should have kept the rock nearby.

  But instead of Wilson’s nasally voice interrupting her unpleasant afternoon, she heard nothing. And while she’d very much like to hear nothing from Wilson, it was not in his nature to be quiet, so Gwen glanced warily over her shoulder and felt her jaw drop.

  “Hey,” Ty said.

  Framed by the weak afternoon sun, he did, as always, glow, even in jeans and a black T-shirt, his hair too shaggy, a couple days’ stubble darkening his tan skin. He’d been here before, of course, a dozen times, a hundred times, but still he was a surprise, the kind that made her heart skip around in her chest like an overeager puppy, not sure where to go first. Was she happy? Annoyed? Confused? All of the above?

  She squashed the first emotion, shunted aside the second, and focused on the third. Because while she’d spent the past month doing her very best to forget every detail of Tyler Ashe, she’d pictured him far too often, and yet never like this. Never standing in her front yard...holding a bucket of dead sticks.

  “Hey,” she finally replied. She peered back at the mess she’d made, hunched on her hands and knees like the raccoon he’d suspected of being responsible for this situation in the first place. “What are you, uh, doing here?” She slowly pushed herself up to standing, clumps of dirt clinging to her knees, flying off her gloves when she tugged them off, a clot landing on Ty’s expensive sneaker.

  He was looking at her the way he had in their last month together, so many unspoken words in his gaze, like he had too much to say and didn’t know where to begin. “I brought you this,” he said instead, extending the bucket.

  Gwen arched an eyebrow, but didn’t take it. “Why?”

  “It’s a rosebush.”

  Now she lowered her eyebrow into a suspicious squint. “What?”

  Truth was, she didn’t particularly care what was in the bucket, it was just easier to stare at the so-called “rosebush” than to see Ty’s face, five feet away, so heartbreakingly beautiful she felt the wounds that had been scarring over come undone all over again.

  “It’s a rosebush,” he repeated, setting it carefully on the ground and reaching for the shovel resting against the trash can. “You can’t plant one with blooms this time of year, because it won’t have time to settle in. You plant one like this so it has time to harden up over winter, then in the spring, it’ll be tough enough to grow.”

  Gwen glanced at her flats of succulents. They were far more attractive than this rosebush, which was most definitely going to prompt Wilson to pay her another visit.

  “It looks dead,” she said doubtfully.

  “It’s supposed to be that way,” Ty replied, setting the point of the shovel into the very center of her weed-free plot and stomping on it with his foot. “According to guy at the garden center.”

  “You don’t actually know?”

  He shrugged. “He seemed trustworthy.”

  For a minute, Gwen just watched him dig. He dug a hole that looked far too large for the plant, carefully piling the dirt in a tidy heap next to it. With each passing second, the task she loathed became one she never wanted to end, because whenever that hole was dug and the bush was planted, they’d have no more excuses.

  “Why are you doing this?” she blurted out.

  Ty, apparently satisfied with his hole, pulled a small green package from his pocket and tore it open with his teeth. “Plant food,” he explained, sprinkling it into the new pile of dirt. “It’ll help the rosebush.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Here,” he said, crouching and gripping the base of the plant with his bare hands. “Hold the pot so I can tug this out.”

  Not really sure why she was doing it, but also not able to stop, Gwen squatted and held the bucket. From this close she could smell the freshly turned earth mixed with the scent of Ty’s skin, the reminder of what they’d had so potent she had to close her eyes and take a deep breath, which only made things worse.

  “Well, well, well,” came a voice from down the drive.

  Gwen opened her eyes just so she could roll them.

  She and Ty looked over to see Wilson beaming as he strolled up to survey the progress.

  “You’ve made some great headway,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back as he took in the mess. “This is going to be truly—” Then his mouth fell open as his gaze landed on Ty and he recognized Gwen’s garden assistant. “You—” he gasped. “You’re—ah—you—this—”

  “Hi.” Ty dropped the rosebush into the hole and stood to extend a hand. “I’m Tyler Ashe. I’m a friend of Gwen’s.”

  The word friend snagged in the air, no more sufficient now than when she’d used it at the lake. When he’d corrected her, very, very thoroughly.

  Wilson’s head swiveled between Ty and Gwen. “You two—you’re—”

  Gwen was in no better position to explain the situation than Wilson was, so she just shrugged and let the circumstances speak for themselves, whatever they might say.

  “That’s right.” Ty reached for the shovel and used it to mix the plant food into the dirt, then nudged it all into the hole and patted it flat around the rosebush. “We should be done soon, so if you don’t mind...”

  Wilson took the hint and backed up so quickly he nearly tripped. “Of course,” he exclaimed. “Of course, of course. I wouldn’t want to—Well, you know. This looks—Absolutely. Great. Nice to see you. Nice to meet you. Nice to—Well, bye.”

  His awkward retreat had the benefit of interrupting the tension that hung between them, and with the bush planted and no more excuses to stall, Gwen and Ty finally looked at each other.

  Ty cleared his throat. “How’ve you been?”

  Gwen blinked away embarrassing tears. Because the truth was, while she’d been heartbroken and sad, she’d also been busy. She’d signed up for some online classes and enrolled in college for the January semester. She was a regular at trivia night and had even been back to The Rack a time or two, hidden away in the games room with her friends and overpriced bottles of beer, beating everyone so badly at Taxi-Kart that they were no longer willing to play with her.

  She told Ty as much, hoping desperately that she sounded as cool and nonchalant about everything as he looked. Like life had gone on and that was totally, unequivocally, fine.

  “Why aren’t you in Miami?” she asked. It was a hundred questions rolled into one. Why are you here? What do you want? What are we doing? Are we doing something? No, we can’t...right?

  Ty shrugged, his smile sheepish. “I think I outgrew Miami,” he said. “It wasn’t as fun without Connor. And it gave me a lot of time to think about everything.”

  Gwen’s heart lodged itself in her throat, making it impossible to speak. “Okay,” she managed.

  “My whole life has been baseball,” Ty continued. “You know the story. My first love is baseball. My second love is baseball. Period.”

  She made herself nod. She did know all this, though it was still hard to hear.

  “And then I saw your slogan on TV, the one you wouldn’t share with me all summer.”

  Gwen opened her mouth to explain, or maybe to make an excuse, but he cut her off.

  “Love and baseball,” he mused. She’d repeated it to herself a thousand times all summer, seen it discussed onli
ne and on television since the leak, but hearing Ty say it made it resonate all the more. “Love and baseball,” he repeated, this time with emphasis on the and. “Not one or the other. Both. For the first time in my life, I had both. And this summer, as fucked up as it was, was the best one I’ve ever had. And you were the reason.”

  Tears pricked her eyes. “Same,” she said. A lame answer from someone whose job had involved writing compelling copy, but sometimes less was more.

  And finally Ty didn’t look just cool and composed anymore, he looked...hopeful. And surprised. “But you got fired.”

  “It wasn’t a great day,” she conceded. “But I don’t regret anything. I learned a lot this summer. I know how to deal with mean tweets. How to strong-arm right fielders into rewriting their bios. How to cope with loss.” The loss of Marge. Her job. The Thrashers’ Wild Card game. Ty. Or maybe not.

  “I learned something too,” Ty said. “That as much as I hate that stupid ‘puts the Ashe in Thrashers’ thing, maybe it’s not just a gimmick. Maybe I wasn’t as much of a team player as I should have been.”

  “You—”

  “You’re far better at it than I am. But no matter what you read on the internet, I’m not too old to change. And your slogan is perfect. Love and baseball. I want both, Gwen. I want to be with you. I want to hang out and plant this garden and watch Baking Bonanza and see what happens.”

  It was so simple, but it was everything she never thought she’d get to hear.

  “I want that too,” she said. “But my life is here. When you’re on the road, I’ll still be here. I have school and—”

  “I know,” Ty said. “Other guys make it work every day. We’ll talk on the phone. We’ll FaceTime. I’ll help you study. You’ll remind me to be nice to Ibanez. We’ll make a good team.”

  And suddenly it didn’t matter that Gwen had been fired and Ty had not. It didn’t matter what everyone else thought, that she was an assistant and he was a star, that he was a playboy and she was the flavor of the month. It only mattered what she thought, and she thought he was right. They did make a good team. She had been alone for so long, sometimes by choice, sometimes not, but this was her decision now, and she was making it. She wanted him. She wanted this. And, like the hideous little rosebush, if they tried this thing and survived the winter, in the spring it would bloom into something even more beautiful, growing stronger and more perfect with each new season.

  “Okay,” she said, nodding. There was a lot more to say, a lot more to figure out, but that was the most important thing. She was okay. They were okay. “Okay. I’m in.”

  He stepped closer, his smile making him impossibly handsome. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I love you too much not to try.”

  His mouth quirked. “I love you too much not to kiss you right now.”

  Commotion on the street had them turning to see a cluster of people gathered at the curb, gawking at the celebrity in Gwen’s garden, more than a few phones at the ready.

  She blushed. “Oh no. They’re all— Let’s go inside first.”

  “Nah,” Ty said, cupping her chin in his hand and lowering his head. “Let ’em watch.”

  FUN FACTS

  I CHOSE TO LOCATE THE baseball team in Charleston because I wanted them to play in the American League East, which is where my favourite team, the Toronto Blue Jays, plays.

  I PICKED THE NAMES Charleston Thrashers and Tyler Ashe entirely independently. It was only partway through my first draft that I realized Ty “put the Ashe in Thrashers.” If it wasn’t such a happy coincidence, I wouldn’t have used it in the book because it’s so cheesy.

  TY IS NUMBER 8 BECAUSE when I started watching baseball, I was obsessed with a Blue Jay named Alex Gonzalez, and he was number 8. One of my favourite possessions is a signed picture of Alex a friend picked up at a sports convention.

  WHEN I PLAYED SOFTBALL, I was number 8, until I joined a new team and the number was taken. After that I was number 9, which is my birthday. I played for about 15 years, recently retiring because I kept getting hit in the shin and it was upsetting.

  I CHOSE THE CHARLESTON-Tampa rivalry to honor the first baseball game I saw, Tampa Bay Devil Rays at the Toronto Blue Jays. (It was so long ago, that Tampa still had “Devil” in their name.) If you’re a baseball fan, that was the game Carlos Delgado hit four home runs.

  THANK YOU!

  I’VE ALWAYS LOVED BASEBALL and I’ve always wanted to write a baseball romance, which sounds like a recipe for success, but was actually five completely different books, all of which I abandoned because they were...horrible. The third scrapped book is normally the point when I tell myself it’s time to find a new project, but something (sadism?) made me persist with this one, and when I finally got it right, I knew it was worth the blood, sweat and tears. Mostly tears.

  If you enjoyed the story, I’d be very grateful if you would leave a review on Goodreads or wherever you bought the book. Positive or negative, reviews help other readers find my work and I appreciate them all.

  Please let me know if you’d like another book in this series! I have an idea percolating, but your encouragement and enthusiasm is more motivating than you know.

  If you would like to know when my next book is available, you can sign up for my newsletter at www.juliannakeyes.com/newsletter.html. I’m too lazy to send newsletters often, so you’ll only get them when I have a new book coming out or something incredibly exciting to share.

  You can also find or follow me on the following pages:

  www.juliannakeyes.com

  http://facebook.com/juliannakeyesauthor

  https://twitter.com/JuliannaKeyes

  Email: info@juliannakeyes.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MASSIVE THANKS TO NATALIE Perret for her endless support and encouragement, and her keen eye for detail. Any lingering mistakes are all mine. (And all the people at your office are terrible, and you are great.)

  AS ALWAYS, I’M HUGELY grateful to Khoi Le for his ability to decipher the vision I’m trying to describe, and his willingness to transform that mound of gibberish into a beautiful cover.

  A LOUD SHOUT OUT TO Jenn for her input on my back cover copy, and helping me shape it into something appealing and not-embarrassing. You rock!

  BOOKS BY JULIANNA KEYES

  NEW ADULT

  My Roommate’s Girl

  BURNHAM COLLEGE SERIES

  Undecided

  Undeclared

  CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

  Just Once

  Going the Distance

  TIME SERVED SERIES

  Time Served

  In Her Defense

  The Good Fight

  NOVELLA

  Bad Princess