Mid-November comes. With it, rain, the kind of drizzling soak that wets the hills around the city. There isn’t a lot to do in the off-season. Charlie doesn’t particularly want to get on a plane anywhere, and he has to keep up his throwing routine, which requires a catch partner. He calls Christine because she sometimes did that before.
“Sure,” she says. “Bring Avis. I bet she could use the air.”
He brings a glove for Christine, but she apparently has an old one. It’s well cared for, which he comments on. “I might have re-oiled it,” she says. “It looked pretty dire before.”
She shoos him to the opposite side of the yard. He plucks a ball, white as new sheets, from the bucket and throws it to her. Avis runs after it, fast enough that Christine takes pity on her, letting her have it. She carries it, slobberingly, over to the roots of one of the trees, sitting in a patch of mud that they’ll have to wash off her later.
He shouts as much to Christine, who laughs, free and ringingly familiar, and tells Charlie he’s welcome to hose her down in the bathtub if he wants.
“I miss living out here sometimes,” he says, when they’re done, and he’s retrieving baseballs from where they’re scattered around the yard. “The house has been kind of quiet.”
“You can come out whenever you want.”
“You know, this time last year, I don’t even think we were speaking to each other most days.”
Christine frowns a little. “We were never that contentious.”
“I meant more like we didn’t know what to say to one another.”
“Funny how a year changes things.” Christine drops her glove on the patio table, then goes inside, returning with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She opens the bottle, working the cork out with a triumphant pop, then glugs some out, sliding a glass to Charlie. “If I’d been thinking, we could have gotten some lunch to eat out here. Really celebrated like it was old times.”
“This works.” Though the wine tastes slightly astringent.
They drink for a while, Charlie surveying the muddy yard, soaked by rain they needed two months ago. “You still planning to sell this place?”
She nods. “After the holidays. I’ve been looking at studios.”
“And apartments?”
“Stephanie and I viewed a couple of places.”
“How’d your parents take that?”
“Oh, me and my roommate?” She shakes her head. “Fine for a given value of fine.”
“I, uh, kinda told my parents. Not about me and Reid exactly, but about me.”
Her eyes go wide. “How’d that go?”
He expected shock, maybe some yelling, but got his father’s slow absorption, his mother’s insistence that it was all right. That some things just take getting used to. They told him to come to Texas for Christmas—that California was a great place to visit but they wouldn’t want to live there—and he hugged them both as they left. “It was okay. I mean, I paid for their house. I don’t know if they would say if it wasn’t. But they seemed to take it in stride, I guess.”
She pats his hand. “Well, you paid for my house, and I think it’s terrific.”
Avis is running around the yard, carrying sticks over to them for their approval. She brings one over to Christine, who tosses it, and Avis scurries to run it down. “The first time she was out here, she was scared of her own shadow. Now look at her.”
“I guess that’s both of us.”
“You think it wasn’t me too? I didn’t know what not being a baseball wife was going to be like. Stephanie says I should stop expecting the worst to happen, but it’s sort of hard not to.”
“When’s the announcement set to go up?”
“Right after the New Year. Along with...let’s just say the prenup may get leaked too.”
Charlie laughs at that. “So people are going to find out I don’t get any of your money?”
“The only equal division of assets is this bottle of wine, I think.”
“I was thinking,” he says, “if you’re gonna have to rebuild a studio, let me buy you the space.”
A tilt of her eyebrows. “You gonna be my patron?”
“I was thinking biggest fan.”
Christine doesn’t say anything for a second, then gets up, pulling him into a hug that unknots something in his back. “I appreciate the gesture,” she says, “but I don’t really need the money.”
“I don’t really either. It’s kind of terrible, but I forget about it most of the time.”
“Spoken like a true millionaire.”
Charlie glances around—at the house that now feels oversized, at the hills in the distance that soak in the scant autumn rain. “Well, there are some things it can’t really fix.”
“It can’t, but it sure doesn’t hurt either.” She reaches for her glass, and nods that he should do the same, raising it to his. “You know, I may have lost a husband, but I got a pretty great best friend out of it.”
“I guess I did too.” He touches his glass to hers, then drinks. The wine has opened, its flavor mellower and more complex. “This is good.”
“See? We just had to let it breathe.”
They drink enough that he stays over in the guest bedroom where he spent last November in exile. Avis actually lets them clean her off before she settles on the foot of the bed, though she migrates to the floor at some point during the night, curling up in the dog bed Christine got her.
He wakes the next morning chilly, quilt spilling halfway onto the floor. He reaches out, half asleep, heat-seeking, and finds only the deflated guest-bed pillows.
Downstairs, there’s a pot of still-warm coffee. He carries a mug with him to Christine’s studio, pausing in the doorway. “I booked a scuba-diving class,” he says. Which he did, months ago, in an attempt at an apology. “It’s by Monterey Bay if you and Stephanie want to go. Otherwise, I’ll just cancel it.”
“You hate being in the water.”
“I thought I could try something new. I’m not really feeling up to it right now.”
“You should go. It might be good for you.”
“Gordon says I have to be over this by next season.”
“There’s not really a time limit on this kind of thing. I cried pretty much every day from January through April. Then one day, I just stopped.”
He expects it to hurt, but it doesn’t. Just a recognition of the same kind of light-switch feeling he had. “You got over me just like that?” he teases.
She laughs. “I could say the same to you.”
There’s an alert on his phone, the team tagging his official account on Twitter. Reid’s article. He opens it, skimming through the sections that he’s read before—Reid talking about his slow push to recovery and the importance of mental health—to a part he hasn’t.
I came back to baseball different from how I left it. I could only throw one pitch, a slowish fastball. I bounced around for a while—check my Baseball Reference page if you don’t believe me. I had to learn how to be alone, especially on the road, where it’s harder to have a routine.
But things changed for me this year. I got traded to Oakland. I learned how to throw a curveball. I met Charlie Braxton.
And Charlie’s eyes blur a little at that, at Reid talking about Charlie offering him a place to stay. How he tossed off flat ground at a pitching target that Charlie set up. How Charlie showed him his curveball grip, then insisted that he try throwing it, even when Reid gave up on the possibility.
He didn’t judge me, and he didn’t let me quit, even when I wanted to. I’m indebted to him for that, and to everyone who didn’t give up on me. I owe it to all of them—and myself—to keep trying for as long as I can.
Charlie looks up from his phone to Christine. “Do you think you could watch Avis for a couple of days?”
“Sure. When?”
“Um, starting now.” He brings up an airline site, looking for the next flights from the Bay Area to Seattle, and finds one later that day. He books a one-way ticket, a hotel room.
“Are you going on a surprise vacation?” She’s smiling at him, a bright, knowing sort of smile.
“Something like that. Wish me luck.”
It’s a two-hour flight from Oakland to Seattle. Charlie’s restless, even in the comfort of a first-class seat. He texts Reid right before he takes off, asking for the name of the hotel where he’s staying, then put his phone in airplane mode and buries it in his bag. He wonders what he’ll find on his phone when he lands—an address, a set of question marks, something else.
But there’s no response when the plane touches down. It’s possible Reid is still throwing for the day or has gone out for a run or is asleep already, though it’s barely evening. All of which Charlie tells himself as he picks up his rental truck and navigates to his hotel. He doesn’t bother unpacking his suitcase, though he showers the plane smell off himself and shaves, his electric razor a buzz against his neck. He dresses with greater care than he normally does; he’s rubbing moisturizer in his beard when his phone chimes.
Reid, texting the name of his hotel.
What room? Charlie says.
You gonna send me flowers? But he sends the number.
It’s a thirty-minute drive to Reid’s hotel. Charlie turns on the radio, adjusting the volume until it’s almost too low to hear, the way Reid sometimes did in his truck after games. He’s not nervous, though he can’t seem to keep his fingers from tapping against the steering wheel, his heart from making itself known in his chest.
Reid could be out to dinner. Or worse, he could be there and tell Charlie that he appreciates him coming, but that none of this will work, no matter how much he wants it. He might look at Charlie, his eyes like the ocean at night, and close the door.
Charlie pulls into the parking lot of the hotel. His hands feel empty when he gets out. He should’ve brought food or flowers, a joke that really isn’t one. He breathes—purposefully, intentionally, like he’s standing on the edge of something.
A car pulls into the spot next to his. A group of people tumbles out onto the asphalt, talking excitedly, enough to propel him forward, into the lobby, past the front desk, hoping the elevator doesn’t require a key card to operate.
He gets in, stationing himself at the back as a few other guests pack in with him. One, a small child, stares at him like his height and breadth are some kind of glitch. The elevator chimes at Reid’s floor, revealing a long hallway lined in inexpensive carpeting. A sign on the wall points to ranges of room numbers. He walks until he finds Reid’s. The door is sealed such that there’s no telltale light—no way to know if Reid’s here or not. Music plays faintly from inside.
Charlie knocks, once, softly enough that he does it again. The music cuts off. Reid doesn’t open the door, perhaps gearing up to gently turn Charlie away. And it’s possible Charlie came all this way to have an awkward conversation in the disorienting hallway of an extended stay inn and suites before returning to his too-quiet San Francisco house.
It’s also possible he’s catastrophizing.
The door swings open, revealing Reid in a T-shirt and running shorts. His hair is wet like he just got out of the shower, though his bracelet and watch are fastened at his wrist. He looks surprised to see Charlie here. Perfect in a way Charlie can’t articulate.
And all of the things Charlie rehearsed in his truck, on the plane, for the past month—words picked carefully, intentionally—abandon him for the five words beating in time with his pulse. “I want to try this.” The next ones come pouring out. “No matter where you end up. It’ll probably be harder than I think it’ll be. I’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out together.”
“C’mon.” Reid’s voice sounds thick. He steps back, letting Charlie in.
The room is furnished with a dresser and bed frame in light wood; Reid’s clothes are stacked in his suitcase as if he’s been packing or never unpacked them to begin with. A tablet that Charlie bought for him is lying on the bed, its screen dark. Reid picks it up, types in a passcode, then hands it to Charlie. On it, an email from Reid’s agent, specifying terms, a two-year contract, an attachment that Charlie opens, skimming it uncomprehendingly, eyes focused on the names in bold at the top.
Charlie looks up. “You’re signing with Oakland?”
“Technically, I haven’t signed yet,” Reid says. “My agent just sent it today.”
“Are you going to?”
“I am.” Reid isn’t smiling, though his expression is soft, the lines around his eyes fond.
“What if you get a better offer?”
Reid takes the tablet from him and sets it on the bed. “Charlie, did you come all this way to convince me to leave you again?”
“I just want you to go someplace that appreciates you.”
“You mean like a team that got me out of Nebraska and made me their eighth-inning guy? The one where their ace pitcher spent time helping me, for no other reason than he thought I deserved a second shot? That team?” He smiles, a smile like a flipped light switch.
“Well, when you put it that way.” Charlie’s standing close enough to smell his shampoo, to see the threads of his eyelashes. To take Reid’s hand and hold it, palm against his own.
“It’s easy for people to be there when stuff’s going well,” Reid says. “You’re something else.”
“Reid, I...” But he can’t find the words, so he kisses him instead, the room around them fading. A kiss that makes it hard to stop, though he does, just to move his hand up Reid’s wrist to the watch Reid has on. He slides a finger between the watchband and Reid’s pulse, feeling his heartbeat. “You’re wearing it.”
“I wanted a reminder that things can go right sometimes. That sometimes it’s the everyday stuff, but sometimes it’s the highlights.”
Charlie works the latch on his own watch, sliding it off his wrist and turning it over. On the reverse side, his own name, the year, a semicolon and a date written under it.
“What’s this?” Reid taps the digits signifying a Monday in June.
“It’s the day before Christine served me divorce papers. The day I met you.”
Reid grins. “That’s a pretty big day.”
“It was.” Charlie holds out the watch to Reid. “The divorce’ll be final in a few weeks.”
“Any particular reasoning you’re mentioning it?”
Charlie’s next words come easily. “I didn’t come here with anything but myself. But I want to be together. Not just next season.”
And he’s working up to ask a question, the question, when Reid says, “Yes.”
Charlie laughs. “I didn’t even ask you yet.”
Despite his answer, Reid’s still looking down at Charlie’s watch. “I didn’t think you’d want to get married again.”
“Maybe not right away. Eventually, though. We could, uh, try living together first.”
Reid’s smile goes even more incandescent. “You’re asking me to move in?”
And Charlie is about to say how this is immeasurably different, when Reid takes the watch, sliding it on.
“So it’s a ‘yes’?” Charlie asks.
With that, a press of Reid’s mouth to his like a promise. “It is. It really, really is.”