The next morning, Charlie finds himself in Stephanie’s office, staring at the brightly colored notebooks on her desk. Stephanie stares back at him, skeptically. “Now you want to make a public statement about the divorce?”
He shifts. The arms of the chair dig into his sides, like she deliberately asked for furniture inadequate to hold ballplayers as revenge. “Not a public statement. Just what it’d mean if people found out.”
“It’d mean that’d be the first Google hit for you for exactly one day and for Chris for the rest of her life.”
“I don’t want that for her. Just if she wanted to date again, it’d probably be worse if people think she’s cheating.”
Stephanie raises an eyebrow. “So you’re also seeing someone else?”
“Also?” Because that would mean Chris is.
Stephanie doesn’t elaborate. “So you are.”
He shrugs but doesn’t contradict her, trying to spin up some plausible fiction if she presses him for details. Maybe an old high school sweetheart or an uncomplicated woman he met...somewhere.
“Have you asked Chris about it?”
“Um.” The thought churns his belly. “Not yet.”
“This is a serious thing for her. You get that, right?”
“I know.”
Stephanie tilts her head to the side, not quite disagreement. “While I appreciate your altruism, maybe go talk to her. Marin County isn’t that far.” And she summarily shoos him from her office.
Back in the clubhouse, he parks himself in front of his stall, scrolling through his phone, self-googling. All his results are about his pitching; all Chris’s are about being married to him. He gets four pages into her search results before he finds her pottery website.
And he has a vague memory of looking for Reid, back when he first joined the team. Google comes back with the expected ballplayer pages. Reid Giordano blazing 100 mph fastball. Reid Giordano strikes out the side.
Reid Giordano seventh-inning implosion.
The link hovers in invitation. Charlie looks over his shoulder, making sure the sound on his phone is muted, then clicks.
The video is dated from three years ago: Reid heavier, face redder, hair cut short. He’s already on the mound, moving with small differences in his delivery that Charlie ascribes to changes in mechanics—except Reid sways as he lands, a follow-through that looks almost unintentional. And it occurs to him that Reid is drunk.
He shouldn’t watch the rest of this. He shields the screen, glancing around the clubhouse before hastily shuttering his phone.
Except, except. The impulse follows him for the rest of the day, through weight training, through throwing to Martinez and a card game with Gordon. Curiosity bites at his heels until he slinks into one of the training rooms, locking the door behind him.
The video is as advertised. Reid pitches badly. His fastball has its previous velocity, but he throws it over the heads of both the catcher and umpire, hitting the backstop. A curveball doesn’t even make it to the plate, bouncing off the hard-packed infield dirt, forcing the catcher to scramble after it.
He regroups, taking off his hat and peering into it in the way he sometimes still does to focus. It doesn’t help. His next pitch is a fastball, big and obvious. The hitter transforms it into a ringing home run. The cameras cut over to the dugout, to the pitching coach and manager, who charge onto the field to snatch Reid from the game even before the ball lands. A bad outing, but one no different from any other bad outing.
Except Reid stumbles as he’s coming off the mound. The play-by-play guy speculates that it could be injury or illness—but by the video comments section, most people have reached the correct conclusion.
Afterward, Charlie sits on the padded table of the training room, not ready to go back into the clubhouse. He shouldn’t have watched it, a low feeling in his gut of regret—as much of a possible violation of Reid’s privacy as any video with more than twenty thousand views could be.
Charlie carries that with him through the game, after, on their ride home, not mentioning it until Reid is clipping Avis’s harness on for their walk.
“I, uh, did something earlier I probably shouldn’t have,” Charlie says, and Reid goes intentionally still. “There’s this video of you pitching from a couple of years ago. I shouldn’t have gone looking for it.”
“The ‘seventh-inning implosion’ one?” And Charlie expects that pinched expression in Reid’s jaw when he doesn’t want to talk about something. But his face is relaxed. “I assumed you already saw it. I assume everyone has.”
“I hadn’t.”
“I blew my shoulder out during that game. I was overthrowing, and I got hurt.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have watched it.”
Reid shrugs. “It’s fine.”
“It’s really not. I guess I just wanted to know how you were before.”
“I wasn’t great.” Reid’s voice goes a little tight at that. “It’s hard, knowing that I can’t get that time back. A lot of therapy is acknowledging that I do have time left, on, like, the planet, but there’s only so much time you get in the majors, and I spent it that way.”
He picks up Avis’s leash. She’s already excited to go, tail thumping against the floor, whining for the treats Reid keeps in his pocket. “Actually, you know what? Could you take her out? I need some space.”
Charlie walks around their neighborhood, avoiding the neighbors they normally see who might ask where Reid is. Avis is shy at the dog park, shier than she is with Reid there, sticking close to Charlie’s leg like she knows something’s wrong. He scrolls through retail sites, like this could be solved with a scuba diving tour or a subscription to a high-end coffee roaster. The minimum buy is six months anyway, and who knows where Reid will be then. He did similar things for Christine, when it was easier to book a flight than have a conversation. A bad idea, probably, but he’s not sure what else to do.
At home, Reid’s on the couch, scrolling through the Netflix queue so quickly that Charlie’s not sure if he’s actually registering what’s on screen. His leg is tapping; his hair looks like he’s been running his hands through it. “Good walk?”
“She got a little spooked with some of the other dogs.” And Charlie doesn’t want to ask if he’s okay when he’s clearly not.
“I called my grandma.” His smile goes tight. “She always picks up asking what’s the matter. I guess ’cause I haven’t exactly given her a reason not to.”
He says it in a way that makes Charlie want to say something, do something, that will solve this. Except all he can muster is “Oh.”
“It’s easier with you. You didn’t know how I was, and you don’t act like I could slip up at any moment.”
A trust Charlie might have diminished out of curiosity. “I don’t think you will.”
“I could. It’s hard to explain. Just, every day I wake up knowing that I could.”
“But then you don’t.”
“I haven’t yet. No guarantees things won’t change.” Reid blows a breath out like he’s making a point. “Everything in baseball is about how I gotta take my lumps. Maybe that makes it better. No one’s treating me like I’m breakable.”
Though breakable sounds a little like human. “Maybe they should.”
Something in how he says it makes Reid get up. He kisses Charlie, soft. “I think about it sometimes. What would happen if I went back to it? If I fell out of the game. If I’d end up like a ghost story. Giordano, he used to party with the best of them.” His eyes clench shut momentarily. “This is the stuff that’s hard to admit. Everyone wants the wild stories. But the thing is—addiction can make you kind of an asshole. No, I was kind of an asshole because it was easier than dealing with the world.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” Even if some flickering part of Charlie wants to know.
“Better you than the East Bay Tribune. I got injured, got sober, and got divorced all within a year. By then my family wasn’t really talking to me. Do you know what a fuckup you have to be to get your calls screened by a hundred cousins?” He takes a steadying breath. “My grandma picked up. That first night at her apartment, she sat me down and told me to make a list of the people I needed to apologize to. Letitia. Various teammates I took money from. It’s funny how certain stuff just sticks in your mind. Like this time I was on the road with the Swordfish double-A team. A local family heard I was Jewish and invited me over for dinner—which happens sometimes. I was all set to go over there. Except I stopped at a liquor store on the way. And I guess I never made it.”
He doesn’t say anything else for a minute, braced like he’s expecting Charlie to order him from his house.
Charlie doesn’t know what to say, a hesitance different from the familiar blank of anxiety. Because he should know more than movie portrayals of sobriety: tearful declarations and healing in montage. “Did you, uh, apologize?”
“I wrote a letter. Except I couldn’t remember what city it was in or their names.”
“I’m sure they forgot about it.”
“That’s what I said when I was making that list. I thought that was the end of it, but have you ever met a Jewish grandma? So the next week, we go to temple. There’s this month—usually in late summer—where we’re supposed to atone. That’s not exactly the right word.” He says a word Charlie doesn’t recognize, then translates. “It means literally ‘to return.’ So the rabbi was saying we couldn’t do that without putting in the work. And I thought maybe I should give that a try—actually fixing things. Probably pretty obvious. You wanna know what my grandma said when I told her that? Well, Michael, better get busy.” He laughs. “Some days it’s harder than others.”
Charlie hasn’t asked him a whole lot about being Jewish, about the bracelet that he fiddles with or the seemingly endless rules that govern what he won’t eat. About if he prays, the way Charlie did at church growing up, a conversation with someone he wasn’t sure was listening. With that, a realization of the calendar. “It’s August now.”
Reid smiles, something resembling his normal grin. “Yeah, it is.”
“Should we be doing something?”
His smile broadens. “Charlie, I think we are doing it.”
“I figured it’d be about, um, God.”
And Reid laughs, his loud familiar laugh, echoing off Charlie’s living room shelves. “I don’t think you can believe in a just God if you’re a relief pitcher.”
Which is itself another recalibration. Charlie’s confusion must show.
“Some days I think there’s a higher power governing the universe, and some days I give up a home run to the Seattle Pilots. Either way I should probably treat people better than I did before. I think that’s kind of the whole point.”
“You said before you’d, uh, teach me about this stuff. Not because I want to convert or anything—”
Reid puts up a hand. “To convert you gotta go beg a rabbi, then study for six months. So don’t worry. You gotta come to us.”
“But if it’s important to you, I want to know about it.”
Reid looks at him, eyes a little wide, then kisses him, a deliberate, lingering kiss. “You’re really something else.”
Something he’s said before, now seeded with new meaning. And so Charlie brushes his hand across his palm, his wrist, the cool beads of his bracelet. Above them, the tattoo on his forearm. The promise he inked to his future self, with all the uncertainty that meant.
Charlie reaches now with that same uncertainty, that hope, of what his future could be like—of what theirs could be, together.
It’s smoky when Charlie drives out to Marin following an afternoon game, the traffic on the bridge stifling, the area around the house gray when he parks his truck. It hasn’t rained and they need it, every sign showing a red-flag warning, every conversation on the radio about when, not if, there will be additional evacuations. Nerves sit over him like clouds: of what Chris will say about making their divorce public.
Her car is sitting in the driveway, pointed outward so she can pull into the road if she needs to leave quickly, its trunk already packed with suitcases and boxes. She greets him at the door, dressed for moving, loose jeans and one of his repurposed shirts. She got her hair cut shorter, and it looks nice.
She thanks him when he tells her that. “It’s a cliché, right? Getting a haircut after a breakup.”
“I guess so.” He’s been visiting the barber regularly, enough to attract attention while he’s there from patrons who want to ask him about the Elephants’ season, and who probably take his mumbled replies as arrogance until he pays for everyone’s haircut.
“I’m glad you came out,” she says. “I could use some help packing up the studio.”
Because he didn’t tell her why he was coming out and she didn’t ask. She leads him back to her studio, which looks the same as when he lived here: a set of worktables, a throwing wheel, a kiln. A large window overlooks the browning backyard.
Her art normally hangs displayed around the room, but most of it’s been pulled down already and set along one worktable. “I guess I could hire movers to do this,” she says, “but it’s different with this stuff versus the furniture.”
She points to a row of dishes, everything from tiny salt cellars to large serving platters, and tells him that there’s paper to wrap them with. He picks up one, a miniature thin-walled cup that feels fragile even as he fills it with a wad of newsprint.
It’s easy to work like this, with music playing through a set of speakers, where his only real worry is if he’s using enough padding. Not like the words pressing against the back of his tongue. I met someone. I want to tell people about the divorce. I want to—and have—moved on.
Her phone chimes, loud; they both jump. “Just a text, not an evacuation alert,” she says, though she looks shaken. “You still got space for me?”
And Charlie is about to tell her that of course he does—that he has an entire unoccupied guest room—when he stops himself. “You should know, Reid’s still living with me.”
“I figured.” She says it without much inflection, like she doesn’t want to pry. Like they’re casual acquaintances. Somehow that hurts more than if she prodded him for answers.
“You should also know—he’s in recovery. He’s been sober for a few years, but I wanted to mention it.”
Christine looks surprised, hand reaching to brush her hair back from her shoulders reflexively, only to find it’s no longer there. “When you brought all that wine back here, that was because of him?”
“Yeah. I mean, I drink when we’re out or whatever. Just not in the house. If you want to stay at a hotel instead, I understand.”
“I don’t want to take a room from people who might not have somewhere else to go. And it’s kind of lonely out here by myself. I’ve been thinking about selling this place anyway and moving back to the city.”
“Oh.” He glances around—at the walls and beams of her studio, the place that’s solely hers within the place that used to be theirs.
“I won’t if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s your house. Or will be once the paperwork goes through.”
“You’re allowed to have an opinion on it. Though I guess it won’t matter if it burns down.” And she reaches for another wad of paper, tearing it and stuffing it into a bowl with more force than she usually uses with her pottery. “It’s funny. This is all stuff that would survive a fire. It’s the rest of the house that would burn.”
He takes the bowl from her and sets it back on the worktable. “Hey, come here.”
She folds herself carefully into a hug, shoulders tense, breathing unsteady. “I just keep thinking about this year, how fucked-up everything is. How I have all this stuff that shouldn’t matter, but I don’t want to leave it.”
“It’s gonna be okay.”
She laughs at that and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “You don’t know that.”
“Stuff can be replaced.”
“You just gonna buy me a new house if this one burns down?”
“I don’t know. Would you want me to?”
“Jesus, Charlie, some stuff just can’t be fixed like that.” She steps back from him, taking another piece off the wall. It’s an object with no discernible purpose, fringed with fragile clay outcroppings that might not survive the rattling commute between Marin and San Francisco, no matter how well it’s packed.
“I have two guest rooms. Reid’s staying in one”—only in the most technical sense—“so I need to get a bed for the other. But if you wanted, we could bring the one out of here.”
Their old bed, its frame custom-made long enough so he can fully stretch out. The one they christened their first night in the house, slept in, ate breakfast in. One he’d miss if the house burned, even though he hasn’t slept there in almost a year.
She wipes her eyes and gives him a thin smile. “It’s a pretty big bed.”
“Like I said, we have room.”
“Why’d you come out here today anyway? I know it’s not to watch me cry on your shirt.”
“It was...” he begins, and his mind goes a whooshing blank of trying to spin up a plausible excuse. “You know, it’s not important. We can talk later.”
“You always say that.”
And it’d be so easy to tell her: easy and the most difficult thing he’s done in a while. There’s something else. Someone else. It’ll hurt, no matter when he says it, the way he got a flash of Who? when Stephanie mentioned Chris was seeing someone. Something he doesn’t want to say right now with her already upset. Because he wants to both yell it to everyone he knows and tell her carefully. Along with it, the familiar traitorous impulse of Later will be better, later will be easier.
She fills in the blank for him. “Now not a good time?”
He shakes his head. “Let’s get you packed up.”