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It could have been him. Would have been him. Had he not been called up for September, Del would have been right down there with Edsell, staring into a plastic jar he knew would be the ruin of him. They’d never been tested in the offseason before. It never seemed like a serious threat. How could the league possibly track down every player, all over the globe, to collect a sample? Or did they only target the guys they suspected? Would they come for him now, at home? Engine still pinging, he sat in his driveway trying to check his breath before he hyperventilated.
It wasn’t the cup he was afraid of. He hadn’t taken anything since his last cycle ended more than two months ago. He’d been tested since then, the day after arriving in Minnesota. What frightened him was how close he had come to getting busted. It was like seeing flashing lights in the rearview mirror and watching the cop blow by and flag the driver one car ahead. Edsell was the guy ahead of him, no more guilty than Del, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Worse than the guilt was the shame. It wasn’t Edsell he had thought of first. It was himself. And that first emotion wasn’t fear or anger. It was relief. From the moment he’d seen through Dana’s bluff, his primary concern had been how to tell his friend he wasn’t coming. How to tell him he was on his own in a foreign land they had negotiated twice as partners. How to tell his buddy, I chose her over you.
And suddenly he didn’t have to.
Milo looked up from the newspaper spread across the kitchen table as Del entered. “How’d it go?”
“All right.”
“So what now?”
Del shrugged. He pulled a carton of milk from the fridge and shook the excess moisture from a glass drying on the rack on the counter. “I’m not going to Mexico.”
“That must have been some dinner.”
“It’s not just ...” Del stopped. He couldn’t very well go into Edsell’s dilemma without implicating himself. There was no harm in letting Milo believe it was all about Dana. “Yeah, it was nice.”
He undressed and slid under the covers tasting chili and doubt as he watched the tree tops lashing in the wind through the broken slat in the blinds. How much of what he’d accomplished did he owe to the juice? Would he have made it to Minnesota without it? Edsell had taken everything he had and more, and he hadn’t made it. The added bulk may even have exacerbated the flaws in his game. Any objective observer would grade him as a below average defender with an exploitable hole in his swing. Del, by contrast, had remained fluid at bat and in the field. The things he had always done well, he still did well. But would he be able to continue to add strength clean? Or at worst maintain what he had? Because he was never going to risk taking anything again. Ever. The stakes were too high now.
He rolled onto his side and wedged his folded pillow into the space between his neck and shoulder. From the top of his dresser, much younger, less complicated, versions of himself and Dana smiled at him from within their yellowed paper frame. What if she hadn’t contacted him? Would he still go to Mexico without Edsell? It was a silly debate to entertain. His heart hadn’t been in the Mexico trip since the night he first saw her at the dance club.
He threw the covers back and stepped across the carpet just far enough to retrieve his phone from the bookshelf. “I love you,” he typed. Why hadn’t he said it earlier when they parted? Would she have said it back? Would she now? He hit send and waited.
He woke seven hours later, still clutching his phone in his right hand. When he thumbed it to life, there was one text in the queue.
“Then don’t go.”
It wasn’t “I love you.” It was more. It was what he’d wanted to hear at dinner. And every time they had phoned or emailed or texted since he’d climbed in her window. It was her being vulnerable enough to want exactly what she’d wanted two years ago. And admit it.
“I can’t leave,” he wrote back. “I have to help my girlfriend paint her condo.”