All dugouts smell the same. Like sweat, and soil, and a little bit of metal. The sounds of dugouts change, though. Some sound like the crunch of gravel under my cleats and the ringing of chain-link fences for walls. The dugout at the field we’re renting for our team practice is a cavernous cement hole that echoes and feels damp and cold even in the heat. Which is fine. It’s the smell that makes it feel like home.
The dugout ceiling is low enough that as I stand I have to hunch a little. “So...should we get started?”
No one acknowledges me. I clear my throat to try again.
“It’s...our first team practice.”
Maybe I should have clapped to get their attention. I raise my hands but let them drop. The idea of their attention makes my mouth a little dry. Part of me almost wishes I were back in that conference room this afternoon, watching Ms. Blunt kill it in front of all those execs. At least there, no one was paying attention to me.
“Wes, those pants are adorable,” Marisol says, throwing her bag down beside mine. “Where did you find them?”
I glance down at my tight pants, my socks pulled up and the matching jersey. “I, uh, still fit into my high school team uniform.”
“Of course you do,” she says, reaching up to pat my head. We both fall silent as Mark tries to give Emily pointers on her batting stance. She seems only mildly annoyed until he comes up behind her, wrapping his arms around hers and holding the bat on either side of her hands. His hips press in close to hers and her face turns red. I leap the steps out of the dugout and clap my hands together.
“Can everyone gather up over here for a team meeting?”
Emily pushes Mark off her and says something to him I can’t hear. But from the scowl on his face I hope it had something to do with fucking himself.
Everyone stands around in various athletic wear. Only a few have brought their own gloves.
“If you need gloves, I brought extras.” I point to the equipment bag at my feet. Dust kicks up as everyone rushes it. “But most are on loan so please return them to me as you found them,” I say over the din of people fighting for the best gloves.
“Who put you in charge, Chambers?” Mark sneers.
“I did.”
Ms. Blunt stands at the edge of the group. This is the first time I’ve seen her outside of the office. She seems smaller in the outdoors. Or maybe that’s just because she’s wearing running shoes instead of heels. She holds a shiny new glove in her hand. The tag still dangles from the web.
“Does anyone have any questions?” she asks in that way she has, like any questions would be a great inconvenience to her.
Mark scowls down at his glove.
“Does anyone have any experience playing softball or baseball?” I ask.
A couple people raise their hands and the group laughs nervously.
“Well, don’t worry. I’ve played baseball my whole life,” I say, looking at Ms. Blunt as I do. She bites the inside of her lip. It feels like confirmation that she assigned this to me because she didn’t know I was born with a ball in my hand.
But the feeling in my gut isn’t smugness at her mistake, just excitement to show her what I can do.
“I’ve been coaching kids’ teams since I was eighteen, so I think we probably won’t completely embarrass ourselves in front the rest of the building.”
Almost three hours later, my throat is sore from yelling instructions across the diamond and the supreme confidence I felt coaching this team has floated away like diamond dust. Half the team could barely catch the ball with their gloves on, and only three people hit the ball in a semi-forward direction. At least when I coach children, they assume I have some sort of authority. This team would barely listen to me. Everyone stands in groups, sipping from water bottles and laughing. I feel like a pimple. Big and a little sore and totally obvious on an otherwise unblemished face. No matter how bad I want to, I don’t know how to get up from this bench and join a group.
Abila makes eye contact with me across the dugout. I stretch out my neck and shoulders and check my phone in an effort not to look at her. There’s a text from Amy reminding me of dinner tonight with our dad.
Thanks for the reminder, I text back. I don’t think I’m going to make it tho...have work to do once I get home from practice. :S.
The text dots appear in our chat window, then Amy texts back a sad face and:
If you’re not going then I’m NOT going.
I’ll call him, I assure her. I can’t deal with a pissed-off Amy today and if anything is going to piss her off it’s going to be our father.
I pull up my dad’s contact.
“Yeah,” is how he answers his phone.
“Hey, Dad, how’s it going?” He grunts a non-answer and when he doesn’t say any more I push on. “I’m going to have to cancel our dinner tonight.”
There’s a pause and I wave goodbye to a few people in the silence. I check my phone screen to see if the call dropped. “Dad?”
“What dinner?” he barks.
“Amy and I were supposed to meet you for dinner tonight, Dad.” I try to keep the impatience from my voice.
“Okay. Fine.”
I drop my head into my free hand. “Dad, wait... I’m saying we can’t meet you. Can we reschedule?”
“Why?” he asks contemptuously. “Does she have to waitress?”
I sigh, not bothering to muffle the sound. “Amy’s opening her own restaurant, Dad. She’s not a server anymore.” I pause. “And even if she was, why does it matter?”
He ignores my question. “Well, then why the fuck are you cancelling last minute?”
Forget the fact that he didn’t even remember we were supposed to have dinner together thirty seconds ago.
“I have to work,” I say bluntly. “I’ll email you about next time.”
I end the call and text Amy: Dinner is cancelled.
Good, she writes. And then, I have a surprise for you when you get home. Make sure it’s at an actually reasonable time. And don’t bail.
My neck flushes at the reminder that I bailed on her dinner last night. She left an encyclopedia of messages on my phone, ranging from angry to worried, this morning. I guess I should just be happy she’s even talking to me.
Amy, I have so much work to do.
You better be home.
Amy is a doer. She has an idea and she does it. She makes it happen. But sometimes she doesn’t always care who she has to bowl over to get there.
And usually the person she has to bowl over is me.
Fine. I’ll do my best. What’s the surprise? I ask.
She just sends back a poop emoji.
“That was a little embarrassing.”
I fumble with my phone to black out the screen and hide the shit.
Ms. Blunt sits down beside me on the dugout bench.
“Yeah.” I shift to face her. “I guess I kind of oversold my expertise.”
She shakes her head. “I meant...” She gestures to the last dregs of our ragtag team. “I’m sure it just takes time. It’s like that with any team.”
“That seems wise.”
I wave to Emily over Ms. Blunt’s shoulder as she gets into her car. I still have to collect the bases and put all of the gloves and bats away because no one has stayed to help.
Except for Ms. Blunt.
I take my cap off and scratch my head with the bill. I don’t have an itch. I just need something to do with my hands when she sits this close to me. Smelling like coconut while I’m sure I smell like sweat and dirt, dugout. I feel the need to apologize but I’m not sure exactly what for, the smell of me or maybe the way I snapped at her earlier.
I resist the urge to check out her legs in the yoga pants, again. I feel fairly positively about them—the shape of her thighs, the curve of her calves, hell, even her ankles are nice. I should probably apologize for that, too, but I’d have to admit it to her first.
That’s never fucking happening.
“You don’t have to stay and help clean up or anything. I don’t mind doing it.”
My chest tightens at the idea of going home too soon. Cleanup might actually be my savior.
“I wanted to say...” She looks out over the empty field. “Thank you. For your help today...or last night.” She waves her hand around in the air. “Anyway, also I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Nothing she’s done recently has required an apology. She frowns at me and it clicks.
“Oh. That.”
The way she’s treated me up until recently. I would rather just pretend we already had this conversation than hash it out.
“It’s fine,” I say, waving my hand to emphasize the point. My glove flies out of my grasp and hits the chain-link fence. I don’t go after it. Maybe if I ignore it, it will be like that never happened. Corrine waits until the fence stops jingling before she speaks again.
“It’s not, though. Your first day, I heard what you said, it sounded like you preferred Richard. And what Mark said about me. But I didn’t hear your response. I just heard you laugh.”
“No—”
She holds up her hand to silence me. “I assumed you didn’t want me as your mentor because I was a woman, and from your laugh I thought you were in on the joke. I was disappointed, especially because Richard spoke so highly of you.”
She swallows visibly, staring straight ahead. “I was embarrassed and angry and I wanted to punish you. So, I did.
“I’m sorry for how I treated you in the past.” She swallows again, her pride, I think. “I’d like the chance to do better in the future.”
As much as I’d love to stare coolly back at her, like I’m sure she’d do to me if the tables were turned, I think my eagerness is written all over my face.
So, I say, “I’d like that, too.”
I make a fist against my thigh. “But I want to make something clear once and for all and then if you don’t want to, we never have to speak about it again. Or...you know, we can. Whatever you like.
“I never wished for a different mentor because you’re a woman. Richard was—is—a familiar face for me when I was trying to find my feet again, that’s all. Honestly, I was excited to work with you. And intimidated because you’re...” I gesture toward her. “You. Frankly, I’m still excited to work with you. And intimidated.”
She frowns and I want to smooth my thumb to the V over her forehead. “And I’m sorry for what happened between Mark and I on my first day.”
I turn to her, but there are only a few inches of space between us, so I turn away.
“I should have done more that day.”
Her eyes search my face. “You laughed. Why?”
I laugh again, that same stilted, awkward chuckle. “I laugh when I’m...” I shake my head. “Nervous, scared, worried, uncomfortable. Pick a card, any card.”
I shrug, trying to brush the memory away and the shame that comes with it. “I laughed the first time I had to give my mom a sponge bath.” To be fair, Mom laughed, too, after a bit. “And at her chemo treatments.”
I nod at her wince. “I even laughed at her funeral. It’s like my brain is deflecting, or protecting me, from things that make me uncomfortable. I don’t know. I wish I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
Her gaze feels heavy on my face. More than that. It feels important.
“The point is, I should have handled it differently. The second it happened I should have marched straight into HR. I can still do that if you want me to. And if it ever happens again, I will.”
I wish there was something I could do to make her believe me. But all I can do is show her. That day in the elevator plays back in an awkward, endless loop in my mind and the residual embarrassment makes me flush. That or the way her eyes keep tripping to my lips. Like when I accidentally make direct eye contact with someone’s crotch when I’m sitting down and they’re standing.
“Okay,” she says, and her voice makes me realize that we’ve been silent for a few long moments.
“Okay.” I nod. “I can go into the office and file the report right now.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “It’s fine.”
“Ms. Blunt, what Mark said was—”
“I know,” she says quietly. “But I like to handle it my own way.”
A swell of undeserved pride fills my chest. Not that she doesn’t deserve it but it’s not as if I’ve done anything to earn feeling it for her. But I feel it nonetheless.
She eats guys like Mark Gutterberg for breakfast. She works harder than anyone despite her boss sexually harassing her. Corrine Blunt is brave and strong and I want to be more like her.
I nod. “Okay. Totally up to you, Corrine.”
Birds make quiet twittering sounds in the tree next to the dugout and a dog barks somewhere nearby in the park. But otherwise it is quiet and the silence lends itself to feeling completely alone with her here. Like we’re the last two ball players on earth.
The smell of coconuts overtakes the familiar dugout smell, drawing my nose, my eyes, toward her. Her hair is in another high ponytail like on that horrible day, my first day, though a few wisps of hair fall loose, framing her face and the back of her neck. Despite the entire length of the bench, she’s so close and in these close quarters I notice things about a woman I’d never have taken the time to notice before.
Like how her eyelashes look like they’re reaching for her forehead. Or how delicate her nose is. It never occurred to me before that a nose could even seem delicate. I track a flush as it crawls up her jawline into her cheeks, realizing too late that she’s flushing because she knows I’m staring at her. I blink away, studying the diamond with intense interest.
I swallow against the collar of my jersey. I lied to Marisol before, I don’t exactly still fit. The jersey is a little tight in the shoulders, the pants in the thighs. But I wanted to wear it today because I wanted them to take me seriously. I wanted Corrine to take me seriously, even if it was only for softball.
“You called me Corrine,” she says quietly.
“I did?”
She nods. “Just now.”
“Oh...”
“You should call me that from now on.”
Something about her words, the surety in them and the quality of her voice, sends them from my ears and straight to my dick. I shift on the bench and the metal pops beneath us. Louder than anything else.
Answering phones, writing emails, working my ass off on remedial tasks, delivering coffee, lunch, and sometimes dinner all seems a little more worth it. Because each small task got me to here: earning her approval and acceptance.
I’ve never been this close to her before. The air around her is electric. The scent of her is overwhelming. But not so overwhelming that it distracts me from the fact that her eyes flicker to my mouth, again and again. Not so overwhelming that I can’t see the flush on her cheeks, feel the heat of her sitting so close.
I lean forward, in her orbit. “I...”
I can’t remember what I was about to say because all I can think about is how close I am to Corrine Blunt’s body. She has freckles on her nose and they’re endearing and girlish. My fingers ache with the sudden urge to slip down the slope of it, down to her lips. There’s something different about her mouth; there’s no color to her lips for practice, no deep wine red or satiny pink. Her lips are dark rose, no embellishment but a light sheen. They look soft.
“I...” I start again but still, I’ve got nothing because what I really want to say is: I’m reading this wrong, right? Because I think I might want to kiss Corrine right now. And I think she might want me to kiss her, too.
So, I cup her elbow, the silk of her skin soft in my palm. Soft like I imagine the rest of her skin might be. “I’m sorry,” I say, studying her rose-pink mouth.
Her lips form the word why.
“Because... I’m going to kiss you now.”
I close the few inches between us and lean down. Whatever is about to happen I don’t think I can stop it. I don’t think I want to. Her eyes flicker shut, her mouth looks delectable.
Like her lips are waiting. For me. But when I feel her breath on my own, I chicken out.
My mouth moves down the column of her throat to the juncture of her neck and shoulder and I place a single, open-mouthed kiss there. She releases this sound, like surprise—like relief—and it echoes through me, through my chest, all the way down to my toes. Because it sounds so much like how I feel right now.
Very surprised but also relieved at how surprised I feel.
Her skin is so soft but my heart is beating so hard. I’ve never had this kind of physical reaction to kissing a woman’s neck before. I feel high, like I might float away and the only thing keeping me on the earth are my hands wrapped around her elbows and her hands, clenched on my forearms. Every point that her body touches mine is hot. Hotter than this autumn evening, or an oven, or the sun.
I want to burn up underneath her hands.
I kiss her again, a bit higher up where her pulse pounds against my tongue, loose strands of her hair tickling my face. I moan at the taste of her, salt and heat and sweet coconut.
Our bodies are electric, magnetized. Her hands slide up my arms to my biceps, pulling me into her in an iron grip. My lips trail over the curve of her jaw; she tilts her chin up for me until finally, my mouth presses against hers, our lips and eyes open. It had never occurred to me before that I could touch this woman, that I would want to. But now that I’m doing it, I never want to stop. Her taste, the sight of her... She’s devastating, in the best way possible.
I touch my tongue gently against hers and her eyes flutter shut again. She tastes goddamn incredible, like cherry-flavored lip balm.
My boss wears cherry-flavored lip balm.
I am kissing my boss.
I pull back, my eyes wide, my pulse frantic.
My dick is not happy that I have stopped kissing the beautiful woman with the cherry-flavored lip balm. My brain is horrified that I ever started. Corrine watches me, her chest heaving, two shaking fingers against her mouth.
Her mouth closes and the shaking in her hands stops.
My knees could learn something from this woman.
“I am so, so sorry,” I gasp.
She blinks, once, twice, until it seems she sees me.
She jumps up, her face horrified.
“Oh my,” is all she says.
I want to stand, too, but I don’t. I’m too tall in this already small space and she looks afraid. Maybe of me.
“I... I...” Corrine stutters. That’s my shtick.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. She turns and runs.
Here’s something I didn’t know: Corrine Blunt is really, really fast.