Page 97 of Triple Play

We could. The possibility is dizzying. We could.

Felix kisses me one more time, then sets me down on the soft sand where Blake is studying something on his phone, wearing an expression I’ve come to recognize: Blake in full planner mode.

“I know you were going to leave today,” he says, “but what if you stayed and took your classes online? Do you need someone to water your plants in Boston?”

I laugh. “I think it might be too late for the plants.”

“And maybe if it’s not too much trouble, you could come see us play.”

“I thought…” There’s no nice way to say that he and Felix are competing for the same spot, though I don’t really know how that works during spring training. “Did everything work out with, uh, baseball?”

Blake laughs, then pulls me to him, kisses the tip of my nose. After a glance around, he motions for Felix and does the same thing to him, a quick kiss that’s over almost as soon as it begins. “Turns out,” Blake says, “I’m gonna be a second baseman. I might not be great at it to start with, but I’m hoping the team is patient with me—that Felix is patient with me—if I get stuff wrong.”

And he goes red when Felix kisses him, a kiss that lingers at his cheek. “Maybe you were always a second baseman and just needed the opportunity.”

Blake laughs. “I’ll be sure to remind you of that when I botch a double play.”

“We can practice. For however long it takes.” As if this isn’t entirely about fielding. Then Felix’s forehead wrinkles in question. “You still have that spare room?”

“I have three,” Blake says. “Come take your pick.” He turns to me. “How about you, Shira?”

“What do we tell people?” I ask. “I mean, if people ask—what should we say we’re doing?”

Blake considers. For a terrifying minute, I worry that he’ll say we don’t tell anyone anything. That some part of him could be ashamed of me or Felix, no matter how much he might work not to be. Until Blake clears his throat. Gets that planning expression. “Does it need a label? Maybe it can be like…Dunkin’ Donuts?”

“Like what?” Felix asks, incredulously amused.

“You know, what you called it before. How something doesn’t have to be this or that: it can be sui generis—its own thing.” Blake ducks down, traces his finger in the sand, writing out words there at the end of my note. We love you too. He draws himself up from the sand, brushing his hand against the front of his shorts to dry it. “How’s that sound?”

“Now that you mention it,” I laugh, “that all sounds pretty fucking good.”

A wave rolls in, splashing at our ankles. Erasing the message we scrawled there. Or not erasing—reshaping it into something new. And ours.

Epilogue: Blake

June

I only stayed in Atlanta for one day longer than the team, but it’s funny how twenty-four hours can feel like a lifetime. By the time the cab drops me in front of our condo in Boston on Monday evening, I’m practically sleepwalking. I take the elevator, watching the numbers tick up up up until I’m delivered to our penthouse, a condo with its own elevator entrance.

I wheel my suitcase into the living room. My head fills with all the things I should do: unpack, throw in a load of laundry, eat something. Off days always make me feel out of sorts and disconnected from my routine—I ran this morning, but somehow the streets around the house where I grew up felt like a foreign country. And what I really want to do is see Felix and Shira.

I call out that I’m here—no one answers. Shira must be out, but this time of night, there’s only one place Felix could be.

So I drop my suitcase in the main bedroom and head up our dedicated flight of stairs leading to private roof access.

It’s mid-evening, the sky lightened by the setting sun and the cityscape. Felix is here, stargazing notebook open on his lap as if he’s anticipating the coming night. He says it’s hard for him to sleep sometimes with all the light and noise, that the city never feels quite like home, except when he’s looking up at the sky.

He smiles when he sees me, though his expression goes pinched. I must really look bad. My feet are heavy against the artificial wood of the roof deck floor. “Where’s Shira?” I ask. Even my voice is thick.

“Downstairs in the pool.” He taps something into his phone. “I let her know you’re home.”

Home. A strange word. Where I technically was in Georgia.

“How was your trip?” Felix asks.

“My family is…” Difficult. Complicated. Toxic. A bunch of other words I can’t really think of, just a low pitted feeling in my gut like I swallowed a black hole.

But I don’t have to finish that sentence. Not with Felix. So I shrug.

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