Page 49 of Triple Play

“Journal,” I laugh. “And yeah, I try to update it every night.” Maybe it’s just an effect of being in a place that feels suspended between somewhere and somewhere else—or maybe it’s the pang I always get looking at the sky—but I add, “Sometimes I look up and think those are the same stars over the farm. I know, corny, right? But it makes every place feel more like home.”

“It’s not corny—it’s nice,” Blake says. From anyone else it might be sarcasm, but he says it with a low wistfulness like I’m not the only one missing home.

“How is the farm?” Shira asks.

“Good.” It’d be better if I got paid this year like I did last year, I don’t add. “Cows are good. My sister Zoe and Emily—that’s her wife—are good.”

“Does Zoe know where she ranks in your esteem?” Shira jokes.

“O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint, agricolas,” I say. “It means, roughly, farmers don’t know how good they have it.”

Shira laughs. “Is that what’s going on in your head most of the time—Latin and agriculture and stars?”

And you. And now, Blake. “More or less.” I feel around for a change in subject. “So what do we think traffic’s going to be like tomorrow?”

After that, we sit for a while, drinking, talking about whatever: traffic, road food. What it’ll be like in Florida when we get there, when we get to play under the warm blue bowl of the sky.

“Too bad you won’t be around for a game,” Blake says to Shira. “They don’t start for another week.”

“These games don’t count, right?” she asks.

Unless you’re worried about making the roster. “Not really.” I take another drink of beer. “Spring training is kind of a six-week dry hump.”

Shira laughs big and open. For a second, Blake looks scandalized that I said that to her. Then he laughs too.

“What’s Latin for dry hump?” she asks.

“I assume that’s aimed at me,” I say. “And I don’t know, ask Catullus.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a giant fucking nerd?” The word fucking comes out full Boston, fully Shira, and she glances up at Blake like she’s waiting for his disapproval.

He kisses the side of her face. “Shira calls ’em like she sees ’em.”

“Yeah, I guess you got me,” I answer. It’s funny how my resentment of him dissolves with every sip of my beer, until the bottle’s empty. I finish it and set it by the edge of the pool.

Blake gently slides Shira off his lap. “I was just about to get another.” He nods toward Shira’s now-emptied soda can. “You ready for something other than that?”

“Sure, just let me see it before you open it—” She cuts herself off. “I mean, don’t want to waste anything.”

If Blake thinks anything of the request, it doesn’t show. Then again, after spending two days with him, not much shows that he doesn’t want to. Except for the way he stroked his fingers down your face earlier or the heated look in his eyes that he tried, and failed, to stanch.

Now he pulls himself from the hot tub, not bothering with the stairs. Water runs down the muscles of his back and along the trim cut of his sides. The tendons in the backs of his knees flex as he walks, and I must be pretty far gone if I’m getting a semi looking at a teammate’s knees.

Except Shira’s watching him too. She smiles at me knowingly, like we’re sharing a secret.

“He’s hot, right?” She whispers it at a Shira volume, but it’s almost immediately covered by the sound of me choking on my own surprise.

Blake turns back to us. “Everything okay?”

“Just waiting on that drink,” she yells back.

He’s hot. Denial rises in my throat. When I was talking about my ex as they of course I meant her. A denial that comes easy after a lifetime spent in clubhouses and locker rooms: When I was out at that bar with a date, of course he was just a friend. No, I’ve never messed around with a college teammate, and definitely not the top catching prospect in a certain baseball organization.

“Yeah,” I say.

She howls a laugh—not meanly, but like I’ve managed to delight her.

“You gonna tell him?” I ask.

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