Page 17 of The Third Baseman

“So you just eat them and forget about them?”

“Exactly!”

I swallowed my mouthful of omelet. “So what happened this morning with Carrie?”

He put down his fork and pinned me with a look of frustration, adding a deep sigh to boot. “She won’t come to the game today; said she wanted to go shopping instead. Fucking shopping! We’ve been away all week when she could have gone shopping, but she does it when I’m back. It’s bullshit.”

Even in my very new and inexperienced position as a relationship participator, I could see that it was, indeed, bullshit.

“How long have you guys been together?”

“Couple of years, but if I’m honest it’s been dying off the last six months. She wants kids, and I’m not ready. I’m still only twenty-eight. Plus,” he dropped his gaze and began pushing the remainder of his food around, “she only seems to have an interest in spending my money, and I’m sure the kids part is to get a bigger chunk of change.”

I stretched my hands out, linking them behind my neck. I’d never been in his situation, but I’d seen plenty of guys over the years get embroiled in a thousand court cases over kids and money. It was never pretty, and it never ended well.

I wasn’t any better off though. My money was safe, but I’d been alone since I was eighteen.

Finding your forever person was goddamn hard – especially if you lost them once already.

“Man, I’m sorry. That really sucks balls. What are you going to do?”

“I dunno. Break up I guess. She didn’t want to come to New York anyway, so maybe it won’t be too bad.”

The door to the dining room swung open and Ace Watson, The Lions’ pitcher, and Parker King, our catcher, sauntered in, with all the swagger a pair of twenty-two-year-olds in their second year of the major leagues could muster, thanks in no small part to the interview with Jimmy Fallon I’d pointedly refused to do, they’d taken my place, and New York had fallen in love with their bromance. It was rare to ever see them apart; they’d even started finishing each other’s sentences like an old married couple.

I groaned to myself. They were at the more junior end of the ladder, and I hadn’t decided yet whether I liked them. King was okay, but I could do with Ace talking less, because once he started, he never seemed to stop.

Stone looked over his shoulder to see who’d just come in, and dropped his voice. “Don’t say anything about Carrie, will you?”

“Take it to the grave, man,” I promised solemnly.

“Thanks,” he looked up as the boys approached. “Hey, guys.”

“Mind if we join you?” asked Parker.

I glanced up. “We’re not in high school, King. You don’t need to ask permission.”

“You looked like you were having a deep and meaningful, that’s all,” he shot back with a boyish smirk, then sat down next to Stone, who looked longingly at the pile of hash browns on Parker’s plate. “Didn’t want to interrupt anything important.”

“The only thing it looks like we’re interrupting is the way Fields is eye-fucking your food. Here, man,” Ace tipped half his plate onto Stone’s. “Go nuts.”

The expression on Stone’s face had me chuckling behind my cup of matcha as I sipped it. “Dude, just eat them.”

He didn’t need to be told twice, and two had disappeared before I’d even put my cup down.

“Hey, do you guys know what baseball science is?”

I pushed my empty plate away and started on my granola, which was far more interesting than anything Ace had to say. “Nope.”

My mind went back to Marnie.

Maybe I should go and see her, just see if she’d talk to me.

How was I going to convince her to talk to me? Um…

Would it be weird if I waited outside her office? Yes, it would.

Maybe.

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