Page 25 of The Baller

“She’s not going to blab. I haven’t even told her.”

The eyes of Parker, Tanner, and me all shot over to where Ace was still holding the bottle of fresh orange juice, all wearing the exact same expression of ‘yeah, bullshit’.

“Okay, fine, I told her,” he swirled a finger around his face, “but it’s not like I can hide this.”

That was very true. He couldn’t hide it, because two-thirds of his face was purple. If he walked into the street, people would point more than usual. “You’re going to need to stay inside for the next month.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” he scoffed.

“Dude, if anyone sees you…” Parker pressed on, “you need to keep a low profile.”

Ace tried to roll his eyes again,tried, but failed. “Fuck that.I’m not staying in this apartment for a month.”

“Either that, or you put out a statement saying you had a nose job.”

“Or a facelift.”

“If Shepherd gets a whiff of this, he’ll be on the first flight to D.C. to ream out whoever’s in charge of Secret Service for breaking his players. If we don’t get to the World Series next year, he’ll definitely blame them.”

“Isn’t Lux’s new girlfriend’s mom in charge of the Secret Service?” The laughter died on Parker’s lips when I punched him in the arm. “Ouch, fuck.”

“Stop being a dickhead,” I glared at him. “Now, where are we up to on the vacation situation? Can we rent an island? Ace can hide on an island.”

Parker rubbed his arm dramatically, and let out a big huff. “What about Costa Rica?”

“I thought we were going to Cabo?”

“Costa Rica has good surfing, and we can always blame his face on a surfboard accident.”

“But I can’t surf,” Ace said with a frown.

“Then it’s a perfect alibi.”

I liked this idea, I liked it a lot. The sooner we were out of the city in fresh ocean air, the better. For Ace’s face, and for me… to help me clear my head withother things. “When are we going again?”

“As soon as fucking possible.”

The four of us peered down at the island as one of the three phones laying there buzzed. Tanner picked it up and groaned loudly.

“Oh fuuuuck! I forgot my sister! She’s supposed to be staying here.” He looked up at Ace, then over to Parker, andback to Ace.

“Um, yeah, Tan, she can’t.”

Tanner’s eyes widened in panic. His twin sister, Holiday, was five minutes older than him and the brains of their operation, therefore, he could never say no to her, and they both knew it. I’d witnessed it on more than one occasion, and as someone who lived with Tanner and his inability to do the most basic things – like clean up after himself – it was impressive.

“How am I supposed to stop her? She said she’d be here in two hours to drop her things off.”

“Make something up.”

His head dropped to the counter. “Like what? She’ll know I’m lying.”

“Check her into the Four Seasons, tell her our place is being fumigated. She’ll never come over if she thinks we’ve got bugs.”

“I don’t know if she’ll buy it.” Tanner scratched his head, which set the rest of us off rapidly scratching. Maybe we did have bugs.

My stomach rumbled again, which brought to my attention that while we’d all been standing here talking about bugs and vacations, no one had done anything about breakfast – except Parker – he’d switched the coffee machine on.

“Why’s she here again?

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