Page 34 of The Baller

Now I just needed to figure out what to say.

EIGHT

LUX

“You look like a highlighter.”

I glanced down at the trackpants and hoodie I was wearing. The bright orangetrackpants and hoodie. My new favorite ones with the fleecy insides.

“Louis Vuitton sent them to me.”

“Then you look like an expensive highlighter.”

“I didn’t know Louis Vuitton was taking inspiration from Staples,” Tanner puffed out – puffed and snorted – as he ground to a halt after sprinting back across the tarmac when he realized he’d left his passport in the car.

My eyes flicked between him and Parker. “Did you two buy a pack of jokes from the Dollar Store this morning? Just because you’re fashion illiterate, doesn’t mean the rest of us are.”

“Hey!” Tanner objected loudly, more loudly than he needed to, seeing as I was right next to him, and smoothed down the plain white tee he was wearing. “There’s nothing wrong with my fashion.”

“Okay,” I replied, with a half-assed shrug as we reached the steps of the plane, nodding to the two attendants waiting there to greet us.

Their eyes, however, were fixed on Ace and his still mangled face. The swelling had mostly gone down since last week, but the Arnica he’d been liberally applying had now turned the bruising to a fading, mottled purple, ringed with a heavy puke-green shade. He didn’t look good.

Even though he’d strongly objected, he’d mostly confined himself to the apartment, or Payton’s apartment, over the weekend. Holiday had been lured away with a pampering at the Four Seasons, and the one time our doorman came up to deliver a package and spotted Ace, Parker jumped in and said he’d been undergoing his annual cosmetics procedures, but the nurse had been someone he’d forgotten to call after sleeping with her, and she took her revenge.

Believable to say the least.

So far, nothing had hit the news, and the secret of our ass-kicking was safe.

Tanner was still mumbling about his t-shirt as I sat down. Tossing my bag on the floor once I’d retrieved my book, Parker picked it up and placed it with his on one of the three-seater couches stretching down the back half of the plane.

“Why did you say that? We’ll never hear the end of it.”

“He started it,” I huffed as he sat down across from me, and turned to look out of the window to watch the air traffic control guys ready us for take-off.

I wasn’t usually a huffy person, but this morning – or maybe the past few days – I’d been feeling more so. The usual end of season tiredness was kicking in. The adrenaline we survived on all season had finally run its course. It was the time of the year which coincided with the days getting shorter andcolder, when all you wanted to do was hibernate and hunker down, watch movies, and sleep in… before it all started again at Spring Training.

This vacation couldn’t come soon enough.

“You are looking particularly bright today, even if your face says otherwise,” Parker pressed on.

I shrugged again. “I got it last week; it makes me feel less…” I waved my hand through the air, trying to find the right word, but nothing came. “Whatever… I dunno. Why do you care anyway?”

Parker leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees with his fingers locked together. “Dude, let me make this very clear: I absolutely do not care what you wear.” A grin broke free from the solemn downturn of his mouth. “If I did, I would have said something a long time ago.”

“Yeah, okay,” I snorted, matching his grin with my own, and leaned back, one jittery foot resting on my knee as we waited for take-off.

I don’t know why my wardrobe was a topic of conversation. Or rather, I was so used to the comments, I wasn’t sure why they weren’t flowing over me this morning like they usually did. Of the four of us, I was the one deemed to be the follower of fashion.

I wasn’t.

I didn’t follow fashion. I just liked what I liked and wore what I wanted. Clothes made me happy. Clothes got me pumped before a game, and I’d enter the stadium in the same way I’d imagine Wall Street guys hit the trading floor.

Ready to win.

It started when I was a kid. The first time I saw Derek Jeter wearing a pair of cream Air Jordans with pale orange piping and an orange swoosh. He’d stepped off the Yankees teambus, and I thought they were the coolest things I’d ever seen.

That Derek Jeter wasso cool.

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