Page 7 of The Baller

Fuck. She’d been something else.

“Why are we in here again?” Parker dropped into the seat next to me, wiped his hands on a paper napkin, and reachedinto the jar of pretzels and popcorn which had been on the table when we arrived. I couldn’t be bothered to tell him that eating them would likely involve a one-way trip to the pharmacist for Imodium. “It’s mostly students.” He glanced around the room. “Correction, it’sallstudents. I swear, you could catch something in the bathroom if you’re not careful.”

Yeah. That was the question. Why were we in a sweaty dive bar near Columbia University, with floors so sticky they’d be banned under the MLB’s foreign substance rule? I’d be picking out popcorn from the soles of my sneakers all week.

Even the TVs weren’t showing anything good. From what I could tell, it was a darts game from a month ago. Fuckingdarts.

“Because…” Tanner began with a loud mom-style huff, like he’d already told us a thousand times and none of us had listened – a very probable scenario, “it’s near the grounds, and there’s beer and a pool table. And two-for-one chicken wings.”

“We have beer and a pool table at home.”

“True,” he nodded, “but we’re fresh from being knocked out of the post season. I thought we could use the distraction. We don’t have this atmosphere at home.”

“Or the wings.”

“Or the sticky floors,” I mumbled through another sip of beer. To be fair to this establishment, the beer was decent.

Parker nudged me. “We have sticky floors when Tanner’s been unsupervised at home for too long.”

Ace, Parker, and I all barked out a loud laugh. Tanner didn’t find it so funny.

“Whatever,” he grumbled, his bottom lip pursing in a deep sulk as he pushed Ace away with a big shove before he found himself roped into a hug. “Get off.”

Ace let go, although the grin he was wearing never moved. “Somebody’s butthurt.”

Tanner put his bottle down and crossed his arms, his scowl moving slowly around the table at the three of us. “We drive past this place every day on the way to the stadium and I’ve always wanted to see inside. I don’t care what you guys think, I like it, and I didn’t want to sit at home on the PlayStation going over what we could have done better.” He twisted around, waving his hand through the air. “It’s busy, so it can’t be that shitty. Everyone loves pool.”

Ace hid his smile, but the man had a point.

Itwasbusy – getting busy – busier than when we’d walked in for sure. In the past twenty minutes, I’d seen at least three big groups of guys enter.

I didn’t know much about student bars on a Wednesday night, or any bars particularly, but I hadn’t expected it to be quite so popular. It was based on a quiet street we always used as a cut through to the Lions Stadium, though I couldn’t recall ever seeing anyone coming or going from it.

I’d been wrong.

What was more unusual was the fact that the four of us were sitting in full-sight, in a booth across from the bar, and not one person had paid any attention to us.

“You’re right, Tan.” My gaze slowly moved through the space; past the TV with darts, pastanothergroup of guys walking through the big swing entrance doors toward the brick archway at the other end, leading to where the pool tables were – where everyone seemed to be headed. “Bringing us to the one place in New York that couldn’t give two shits about baseball is a great idea.”

Parker looked up from his phone. “We’ll get there next year.”

“Hey, we got further than The Yankees and The Mets did, that’s all Shepherd cares about,” Ace replied, taking a long draw on his beer, his amusement still very present.

I shook my head. “No, we need to make the World Series next year. We’ve already proved we can beat both, he wants more now. He wants The Commissioner’s Trophy.”

“Don’t we all.”

The four of us nodded in silence. Ace went back to thinking about Cosmo; Tanner was still looking butthurt; Parker, who’d been unanimously voted in charge of finding vacation options for our next trip, went back to his phone screen.

I was still scanning the room and about to join Parker in vacation hunting, when my eye caught on a guy standing by one of the brick pillars. It wasn’t that he was by himself, or that he didn’t appear to have taken advantage of the five-dollar beer and wings, or that he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. None of those things.

I’d seen him before, and I couldn’t figure out where.

I didn’t go enough places to randomly bump into people I knew, and I’d never been here before.

“What about Greece?”

“WhataboutGreece?” Tanner asked as he peeled off the label from his bottle and began shredding it.

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