Page 93 of Through the Water

Bailey leaned back on his stool with a low whistle, palms raised in surrender. “Easy there, killer. Damn, you’re in rare form tonight. As far as your issue, I’m simply trying to understand why you didn’t at least have a conversation with the woman before taking off.”

“You said yourself, she never would have looked at me had it not been for the brain injury—”

“I said no such thing,” he interjected. “Christ, I know I’ve messed with you over the years, but it was all done in fun. Since when did you start taking me seriously?”

Never.

The bartender slid another beer in front of me. I glared at the glass, trying to remember if it was my fourth or fifth. I knew I wasn’t drunk—not yet—but I wasn’t exactly sober enough to keep my thoughts to myself either.

I paused to sign a couple more autographs before continuing. “Look, I can’t help but feel that the seizure was my fault. When I told Ari I wanted a relationship, she got scared. Fuck, I was scared too, but then I went and kissed her anyway—”

“You might be the richest son-of-a-bitch in baseball, but you aren’t a god, Reed,” he said dryly. “Not everything is about you. So, you kissed—big deal. From the way you described it, sounds like she was a willing participant. Sometimes, bad shit just happens, and if you spend your life trying to find the reason behind it, you’ll miss out on everything.”

It would have been easy to buy into what he was saying and absolve myself of any guilt, but the persistent ache in my chest begged to differ.

I took a long drink, trying to shake my last memory of Ari. I didn’t want to remember her like that. I’d been haunted by the look of nothingness in her eyes, tormented by thoughts of her body thrashing violently in my arms. “Look, it is what it is. Right now, more than anything, I just need some advice on how to get over it.”

“How to get over it,” Bailey repeated, the side of his mouth tugging up into a smirk. “And what makes you think I have the answer?”

“C’mon, cut the shit,” I grumbled, pressing the heel of my hand over the invisible wound on my chest. “You do this all the time—just tell me how to make it stop hurting.”

I didn’t care if his answer involved a cask of Macallan and another night on the old inflatable flamingo, I’d do it if it meant exorcising the ghost of her from my head.

Bailey cocked an eyebrow. “Do what all the time—fall in love? C’mon, Reed. You know me better than that. Feelings are messy—I mean, look at yourself!”

“Love—” I didn’t bother hiding the disgust in my voice. “Who the fuck said anything about love? It was just one kiss.”

“Observe.” Bailey retrieved several limes from a nearby caddy and lined them along the bar before lifting his empty whiskey glass. “This is your brain—”

“I swear to Christ, if your next sentence involves my brain on drugs, I’m knocking the barstool out from under you,” I growled.

Bailey rolled his eyes, pressing his thumb and index finger into the okay sign. “Sure you will. You know what? Seems like you’ve got this all under control. I’ll just leave you to it—”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and groaned, “Fine. I’m sorry. Just tell me what to do.”

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, think of this glass as your brain. Now, these limes represent some area of your life. You’ve got baseball here—”

He began dropping the pieces of fruit, one by one, into the glass. “Your friends, family, and casual sexual encounters—or in your case, an extensive collection of porn. Right now, you’re spending time in the friend area. Later, it’s definitely going to be the porn one—”

“Is there a point to any of this?” I should have gone to a therapist or priest—someone who didn’t know shit about my life.

“My point is that you keep your areas separate. You wouldn’t combine your friends and love sections any more than you would, say, the family and porn ones—which is illegal in most states, I might add.”

Bailey dumped the limes back out on the bar, along with several drops of whiskey before snagging another lime wedge. “We’ll call this one Ari. Here’s where it gets interesting. By introducing her into the mix—”

He paused to return the limes back into the glass before squeezing the piece in his hand over them. I wasn’t exactly sure why he hadn’t just left them in the glass to start with, but as it was one of his rare moments of seriousness, I kept my mouth shut.

“She coats your entire brain. So, you might be in the friend area now, but you’re thinking of Ari. Your mom calls up and wants to serve meatloaf at the next family dinner, and you find yourself wondering what Ari’s favorite food is—”

“Yeah, now how do I make it stop?”

He dropped the last lime into the glass with a shrug. “You don’t? You’re in love, Reed. Accept it. Learn it. Live it.”

I’d chosen the wrong moment to take a drink and ended up inhaling a mouthful of beer into my lungs. After coughing until my eyes were streaming, I croaked, “But I’m not—we just met a little over a month ago.”

A hand tapped my shoulder. “Could I—”

“Yep.” I twisted around and scribbled my name across a napkin, grateful for the distraction.

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