Page 14 of Nailed at Home Plate

“Oh hell no.” Benson laughed as he slid off his sweat wristbands and flung them into his locker. “At least not since Roman. And that was like two years ago.”

“Wait…” I whipped around to glance at Roman, the team’s second baseman. He bashfully shrugged in noncommittal agreement. My voice dropped as I leaned in towards Benson. “You mean…thatRoman…?”

“Duh. Who the hell else names their kid Roman?” Benson snorted in amusement before getting beamed in the head with a balled-up sock by the same person he insulted. The irony was not lost on me as Truitt had told me Benson’s mom watched too muchLaw & Order: SVUwhen she was pregnant.

“So…Cadence dated Roman?” The words came out in a sharper tone than I meant. The guys on the team treated her as if she was completely unattainable. Untouchable. Not that I was fishing for tips on how to ask her out or anything. Because that would be daft.

“Heh, yeah. He said they had fun on their handful of dates, but she bunted him right back into the friend zone.” Benson shrugged.

“Oh, shut up, Benson,” Roman muttered. There was a hint of disappointment there, but the man didn’t look all that upset about the whole ordeal.

“Yeah,” Benson snorted as he glanced back at me. “Cadence deserves someone better than the sorry likes of us.”

“Talking shit about me again, Benson?” Cadence’s sudden appearance had us all aligning our spines ramrod straight in surprise. Her playful quirk of a smile had molten lava pooling low in my belly.

That was until she spotted that it was me who Benson was talking to. Her vibrant gaze tore apart from mine as she moved to look anywhere but at me. The brightness of her smile melted into a muddy puddle. What the hell was it about me that she couldn’t stand?

“Gotta get the rookie caught up on all the hot gossip while we do our nails.” Benson laid it on rather thick with his pantomime. It got a snort out of Cadence. I let out an annoyed huff myself at the mention of “rookie”. I hadn’t been called that in years. But the guys seemed determined to overuse it. Even though I was the furthest thing from a rookie, with this team and their antics, I sure as fuck felt like one again.

“Yeah, your cuticles could go for some conditioning, Benson.” Cadence jested right back after avoiding my entire presence in the room. Maybe if she ignored the fact that I was here she wouldn’t be so grumpy. I decided to keep my eyes on the floor and my mouth shut to see if my assumption was correct.

“Maybe we need to go back to that nail salon you took us to last year.” Schmidt chimed in as my brow went sky-high. Wait, Cadence hung out with this lot outside of work? On a semi-regular basis? At a fucking nail salon of all places?

“Oohyeah. The place with those massaging chairs!” Truitt butted in as I tried to make myself blend in with the locker room bench even more. As unhinged as this conversation was with a woman and a bunch of grown men, it was kind of nice to hear a taste of why the guys respected this woman so much. She didn’t treat them like baseball gods, she treated them like they were her siblings.

“Not for me. Mine got stuck.” Tomas grumbled and it sent the locker room into laughter.

“Aww, poor Tomas.” Camden mock-pouted as he slung an arm around the shorter outfielder’s neck. “I’m sure they fixed the possessed chair by now.”

“You know you don’t have to use the massage option on the chair, bud.” It was Cadence’s tender tone that cut through the lighthearted jesting in the room. “Although if it really is still possessed, I’ll bring some Holy Water and be sure to unplug the chair for you. Or I’ll just end up stabbing it with a nail file. Either way, I’ll protect you.” That sent the guys into uproarious laughter while Tomas grinned with relief.

She didn’t bat an eye at the guys with their antics. In fact, she fed into it. Encouraged it. Maybe she was even a little unhinged herself.

During practice, she was one tough cookie. In the locker room, she was someone I could hang out with. Obviously, the guys saw her as such. This whole interlude had me rethinking that maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.

“Yo, we should bring Jamie with us next time. He could do with some pampering.” Arlow clapped me on the back. I froze. Had Cadence forgotten I was there? This was the true test to see if her issues reallywere just with me. Was she going to revert to her sour self at the mention of my name?

“Yeah, he needs to dissolve the rod up his ass.” I rolled my eyes at Truitt’s jab. He’d act the same way if he were in my demoted cleats.

There was an audible feminine squeak that shot my gaze in Cadence’s direction. I only managed to catch her wide eyes for half a second before she took an immediate about-face with her entire body. That wasn’t exactly the most appropriate reaction to hearing about a metal object existing in one’s anal cavity. I guess she and I both weren’t fond of the idea.

“Yeah, yeah. Maybe you guys are just too deranged for this ancient major leaguer.” If they could dish it, I could send it right back to them. I wasn’t a stuck-up asshole. I knew how to have fun. Although I was a bit rusty.

The guys cracked up even more. At least they thought I had a sense of humor despite the rod between my ass cheeks. Small victories.

My eyes moved to Cadence, who still couldn’t look me in the face. Instead of sticking around for more fun, she made a beeline towards Topper’s office. Thank fuck she hadn’t arrived ten minutes later when she did. She would have gotten an eyeful from quite a few of the guys. How the guys treated her appearance in the locker room led me to believe that this was a regular occurrence. Guess I’ll have to keep that at the back of my mind.

Women were a huge no-no in the locker rooms in the majors. Not even wives. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the guys snucksomeonein down there at one time or another.

Cadence was the first woman I’d met that baseball was seemingly just as important to her as it was to me. This was also her world. Why was I even thinking about this? I didn’t come here to find someone. I came here to play ball and hopefully get my life back on track and back on the majors’ roster.

However, there was one grumpy dancer who was making that chanceverydifficult at the moment.

“Hey Jamie?” I glanced up at the mention of my name from Arlow, pulled from the haze of my thoughts. “You’re making thatface again.”

Dancing on My Own

CALLUM SCOTT

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