Page 28 of The Art of Catching Feelings

“Let’s do that again,” Greg said. “This time with eye contact.”

Daphne gave a self-conscious half laugh, puffing her cheeks out. Then she lifted her gaze to Chris’, meeting his eyes for the first time since she’d sat down.

Their color was hard to determine. Green, she might’ve said if pressed. But there was some steely blue in there, too, some flecks of gold. Hazel, maybe. An entire color palette for a painting of a mountain landscape, all contained in the irises of his eyes. He wasn’t wearing his hat or a batting helmet, as he had been most of the times she’d seen him on TV, and having such a clear view of his eyes felt almost uncomfortably intimate. She felt like she could count each individual eyelash at this distance. God, his eyelashes were beautiful.

They said eyes were the window to the soul, and maybe that’s why she’d been so scared to look into his. Because for just a second, she felt something click into place. This was the same guy who’d bought a yellow rose corsage for his prom date, who’d lost his brother only a few months ago, who’d asked if she wanted to talk about her divorce and had seemed genuinely open to listen.

She wondered what he saw when he looked back at her. Probably nothing more than his heckler, someone he had to spend the next twenty minutes talking to even though he’d rather be doing anything else in the world.

An unbearable tension was rising in her chest, and shedropped her gaze down, unable to sustain eye contact for another second. She stared at his hands, frowning.

“Um,” she said.

“It’s not often…” he prompted, like they were in a school play.

“No, uh.” She gestured toward his hands. “You have my cards.”

“Right. Sorry.” He offered them back to her, and it seemed to Daphne that he went out of his way to make sure their fingers didn’t touch in the exchange. Or maybe that was just her projecting. For her part, she was careful to grasp them by their farthest corner from where he held on.

Once the cameras were rolling again, she got back on track, getting through the intro and into a few easy questions about his career and his time with the Battery.

“I have to admit,” she said, starting to settle in a little. “It’s easy as a fan to feel like players are pretty removed from whatever’s happening in the stands. How aware are you, down on the field, of what people are doing or saying?”

He made a face, a straight-lipped head bob that seemed to suggest a noncommittalso-sotype of response.

Everything that used to be background is turned up so loud, I can’t tune it out.

That’s what he’d typed to her a few days ago. But now, he said, “We hear when the crowd gets loud, definitely. And sometimes individual comments get through—like yours.”

He didn’t say the words with any particular animosity, but she felt her face heating nonetheless. “I’m so—” she started, before Greg called cut.

“That’s my bad,” Greg said. “I should’ve been clearer at the beginning. We don’t want to get too deep into the actual incident here, or the, uh, reaction. This is more about moving forward.”

Daphne drew her brows together, trying to mesh that withwhat Layla had told her. What was the point of them doing this interview? She hadn’t planned to bring up exactly what she’d said, and she definitely hadn’t wanted to harp on the crying thing the way the rest of the media had for the last week. But if she couldn’t talk about itat all, not even to apologize…why bring her here?

She flipped through a couple cards, until she got to some of the “fluff” questions Layla had prepared for her. They were things likeWhat’s your favorite postgame snack?orWho on the team is the biggest prankster?But she felt like such a fraud. She couldn’t sit here and ask those questions like this was a normal interview.

She glanced back up. She had no idea if the camera was rolling now or not, had lost track of whether they were taking an actual break from filming or just one of those pauses that Greg had told them to push through.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, because she was going to get that out, at least once. “I shouldn’t have heckled you. I—there’s no excuse. I’m mortified that I did it. AndChristopher Robin, god, it’s just so stupid.”

“It’s fine,” Chris said, but suddenly his gaze didn’t seem fully focused on her anymore. The words had come out fast, almost before she was done speaking.

“No, really,” she said. “I—”

“No,really,” he said, his voice ringing with terse finality. “It’s fine.”

He stood up then, starting to unwind the microphone wire from around his back. “I actually need to get—” he said, then gave up on the wire, running his hand through his short hair. “I have an appointment. Are we done here?”

Even Greg seemed a little speechless. It was pretty clear that they weren’tdone—they had maybe two minutes of usable footage, if you took out all the stops-and-starts and bloopers. But it was also clear from Chris’ tone of voice and the fact that he wasalready walking away, a wire still dangling off his belt, that it hadn’t really been a question. Maybe Chris legitimately had an appointment, something that had to do with the team—physical therapy or practice or whatever they did when they weren’t playing. Maybe he really did get his hair cut every day, and he was running late for his trim.

But even if it weren’t highly unlikely that he had an actual appointment at ten o’clock at night, something told Daphne none of those were it. She’d managed to offend Chris Kepleragain, only this time she had no idea how.

“We’ll be in touch,” Greg said, giving her a tight smile.

TWELVE

Chris stood in one of the showers, fully clothed, leaning against the tile wall and trying to catch his breath. He didn’t know what had happened—one minute, he’d been in the middle of doing the interview. The next, he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

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