Page 4 of The Art of Catching Feelings

Between the dry snark and the dramatic pause, she could tellthis wasn’t going to be good. It was weird, to see footage of the game that she was at earlier that day. Not that she’d had either the baseball knowledge or the sober wherewithal to know what was going on at any given point. But now the video was showing clips of Chris Kepler up at bat, clearly from various games earlier that month, swinging and missing, the ball sailing by him for a final strike, him popping up a foul ball easily caught by the catcher. The whole time, the video guy kept up a running commentary of each different way Chris Kepler had fucked up.

That’s right,he said,they called onthisguy.The one who’d already cost them one run in the top of the third.

Another clip from the game that day, this one of the ball cracking off a Blue Jay bat, Chris breaking to the right, his glove up, watching…waiting…and then the ball bounced off the edge of his glove, cutting sharply toward the outfield. He turned around, trying to locate it, but one of his teammates was already running to scoop it up, throwing it toward home plate. Not in time. The runner scored.

For a second, Daphne almost forgot the context in which she’d been sent this video, the part she must play in it later. She was impressed that someone had been able to edit this together so fast. It actually made her understand what was happening.

But then the camera turned toher. She was right there, behind the net, a purple can in her hand. If she never saw one of those raspberry beers again, she’d be fine. The older guy was to her right, and she could see Kim’s leg to her left, the rest of her friend off camera.

This fan knows what’s up,the video guy said.She’s not having it. She yells something at Kepler—his body is blocking our view here, so I can’t read her lips for you. Probably something like, hey, hit the ball, buddy! And he’s like, yeah, yeah, I’m trying. Maybe she’s like, hey, remember hitting home runs? That was nice.

The commentary was making the moment seem much biggerthan it had been. Right? She’d shouted one stupid Winnie the Pooh reference, which would make her more the target of ridicule in this video if he’d been able to figure that out, and then the player hadn’t said anything. It was over in thirty seconds.

But the moment had felt pretty big, even as it was happening. Daphne’s stomach twisted as she remembered that look on his face, like he was…haunted. By the words she’d said. Milo watched her from the floor, his tail twitching, like even he could sense that there was something going on.

No big deal, right? Fans heckle, it’s what we do. I’ve shouted at a few jabronis in my time. It’s all part of the game. But wait—this guy’s not so great at the game right now.

Now it was the part she hadn’t seen, while she’d been making her way through the crowd with Kim. He was crouched in his batter’s stance, his hands gripping the bat, and then all of a sudden…his face crumpled.

That was the only way to describe it. He turned away, putting his hand up like he was calling for time, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his jersey.

Is hecrying? He’s crying. This guy is getting paid millions of dollars to suck and he’s crying. There’s no crying in baseball! I mean, maybe the fans can weep, since Carolina’s twelve-and-sixteen to start the season…

Daphne paused the video, only just realizing she’d been biting her knuckle so hard she’d left an indentation in her skin. There were fifty-eight seconds left in the video, but she wasn’t sure she could take any more.

In the end, she pressed play but turned the volume down, not wanting to hear this guy’s no-doubt gleeful commentary. Chris finished his at-bat, his face stoic, and between the shadow from his batter’s helmet and the eye black he wore on his cheekbones, it was almost like he’d never reacted at all. But there was thatsheen in his eyes, which you could see when he moved his head. That look on his face, the way it had collapsed for that split second. The expression he’d had before, when he’d turned to make eye contact with her. Those couldn’t be explained any other way.

She’d made him cry.

She was still staring down at her phone, frozen on a blurry still from the end of the video, when it buzzed in her hand with a call from Donovan. Now that she knew what he’d called about, shereallydidn’t want to talk to him, but she picked up before the phone could ring again.

“Well?” Donovan demanded. “I know you had time to watch the video because I just finished rewatching it myself. Do you know how bad this makes me look? What did yousayto him?”

“I—I just said he was Winnie the Pooh.”

Silence.

“Or Christopher Robin? That he should be called Christopher Robin, because he played like Pooh.”

Those raspberry vanilla beers had her feeling like Rodney Dangerfield at the time. Now she just felt stupid.

Donovan sighed. She couldn’t tell if the sheer inanity of her insult made the situation better or worse.

“Justin said you made him give up his ticket?”

Her brother’s censure had moved back to the personal, it seemed. She didn’t feel like filling him in on everything that had happened with the divorce papers the other day, and it sounded like Justin had already filled him in anyway. He sure was quick to tell people what information cast him in the best light. Everything else, he shoved behind a closed door.

They’d had to live separately before they could be granted a divorce—hence the shoebox she was living in, since it was all she could find and afford at the time. In South Carolina, there were only a few grounds for divorce, and technically Justin hadn’tcheated on her, hadn’t hit her, hadn’t abandoned her, and wasn’t chronically drunk. There were no “reasons” for them not to be together, so the state insisted they live apart for a full year before it would let them go through with the dissolution.

And sometimes that was the hardest part. There wasn’t any huge event Daphne could point to and saythat,thatwas unacceptable. It had been a lot of little moments, times when she realized her marriage just didn’tfeelgood. It had been a slow whittling away, an eventual realization that there was more negative space than anything substantial there.

Donovan sighed again, clearly taking her prolonged silence as a refusal to answer. Really, she’d just spaced out on his question. She found she was doing a lot of that lately.

“Look,” he said. “It’s late. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow, yeah? They’re probably going to call me into a meeting. They know Layla and I got you those tickets. Hope you enjoyed the game, because it’s the last one we’ll probably be able to get you into.”

Her brother could be overdramatic, but she still tensed up when she heard him say that. “This won’t cost you your job, right? Or Layla?”

God, she would absolutely die if this came back on her sister-in-law in any way. She was the first Turkish American woman to work the sideline in the MLB, and was great at her job. Daphne still figured her brother had been a nepotism hire, but she didn’t want to see him down and out because of her shitty judgment, either.

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