Page 21 of The Art of Catching Feelings

D: The dresses just weren’t cute, in my opinion. And I didn’t like the company on principle. They advertised “plus sizes” that were just the same pictures as the smaller sizes, but stretched out with Photoshop.

C: No.

D: YES. Not even Photoshop—more like someone had pasted the picture in a Word document and then dragged the edge to widen it.

C: That’s…I don’t even have the words.

D: I may still have a copy of the catalog somewhere. It was bonkers.

C: I hope you do. It belongs in the Smithsonian.

Daphne started typing a response when she saw a new message come in.

C: Hey, we’re about to land and head right into a team meeting. Will you be around later?

The beauty of texting was that you didn’t need someone to bearound. You could just send the message and then wait for them to get to it when they got to it. But Chris didn’t seem to fully appreciate that, or maybe he just liked knowing that there was a person on the other end, reading and responding to his texts in real time. She could understand that, since it was an aspect of their conversations over the past few days that she’d really enjoyed, too.

C: I promise I won’t go dark again.

He also didn’t need to make any promises to her. But she found that she liked that he had, regardless.

D: I’ll be around.

NINE

Chris didn’t know why he’d lied to Duckie. He did have to head into a meeting right after landing, but it wasn’t one for the whole team. They were all going back to the clubhouse after the flight, and some guys had plans to work out together, some coaches were going to work with players on specific skills, but as far as Chris knew, he was the only one Marv had asked to come directly to his office.

“It’ll only take a few minutes,” Marv had said, his face as inscrutable as always. During a game, one of the only ways you could tell if Marv was upset in the dugout was by the way he spit out his sunflower seeds. He gave the gesture a bit more attitude after a bad call from the ump or an egregious error from one of his guys.

Chris had only been called into Marv’s office twice before. Once, at the start of last season when he’d been traded to the team, and Marv had extended a welcome and explained a few things about the way he ran the clubhouse. The second time was when Chris’ shoulder injury wasn’t healing as quickly as they would’ve liked, and he’d been sent to a rehab assignment. Both times, at least he’d had some sense of what Marv wanted to talkto him about. Now, he had only vague ideas, and they were all bad.

“I want to get ahead of this heckler business,” Marv said as soon as he’d sat down. Chris knew that his face could be as inscrutable as his manager’s, and he hoped it wasn’t betraying anything now. He was sick of hearing about it.

“It’s an extra distraction,” Marv said, “that we do not need. Would you agree?”

“Yes,” Chris said.So much yes.

Marv gave him a cursory smile. “Good,” he said. “Good.”

Chris had known one outfielder a few years ago who’d gotten hit by a home run ball thrown back onto the field by an angry opposing fan. He hadn’t been seriously hurt, thankfully, but the fan had gotten banned from all thirty ballparks and the whole incident had definitely been the subject of lots of talk on sports radio, ESPN, YouTube videos like that guy with the breakdowns, and on and on. Surelyhisincident didn’t need to rise to that level. It wouldn’t have if he hadn’t started to cry at the worst possible moment, when the camera would be trained right at him. He wished he’d had his inscrutable face on then.

Marv picked up the phone and called someone else to join them, and from the short delay before the person arrived, it was obvious the whole thing had been prearranged. The new guy wore a team polo and had his graying hair gelled up into spikes, and he reached out to shake Chris’ hand before Chris had even placed where he knew this guy from.

“Greg,” he said. “Executive producer for the network. How are you doing?”

Chris knew that his answer didn’t actually matter, so he just nodded. What was going on here?

“Listen,” Greg said. “The good news is that the Battery is part of the national conversation now. The bad news…”

He shrugged, not needing to finish that sentence. The bad news was that it wasn’t exactly for baseball.

“With Layla out, we’re still working on filling content for home broadcasts, and we had one idea that we wanted to run by you.”

Chris frowned. “Layla’s out?”

Greg waved his hand, like that was the least of it. “Maternity leave,” he said. “Or, what you call it before the baby is born. Point is, we’ll be looking for someone to fill in for the rest of the season.”

Chris hadn’t even known Layla was pregnant, but he guessed there was no reason he should know. He generally liked Layla, but he didn’t know her very well, and he wasn’t one to volunteer for any interviews he didn’t have to do.

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