Page 68 of The Art of Catching Feelings

He still had his hand on her cheek, stroking her skin with his thumb. “No,” he said. “It’s not.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately,” he said. “With the All-Star Game coming up. It wasn’t a surprise when I didn’t see my name on the ballot. I’m lucky I got my average up above the Mendoza Line, but it’s hardly All-Star level. But I realized I’d always had this dream of going one day, not even for the game but for after the game. You know, when they show all the players on the field with their families?”

Daphne nodded, even though she didn’t think she’d ever seen an All-Star Game in her life. She only knew what it was from press briefings she’d gotten about the one pitcher from the Battery who’d been picked to go.

“I always had this vision of being out there, having my dad with me, my brother Tim. And maybe Tim would have a kid. MaybeI’dhave a kid. Tim was so funny, he could make anyone laugh, he would’ve made a great—”

Chris’ face crumpled briefly, and his eyes were shiny, but he was holding his jaw very rigid, like he was willing himself not to cry. “Some people say suicide is selfish, but then I thought, how fucking selfish amI, that this is what I’m thinking about? A fucking All-Star Game. I don’t care about a fucking game. What was all of this for? The World Series? Some stats? Money? I don’t give a fuck.”

He was so tense Daphne worried he’d break. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him toward her. And when she felt his body start to rack with silent sobs, she tightened her grip, holding him as he clung to her like he was drowning and she was the only one who could save him.

“I should’ve been there more,” he said. His voice was thick and muffled against her shirt, but she understood every word.

“He was obviously in a lot of pain,” she said. “You couldn’t have fixed that all by yourself.”

“I should’ve tried harder.”

She had to swallow against the lump in her own throat, not wanting to break down herself. “You try, Chris,” she said. “You try so hard. It’s who you are. But that’s a lot to carry.”

She held him until she could tell he was all cried out, stroking his hair and murmuring occasional responses to anything he said. By the time he drew back, his eyes were swollen and red, and there was a damp circle on her shirt.

“Sorry,” he said, running his thumb over her taut nipple where the fabric was wettest. “Chris Kepler cried again, this time on the heckler’s Chris Kepler shirt, a breakdown.”

He smiled at her, and she returned it, although the expression felt shaky and false on her face. Why should it upset her, that he referred to her as the heckler? That’s what she was. And there was a time when she thought she’d never be able to look at Chris Kepler without thinking about that moment, and feeling terrible about the fact that she’d made him cry, however unintentionally. But now she looked at him and saw so much more. She saw the man she was falling in love with. She saw the man she knew she was going to hurt, much worse than she could ever have done by shouting an insult at a baseball game.

“I’m tired,” she said. “And I know you must be exhausted. Do you want to just sleep here? We can set an alarm for early in the morning for you to head back to your room.”

“Yes,” he said, pressing an emphatic kiss to her forehead. “I thought you’d never ask.”

—

This time, when Daphne ended up at Layla’s house after the road series, she barely let her sister-in-law queue up anyfootage from her interviews. She already knew what they’d be. She’d asked all the questions she was supposed to, there’d been a funny moment when Randy photobombed her postgame interview with the winning pitcher, Chris had looked a little tired, dark circles under his eyes that weren’t just from the eye black but probably didn’t even register on camera.

After that first night, he’d spent the next night in her hotel room, too. They’d managed to catch a replay of the exact same movie, only this time from the beginning so they spent most of the movie marveling at how much more sense it made now that they knew the actors were supposed to be playing each other. They ordered room service and found ways to work around her period and stayed up late talking. And by the time Daphne was on her flight home, she knew things couldn’t keep going the way they were.

“I fucked up,” she told Layla now. “I really, really fucked up and I know you’re going to be mad at me but I need you to first just listen to me and tell me what to do.”

Layla, uncharacteristically, looked so startled that she didn’t say a word. She only stared at Daphne as she paced back and forth in front of Layla’s bed, outlining what had happened from the night she DMed Chris to the night she ended things with him to the relationship they had now. She left out the salacious details—no need to fill Layla in oneverything—and also kept Chris’ revelations about his brother private. Otherwise, she laid it all out. When she was done, she was almost out of breath, both from the pacing and from the onslaught of words.

“Don’t worry,” she said, catching sight of Layla’s shocked face. “I’m going to tell him. I have to. My plan is—”

Layla sat up in the bed then, clutching her belly even though she was only just starting to show. It occurred to Daphne that maybe she should’ve cleared Layla’s health before she went into this whole saga. Her sister-in-law’s face was all red.

“You absolutely willnottell him,” Layla said. “Not until the season is over, at least.”

Now it was Daphne’s turn to look shocked. “But that’s months away.” They were barely into July—there were practically three full months left to go.

“And it’s going to come a lot sooner if you tell him. Foryou, because honestly, you’ll be lucky if you don’t get fired. And forhimand the rest of the team, because any long shot they might have at making the playoffs will be toast if he’s all distracted and upset and bringing it into the clubhouse every day.”

“But wouldn’t it be better—”

“No.” Layla cut her off without even letting her finish. “It wouldnotbe better. Look, what you did was—I don’t even know. I don’t know what would possess you to stay anonymous in the first place, and then I really don’t know what would possess you to start a real-life relationship with the same person you catfished. That’s some Theranos-level shit.”

Daphne opened her mouth to protest—she didn’t know if she deserved to be compared to a company that had defrauded investors out of millions of dollars—but she shut it again when she could see that Layla wasn’t going to be interrupted.

“But you did it,” Layla continued. “Damage is done. You can’t undo that, but what you can do ismitigateit. Which means, for example, not fucking up the Battery’s playoff chances because you’re suddenly having a crisis of conscience.”

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