Page 87 of The Art of Catching Feelings

“Should I—” she started to say, sure she didn’t need to be present for this part.

“You’re not going to another market,” Layla said. “We’re about to have ababyand we’re not looking to have his aunt move thousands of miles away. I was going to ask if you would want to be involved with the Battery on its charitable foundation side. They’ve been wanting to put something together for a while to do with books or reading or something like that, and I know that’s kinda your thing.”

Daphne’s first thought was that it sounded incredible. Even without any more details, she was already really excited about the idea.

But her second thought was that she didn’t know if she’d want to be involved with the team, even doing something like this, where she doubted she’d have much reason to run into Chris at all. Maybe it would be better to have a clean break.

“Can I think about it?” she asked.

“Of course,” Layla said as the nurse put her surgical gloves on. “Now could you bothpleaseget the fuck out of here so I can have some privacy? I know birth is a beautiful natural part of life but I don’t need an audience when there’s a stranger’s hand in my cervix.”

It was practically a race to the door to see whether Donovan or Daphne could get out of there faster, and they stood out in the hallway, close enough to know when to go back in but far enoughaway that Layla couldn’t accuse them of trying to eavesdrop on her cervix check or whatever.

“You know,” Donovan said. “I bet I would make agreatbest friend for Chris Kepler. Maybe that’s how you get him back.”

Daphne shot him a sharp look. The sad truth was, he probablywouldmake a great friend for Chris. She could picture it. Except she knew that, if anything, it would be Chris making Donovan give her a turn at a video game she was admittedly terrible at, while Donovan whined about how she was wrecking his stats. And then Chris would’ve let her play on his profile instead, and he’d try to coach her through but she’d be hopeless, except he wouldn’t care about how much she was fucking up his stats, he’d just be laughing and then he’d squeeze the back of her neck in the way that let her know he was thinking about what he’d do to her later that night when they were alone.

She could get through whole hours without having these kinds of thoughts now, which was an improvement over a couple months ago. But they still haunted her, especially when she couldn’t sleep.

“I’m sorry,” Donovan said. “I was trying to make a joke, but too soon, huh?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“The thing with Kepler, it was serious?”

Daphne had hadthisconversation with herself a thousand times, too, about how it hadn’t been serious and that was the whole point, she really had no right to feel this way. But she was only trying to fool herself, and there was no fooling herself anymore. The way she felt about Chris was different from the way she’d felt about anyone else; the way it had ended had wrecked her more than anything else. Even her divorce.

“Yeah,” she said.

The nurse poked her head out of the door, beaming. “Get ready, Dad,” she said. “We’re about to have a baby.”

FORTY-ONE

“Magic number’sthree, yo!” Randy came from behind Chris to pinch the tendons between his neck and his shoulder, right where he knew it would make Chris squirm.

“Don’t tell me the number, man, I don’t want to know the number.”

“Ah, youknowthe number.”

Randy had a point. It was impossible not to—the Battery had four games left in the season, and if they won three of them, they’d have a Wild Card spot. They didn’t have to wait to see if another team lost, they didn’t have to hope a favored team choked at the last minute, they could just win three out of four and they’d be in. The fact that they’d made it that farwaswild, especially when you looked back on how badly they’d been playing in the early part of the season.

Most guys had cleared out of the clubhouse, but Chris had started sticking around later and later, wanting to put off going home as long as possible. Sometimes Randy invited him to do something, go out with other guys or just back to his place to play video games, and Chris was always grateful for those gestures. At his lowest moments, he thought about inviting himself over, but he hadn’t gotten that desperate just yet.

“Did you see Layla had her baby?” Randy asked, taking his phone out of his pocket and scrolling through until he reached the picture he wanted, turning to show Chris. Hehadalready seen that one—it had made the rounds in several group chats. It showed Layla in a hospital bed, somehow looking just as perfectly coiffed as she always was, holding a little bundle of blankets he had to assume was the baby, although there was only a sliver of a forehead peeking out from the swaddle. There was another one with Layla and Donovan together that showed the baby a little better.

“Yeah, that’s awesome.” Chris cleared his throat. “Are there any other pictures?”

Randy clicked through a few things, handing his phone to Chris. “Scroll up to see all of ’em.”

Chris gave the first couple pictures a few long beats of his attention, even though those were the ones he’d already seen. There was another picture of just the baby, lying in the bassinet withbrink-demirwritten on an index card taped to the front, stars hand-drawn in blue highlighter to apparently indicateboy. Chris scrolled up one more and stopped.

It was a picture of Daphne holding the baby in her arms. He recognized the dress she was wearing as one she wore for the broadcast, and he remembered the night when she’d left early to go to the hospital. He’d been on his way to the dugout after a quick one-two-three top of the first, and his gaze had automatically slid over to the spot where she usually stood, surprised when he didn’t see her. It wasn’t until the seventh inning when he finally got out of someone that she was just at the hospital because her nephew was being born, and he was so relieved, he’d comeso closeto texting her. It wasn’t the first time he’d had that impulse. He’d typed and deleted so many things into that text box, ranging fromheytoyou looked beautiful tonighttou up?toI miss you.

In the picture, she was looking down at her nephew and smiling, and something about the way her hand cradled the back of his head…He returned the phone to Randy. “Cute,” he said.

“The baby, or Daphne?”

“Come on, man.”

---