Page 105 of Diamond Ring
Jake shakes his head. “I was thinking about the game—about how I’ve probably pitched for the last time in the majors. I know it’s my choice about going to Japan but...” He trails off. “It just feels a little anticlimactic, you know?”
“You got here, didn’t you? That’s something no one can take away.”
“I know.” Jake blows out a breath, then sits on Alex’s partially unmade bed, purposefully not looking at the stuff on his dresser. Because there’s what Jake can control and what he can’t, and tomorrow they’ll play a game he might not pitch in regardless of the alignment of Alex’s room key.
It’s easy to talk here, with no one but the walls to judge him, especially when Alex sits next to him. He winds an arm around Jake when Jake leans against him. Alex smells like he always does: ballpark scents and the faint odor of rain. He rumbles an “I think that’s just my shampoo” when Jake mentions it.
“Today hasn’t been great,” Jake says. “Last time we were in the series, everything was a blur. Now all I’m doing is getting stuck in my own head.”
“It does feels slower this time.”
“I was thinking about next year.”
“About Japan?”
“Or if I should just quit.”
“I remember thinking how great our second year was going to be with us together in Oakland, even with you rehabbing your elbow. That it’d all be fine, even if it wasn’t.” Alex pauses like he’s considering what to say. “I don’t want you to decide anything just because of me.”
“Things’ll be hard—me being there alone.” And the time difference, the playing schedule, the worry that they’ll drift away from one another the way they did a decade ago.
“Everything’s hard,” Alex says. He punctuates it with a kiss to Jake’s neck.
“Long distance might be especially hard. I’ll miss you.” Jake settles closer, until Alex is a solid wall against him. Some of the tension he’s been carrying all day eases.
“But you want to go?” Alex asks it softly, without judgment, the way he asked if Jake wanted kids when they were on the plane.
“I want to play. And I’ll get to travel. It’s funny, I feel like I’ve been everywhere and haven’t really seen much.” He gets a flash of himself standing in front of a temple or in a garden, turning to say something to Alex who isn’t there. “Tell me about the house.”
Alex smiles. “You want to hear about renovations?”
“I just need to know”—Jake can’t keep the faint shake out of his voice—“that there’s life after all this.”
Alex tells him about the house: a Queen Anne a few blocks from Sofia’s that will need new floors, new plumbing, new wiring. He’s already made a list of the things he can do himself and what he’ll need a contractor for, how he’s looking forward to the soothing repetition of scraping paint and laying tile on a timeline no one but he can dictate. How he’s planning to let Evie pick all the paint colors, save for the room that he’ll turn into a child’s bedroom; how he’ll paint it something neutral and then let them decide. A place that will be all his—even as Jake holds onto the distant hope that it will someday betheirs.
“I was going to build some of the furniture,” Alex says. “Nothing too complicated. A table, maybe.”
“Oh, just a table,” Jake teases.
Alex knocks a shoulder into his. “They’re pretty simple. I could make you one.”
Which makes Jake’s heart ache a little in his chest. “What kind of table?”
Alex grabs a notepad off the nightstand, then sketches a few things, messily, before dropping the pen. “It’s easier—” He goes to the dresser and starts shifting stuff around in various arrangements, waving Jake over. “Could do a bench table.” He lays the cologne box across two overturned cups. “Or a pedestal.” A coaster balanced on a heavy-bottomed glass. A few other options—a tripod he shows by leaning together straws, a drop leaf he demonstrates with a piece of folded paper. “Or something else. Whatever you want.”
I want to be with you. An echo of Alex that night in New York, the easy tap of his hand against Jake’s. A reminder not just that he’s leaving but what he’s leaving behind. “No one’s ever built me something.”
Alex smiles, brightly, and kisses him, deeply, before starting to dismantle the little model tables he’s built.
“No, leave them,” Jake says.
Another smile, something that carries Jake through the rest of the evening, until they fall asleep together, until all he can feel is the even rhythm of Alex breathing and the reassuring beat of his generous heart.
Alex
Game two is a fiasco for both teams, a game that’d be a sloppy affair in mid-May but is especially so in front of fifty thousand people, the Gothams earning a twelve-ten win and the Elephants a dejected flight back to Oakland the next day.
Sofia and Evie are there when Alex gets home, having flown on the team jet and taken the earlier friends-and-family bus from the airport. Alex deposits his stuff in the front hall, then goes to the living room where Evie’s set up on the sofa frowning over her drawing tablet. Even though it’s early evening, she gives an expansive yawn.
