Page 23 of Diamond Ring
Alex doesn’t text him and he doesn’t text Alex. A week goes by. Another. Jake’s parents fly back to Maryland, leaving Jake to his apartment, the lease for which he extended through December rather than try to move during the postseason.
He mostly keeps to himself, a task that was easier when Alex was with him. Baseball has a way of making time feel elastic. A season can last a blink, a single outing a lifetime. Days are longer, harder to fill. He sleeps, tiredness from the series catching up with him compounded by a deeper exhaustion like the gravity got turned up on his bones.
His landlord slides a notice under the door that they want to show his apartment to other potential tenants. A problem, since Jake hasn’t been doing much since that first frantic cleaning spree. A pang of fear accompanies it—that strangers will see this place and know how bad he’s been since the series.
Cleaning at least gives him something to do; he clears his bed off, dumps the laundry into the basket, ferries plates to the sink. A set of tasks that untangle the mess of his mind the way Alex picked apart that mic cord the first day they met.
How he sat through that interview, resentment rolling off him like an atmosphere, and still put his hand out to help. How he isn’t handsome so much as magnetic, or at least Jake is drawn to him, the dark rim of his eyelashes, the breadth of his chest, his smile those few times Jake made himreallylaugh. How Jake wants to again but doesn’t know what to say that’s notI’m sorryfor things he isn’t sorry for.
Stripped down, his mattress has a dip in it like the outline of his body, one that softens when he goes at it with the vacuum, which makes a satisfying crackle as he hoses up crumbs and dust. Sheets next. He finds a clean set in the hall closet that he affixes on the bed. Except either his mattress is the wrong shape or his sheets are, because he spends a good few minutes trying futilely to get them smooth. Even then they don’t look right.Someone will know. An irrational thought, like there’s a tell from his bedsheets that he’s kind of a mess. So he takes them off and tries again, then again. He looks at the clock. A half an hour has passed, and he’s no better off than when he started.
He goes home for Thanksgiving, greeted by his mother’s nodding approval for putting back on some of his lost weight. He occupies himself training, running in their sidewalk-less neighborhood, anonymous in unbranded workout gear. It’s cold, because it’s November in Maryland, the last sun-shining days of late autumn come and gone, the trees mostly leafless. Their bare branches scrape the equally dour sky.
His arm complains about the weather, about Jake distracting himself with the dusty set of weights in his parents’ garage, small discomforts at the join of his elbow he mostly ignores.
He spends Thanksgiving weekend being overfed by his mom, avoiding shopping malls, and not looking at his phone to see if Alex called. It can’t be sulking if he’s spending time with his family, though he spends a lot of it in his childhood bedroom, stretched out on the bed he bought with his draft signing bonus, the last ill-fated game playing in an endless mental loop.
A text wakes him Saturday morning.Alex. Jake reads it, scrambles to unlock his phone, then reads it again.
Alex: You get home?
Then:nvm.
Jake goes running after that, wanting nothing more than the impact of the pavement under his shoes, to put some distance between himself and everything in Oakland. He takes his normal route around the sidewalk-less neighborhood, waving to his parents’ friends. A few kids are riding their bikes. A handful play catch on the rise of a lawn. Their ball gets away from them, rolling in the street. Jake scoops it up, tosses it—lightly, gently, an arcing throw.
Maybe he didn’t stretch fully. Maybe he puts more force behind it than he should. Maybe it’s just the universe kicking him when he’s already feeling low, because his elbow doesn’t so much twinge aspop. And fuck.Fuck.
He hauls himself back to his parents’ house and practically collapses in the front hall. Team medical staff answer when he calls and say things likeMRIandulnar collateral ligament. They’ll book the appointments. All he needs to do is show up. He does, the next day, his mother waiting while flipping through outdatedTown & Countrymagazines in the lobby.
Even with the stuff they dope him with, it’s claustrophobic in the MRI. He spends forty minutes staring at the featureless tube, listening to the whoop of magnets, not thinking about how a blown elbow might mean a blown season. A blown career. How some things time can’t heal.
When the MRI results come back, the diagnosis is obvious. He has a torn UCL. They walk him through what it means like he doesn’t already know: Tommy John surgery to install a new ligament. Twelve to eighteen months of recovery time while he retrains his arm to throw. There goes next season.
Boarding a cross-country flight to pack up his apartment seems like another impossibility. His mother tells him she’ll fly to Oakland when he says that there’s no one there to collect his stuff. Though he hesitates as he gives her his keys.
“Jake, I’m sure I’ve seen bigger messes,” she says.
“No, that’s not it.”
Various team personnel call. Courtland, with reassurances. Braxton, who asks Jake if he needs anything.
For this to be all right, he doesn’t say.
Jake: Appreciate the support, man.
Braxton: Recovery was harder than I expected.
A more honest declaration than Jake was anticipating, confirming his fears that this will be hard in a way he’s unprepared for.Text me whenever you want,Braxton adds.
They’re not really friends like that, especially since they haven’t ever talked outside the few times that Braxton came into the clubhouse for his recovery work.Will do, Jake texts back, even if he probably won’t.
Gordon calls later that night. It’s possible Jake breaks down talking with him, his voice scratchy in his throat.
“This game can be stingy,” Gordon says. “But I’m betting there’s more left for you.”
Stephanie calls as well, then cuts him off when he apologizes for not doing that promo. Over video, her hair’s blue again. She’s got a clear spacer in for her eyebrow ring, which he refuses to let remind him of Alex.
“Listen,” she says, “most people don’t know what it’s like for you guys to recover. I know it’s gonna feel like a slog, but for fans maybe there’s a way for you to stay connected with them.”
