Page 50 of Diamond Ring
Ben: OK that’s for you. Now where should I go hiking?
Chapter Thirteen
April
Alex
Alex spends more time than he’d like thinking of things important to Jake. He thinks about it while he’s working with their pitcher staff—a task that only makes him step into an unused training room to yell diffusely at the ceiling once.
He thinks about it in the clubhouse, distracted by the light that keeps hitting Jake’s necklace chain. When Alex glances over at him, annoyed, Jake gives him a lopsided smile that makes Alex want to scream for other reasons.
He thinks about it as he’s driving home. It really is beautiful here, even if he misses the angry slate of the New England ocean in early spring. At least that would match his mood, unlike Oakland, which is aggressively sun-dappled and pleasant.
It shouldn’t be hard to come up with three things about Jake. Theyknowone another. That’s half the problem. (What the other half is... The thought rattles in Alex’s brain like a well-polished stone.)
So a list of things important to Jake.
One: Jake was always pretty close to his parents, who came to a lot of games their first year. They were both exactly what Alex imagined middle-aged government contractors to be—and not. Because when Alex mentioned Sofia and Marianne to see how they’d react, neither blinked twice.
Two: Jake liked attention. Not in a bad way. When they went out, it always felt like he was at the center of everything, Alex competing for him with every bartender and club patron. That Alexwantedto compete for his attention, the way plants on the forest floor compete for sunlight.
And Alex can’t imagine saying any of that out loud in the clubhouse or in front of Todd, but most especially not in front of Jake.
Two, again: Jake’s pitched for a lot of teams. Alex knew he pinballed around after Oakland but not the extent of it. How he mustneedthe game if he’s willing to pitch for whoever signs a half-good paycheck and hands him the ball.
So Jake pitches: A decent fastball. An okay curveball. A changeup that goes from adequate to devastating if his command is working. All elements of an arsenal that’s aged in the last ten years. One Alex will need to catch tomorrow during Jake’s first start. Because of course they have to work their issues out in front of however many Oakland fans, all of whom will probably be thinking about the last time they played together.
That’s two. What else? Jake remembered Sofia and Evie, though they only met a couple of times. Alex’s record collection, which turned into his and Eric’s record collection that Alex dragged back to Rhode Island when they broke up.
He knows Jake told him things, but mostly Alex remembers that wide-open feeling of how much theywanted. How sincerely they believed that the game was unkind, sure, but that unkindness would never come for them.
Alex gets to his rental house and parks in the driveway. The house sits slotted between its neighbors, newly constructed, with no creaking aches like Sofia’s house in Rhode Island. Not much waits for him inside: his lease says he can’t do much with it—can’t fix it or paint it, can barely hang things on the wall without his landlord’s say-so.
He could go out. It’s not that late by ballplayer standards. He could text guys and see who’s up to party or go by himself to pick up. Though he feels every second of his age, older than guys who sit in soft office chairs all day and don’t get pelted with baseballs. Besides, hooking up lost its appeal approximately ten years ago on a cold Maryland evening.
A third thing. What’s important to Jake.
Not me.
Which hurts to admit. Because time doesn’t heal so much as fester.
Every random thing Jake ever told him comes pouring back. How Jake once snuck out to the McDonald’s near his house to try a cheeseburger for the first time, then got sick from it and confessed to his parents what happened. How Jake only tried pitching when his middle school team’s pitcher got hurt and Jake offered to step in.
How someone once dared a friend of Jake’s to climb a tree and he was brave in the ascent, but too scared to come down—so Jake climbed up with him and sat for hours until he trusted himself enough to make it to solid ground.
Silly, inconsequential stories players tell all the time, except these feel different. How Jake was self-effacing, but that only made Alex want to talk with him more. That he had the kind of insulated, aggressively normal home life that Alex found strangely exotic. That he could laugh at himself and wear aWhat can you do?grin, then pitch like he wanted to destroy the opposing team.
When Alex goes inside, his house is no different than when he left: a newly constructed town house that he’s renting because it was easy, and filled with furniture he ordered from IKEA, even if it came with Sofia’s sniffing disapproval of prefab bedframes.
He could call her and sit while she pulls cards for him, though it’s better to come with a question beyond his current emotional dehydration. What’s he going to do with—about—Jake? Something he’s not ready to articulate, even to her.
He pulls out his phone, opening up the chat he started late last night, under the profile he made right after he and Eric split, back when he told himself he just needed to date again but ended up feeling worse.
Growing up, Alex always thought his middle name was Michael. When he got his birth certificate years later, it turned out they just gave him the middle initial M without it standing for anything. Something he’s always wondered about—one of the many things he’d want to ask his dad about if he was still alive.
It was easy to pick a profile name: Mike. Because there’s nothing as anonymous as being a guy named Mike with an accent that registers as Boston to anyone but someone also from Rhode Island.
The guy he’s talking with seems nice and funny and definitely hot, all things Alex should want. Does want. But he’s old enough that artifice feels like artifice. So he opens the chat, types, and hits Send before he has the chance to regret it.
