Page 70 of Diamond Ring
“You gonna get the hell off my mound?” Jake snaps, and Alex conceals his smile under his mask as he jogs to home plate.
Alex’s phone buzzes just as he gets home. He has a box full of postgame food, a slight dehydration headache, a throbbing knee. Faint hopes that the night will hold anything good—he didn’t uninstall the hookup app but he took the icon off his home screen so he won’t be tempted to reread his conversations with Ben-slash-Jake.
Jake, who he’s definitely not thinking about—not how he ordered Alex off the mound, not how they more or less got their shit together for the rest of the game. Not how Jake was gone when the game ended, hustling off to—
Alex isn’t thinking about it.
He should probably ignore whoever is texting him. But it could be Evie or Sofia or Charlie, who’s starting tomorrow and who seems more nervous than is warranted about it.
Instead,Jakeacross his phone screen.Can I come over?
Not what Alex needs right now—hot-and-cold-running whatever the fuck this is. He should eat. Go to bed. Pretend he didn’t see the text and move on with his life.
Maybe it’s an emergency. Though he isn’t sure Jake would tell him if something was going on with his arm. Curiosity tugs at him. He sends back a single?, sinkingly wondering if Jake meant to text to someone else.
Jake: Address?
Alex shouldn’t. Boundaries, or an approximation of them. He’s been called all sorts of things over the years—brusque, guarded,an asshole—assessments that sometimes give people license to act like he doesn’t have feelings to hurt. But not Jake, at least not before. It’s probably important if Jake wants to come over. Against his better judgment, Alex types in his address.
Ten minutes later, a knock at his door. When he opens it, Jake’s standing on his porch, holding a reusable bag. “I brought snacks.”
So not an emergency. Alex waves him inside.
“Nice place.” Jake peers at Alex’s underdecorated front hall. The house is fine compared to other places Alex has stayed—austere compared with his and Eric’s condo, and certainly with less personality than Sofia’s house—but a few steps up from where Jake’s living, which is shabby for someone who went pro at nineteen.
“Thanks,” Alex says. An unstatedWhat are you doing here, Jake?floats between them.
“I didn’t come over to hook up, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Alex tells himself he’s not disappointed. That’s what he wants. What they both want. But distance is easier to enforce at an actual distance, not with Jake going into his living room as if they’re going to, like, hang out.
He unloads the bag on Alex’s coffee table—a bottle of fairly decent whiskey and a box of chocolate-covered mini-doughnuts. “You drinking?” Alex says.
“Nah, but I figured you could probably use something. Given...” Jake trails off.
The game today. The past week. The overall course of their season, which is going well but could be better. “I have water and milk, probably some Gatorade, if you want something,” Alex offers.
“Milk’s great. Well, let me pop a Lactaid. Then it’ll be great.”
Alex busies himself with getting plates, then stalls by rinsing and drying his already-clean glasses. When he gets back to the living room, Jake is sprawled out, long legs encased in gray sweatpants (unfair), T-shirt showing off the strength in his arms (also unfair). His necklace glints above his shirt collar (especially unfair).
Because Alex is still wearing the Phiten one, though it hasn’t conferred any particular luck. Maybe the game could have gone worse. Which will probably mean he’ll wear it again for Jake’s next start. He’s not superstitious; he just doesn’t want to find out what happens if he doesn’t. (Or think about Jake wearing that necklace, ten years ago, or asking Alex to wear it now.)
Alex nods to the whiskey. “What are we celebrating?” Then registers the brand of doughnuts Jake brought. “Or mourning?”
Jake chews his lip. “Before, on the mound, you said this was your last season.”
Alex saidifit was, though he feels it more days than not: ten years of squatting in the dirt, of getting hit by pitches and pitcher attitudes. “I’m thinking about it.”
“Figured that might be the case.”
“This my retirement party?” A bottle of whiskey and a box of doughnuts might be better than what Alex gets from the Elephants at the end of the season.
“More like anI owe you onefor the game earlier.”
“Me getting charged with three passed balls, you mean?” Because the pitches Alex couldn’t get his mitt around will go in the stats as his mistakes, even if he was set up in the right place and Jake threw to the wrong one.
“At least one of those is on me.”
