Page 79 of Diamond Ring
“It’s okay,” Johnson says in a way that indicates that whatever he got a one-seventy on it is, in fact, very good.
Morales catches Jake eavesdropping. “LSAT scores,” he clarifies.
“Like for law school?” Jake asks.
Johnson nods. “You know, gotta have a plan B. Scores are good for five years or so.” A shrug, as if his career is a coin flip between major-league pitcher and attorney.
Zach has that look that Jake’s seen on his older relatives, a particular flush of happiness at someone else’s success he’s attempting to conceal in the menu. Jake should probably turn away from whatever this is, and toward the conversation at the other end of the table, an escalating discussion of a movie Jake hasn’t seen. Or do anything but feel a slight deflation from the high of throwing well yesterday.
Alex hasn’t said much since he sat down, other than to grunt a thanks for Jake handing him a menu. He drops a hand on Jake’s leg now, low enough for plausible deniability even if, at the park, Jake wanted to tell all five boroughs about them.
Morales rescues him, with a loud command that he’s gonna order stuff for the table and if guys have preferences, they need to let him know.
Jake tries to think of how to condense the rules of keeping kosher—which he does, more or less—into something digestible for Morales. Or at least how to order separately without insulting Morales’s taste.
He plasters on a smile. “If there could be something without seafood. Fish is okay, just not...” Basically everything else on the menu without some kind of alteration.
Morales looks slightly amused. “How do you feel about pork?”
Jake’s about to say,Pork’s fine, because he can usually pick around it, when Morales goes, “Let me guess, no pork, no seafood, no rabbit, no eel?” A list that sounds like he’s recited it before.
Jake glances down at his menu, confused. “I don’t think they serve eel.” But that gets lost when Morales laughs like it’s an inside joke.
“Long story,” Zach says, waving a hand.
And Morales leans to say something only to him, drawing a laugh from Zach and Jake’s attention to where their fingers are just barely touching on the tabletop, different from how guys put hands on each other in the clubhouse—in laughter and mock affront. Probably nothing, especially when no one says anything about it.
Charlie drifts over to talk with Morales. Jake only catches a few words of it, Charlie indicating his card’s already with the waitstaff. “If you could order something without pork...”
“Sure,” Morales says, sounding put upon but slightly pleased at that fact. “Anything else?”
A cheer goes up from the other end of the table, a call fordrinks, and fuck, one of those sounds pretty good to Jake right now.
“You good?” Alex asks, voice low. He hasn’t moved his hand. He changed out of the sweats he was wearing earlier into a white T-shirt that shouldn’t do it for Jake as much as it is. Especially when he intensifies his grip on Jake’s leg.
And Jake can think of few worse times to get hard than at a table surrounded by their teammates and the catching staff of not one but two opposing teams, but that’s apparently what’s about to happen, with a suddenness it hasn’t since before he went on antidepressants more than five years ago. He grinds a thumbnail into the bend of his index finger, a move Alex takes as tension, because his grip goes even harder. Which absolutely does not help.
Jake tries to distract himself with the menu. Drink orders. Dinner. A start in two days in front of a bunch of screaming people from Queens. That last one helps.
They eat. They drink. Morales keeps them provisioned in legitimately great food and leans over to explain things to Zach, their heads bent together, Zach’s hearing aid curving over one ear where the dark curls of his hair are cropped around it.
He must be staring because Zach catches him at it. His expression goes through stages: surprise, then the possibility of denial. That, swallowed like a gulp of beer. Then the kind of square-shouldered defensiveness like the first time Alex told Jake about his aunts. Assessment of if Jake’s gonna be an asshole about this.
Jake tries for a hand gesture approximatingIt’s coolthat probably comes off as signaling for a refill. It’s possible he’s misread the whole thing: maybe Zach’s reaction comes from guys objecting to his and Morales being friends, like the old rule against fraternization across teams still applies. No real good way to resolve it, and Jake spends the rest of the meal with his excellent, eel-free dinner churning in his stomach.
“Wouldn’t really have pegged Zach and Morales as friends,” Jake says, as he and Alex are walking back to their hotel, the rest of their teammates having gone out for the night.
Alex’s smile is slightly smug. “People might say that about us.”
Friends. An appellation Jake would’ve been grateful for months ago that’s now woefully inadequate to describe the brush of Alex’s shoulder against his arm, or the occasional frisson Jake felt through dinner, when Alex gave a half smile that from anyone else would be a full-bellied laugh.
They’re staying on the same floor. Alex follows him off the elevator, then pauses at the door to Jake’s room like he’s walking him back from a date. Like they could kiss here, in the open field of the hallway, with any of their teammates likely to come strolling through. Like a photo might not end up in a New York tabloid with a headline out of Jake’s worst imaginings.
Jake said they should keep thiscasual—an ill-fitting word he wants to shed and doesn’t know how—so can’t even complain when Alex says, “Get some sleep,” like it’s a good-night kiss, then leaves him to his luxurious, empty room.
Once he’s inside, Jake knows he should brush his teeth, review scouting reports, sleep. Should write something like,This trip started out bad and ended up goodin his journal as a reminder that’s sometimes how things go. Instead he shucks his clothes, showers, pulls on a shirt and boxers. He makes a circuit of the room, rearranging the dustless objects on the desk until they’re slightly misaligned. Tries to relocate that same feeling from the restaurant, the clamp of Alex’s hand on his knee, and the look from under his eyelashes, an urgent feeling that coalesces at the base of his spine.
He has a container of lube he liberates from his suitcase, a folder of porn he’s meticulously saved. Alex’s phone number.
