Page 85 of Diamond Ring
“It’s okay.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Coddle me.” Something he’s said to Alex before, like he doesn’t think he deserves to be treated carefully. “It sounds stupid, but this was easier when I was good at it. Like there was thisexpectationthat if I chose to do this then I’d be set, you know? That they provided for me, so I could build on what they had. Not that I spent a decade fucking around.”
“Who said you were doing that?”
“No one. I mean, that’s what I hear a lot of days.”
“From other guys on the team? Assholes on Twitter?”
Jake shrugs. “Myself.” A quiet admission: that he’s being gnawed at the edges in a way most people can’t see.
“Remember on New Year’s Day, when your mom came in and found us asleep together?” Alex says.
“Yeah, that was a fun conversation. Particularly with the way you left.”
“She asked me how you were.”
“Not surprising. After Matt... Some days I think they still think of me as a teenager. And things got pretty bad right after the series.”
“She asked me to keep an eye on you. I told her I would.”
A confession met with a hissed intake of Jake’s breath. “So all that stuff about me coming back to Oakland to rehab my elbow was about that?”
Yes.No. Because he also felt that same urge to wrap himself around Jake, to shield him from the world, even if that’s not what Jake wants or needs. “I would have without her asking me to.”
“You ever think what it would have been like if I did go back—how things might have turned out?”
Theifs Alex has considered for the last decade: If Jake’s arm healed. If he regained his previous velocity. If he didn’t resent Alex for trying to look after him rather than listen to him. If they’d talkedtoone another rather thanatone another. “Maybe we would have won it all. Or maybe we would have hated each other.”
A bump of Jake’s shoulder against his. “I couldn’t hate you. Even when I hated you, I never hated you, you know?”
“Even when I field a ball off my arm?” Alex teases.
“See that wasfunny. For a minute, everything felt like it did ten years ago. It was nice.” Jake tilts his head slightly from side to side, like he’s considering something. “I guess I need to stop chasing that.”
“No harm in reminiscing.” Especially when it’s just them and the glittering lights of surrounding buildings, a lightness to the evening despite the heat.
“I guess not.” Though Jake sounds skeptical.
“Remember when you thought some guy at the bar was asking for your autograph and he was just trying to get the bartender’s attention?”
Jake laughs. “Yeah, that happened a couple times. Remember when that bench player—you know the guy I’m talking about—started playing smooth jazz in the clubhouse all the time just to piss you off?”
An argument that turned into a dumb ballplayer shoving match. “Yeah, whatever happened to him?”
“Not sure, but he still has the fifty bucks I paid him to do it.” And Jake is grinning, a broad uncompromising grin that makes Alex want to kiss him right here. “Remember that bar where we used to go out to pick up,” Jake says, “the one with the floors even you thought were disgusting?”
“I didn’t go out. To pick up.”
Jake’s forehead scrunches a little. “Then why’d you come with me?”
“Wasn’t it obvious?”
A smile at that. “Tell me anyway.”
