Page 41 of Diamond Ring
Jake looks no different than he did a second ago, with Gordon’s chaperoning presence. Except his smile is a little more fixed, the lines of tension around his eyes slightly more visible. He hasn’t said anything, but neither has Alex. They might each get into their respective trucks. A deflationary end to this buildup, even if anger is still pressing up under Alex’s skin.
Jake cracks first. “You think Gordon’s gonna tell the team we were being difficult?”
Because Jake always cared about other people’s opinions. Alex used to catch him looking up his own stats, reading the latest laudatory article—a habit that must’ve been hard to break when coverage soured. “That what you’re worried about?” Alex asks.
A shrug. A smile that’s a close enough facsimile to Jake’s real one to fool most people. “I’d prefer not to get released before I can pitch.”
“They wouldn’t cut you,” Alex says. “Not while they can make money off selling your jersey.”
Jake doesn’t flinch, though his eyes go hard. “I could say the same to you.”
Though the Elephants did get rid of him, his first time around, trading Alex without so much as abest of luck. Another catcher got called up, and there went Alex like yesterday’s news. Jake must know. He spent too much of his time glued to baseball media to have missed it.Unless he stopped checking on you. Alex isn’t sure what’s worse: if Jake’s being intentionally mean or if he just doesn’t give a fuck.
“Guess it’s not as easy to pretend you don’t care when it’s your ass on the line,” Jake continues. So, intentionally mean. And Alex somehow forgot that fighting with him is like trying to win a battle with New England ice: it looks harmless until it cuts your hands up.
They’re only about ten feet apart—nine, when Alex steps forward, then eight. Jake’s shoulders tense like he thinks Alex is actually going to hit him. He puts a hand up, an apology clearly forming on his lips, and that’s even worse.
“God, grow a spine, Fischer,” Alex snaps.
Something in Jake’s expression kindles, some spark like he might tell Alex to fuck off, the way he used to order Alex offhispitcher’s mound ten years ago—
—then extinguishes just as quickly. Jake retreats into the clear, reasonable air of the midafternoon parking lot. His smile returns, the fake, stuck-on grin Alex wants to wipe off.
“You know what?” Jake says. “I don’t have time for this right now.” As if he has some place better to be. “See you tomorrow, Angelides.”
And he’s long gone when Alex realizes that he’s the first person to say his name right all day.
Chapter Eleven
March
Jake
The first day of the season feels like the first day of school—except Jake liked school. Guys greet each other with back-thumping hugs. Jake winds his way through various cliques to his stall. They didn’t do official space assignments until yesterday, but hell, this has gotta be someone’s idea of a prank. Because there’s his nameplate and all his stuff. Right next to Alex’s.
Worse than a stall full of Alex’s stuff, Alex is here, looking no less ticked off than the day before. The way he did the last time Jake saw him a decade ago, like he spent ten years angry. Knowing Alex, it’s entirely possible, given how tense those last few texted conversations were. Because fighting about how the series ended, about how Jake’s arm got hurt—and Alex took too little of the blame for the first and too much of it for the second—turned into fighting just to fight. Until it didn’t. Until they, by unspoken agreement, stopped speaking.
One of the hardest things about adulthood, or as close to it as ballplayers ever get, is how people can fade in and out of your life. He thought Alex would be, if nothing else, his friend and teammate for years but they’d only gotten a handful of months. He thought they’d somehow reconcile, even if every time he picked up his phone to eke out anI’m sorry, he put it back down again with a stubbornness that felt increasingly juvenile the older he got.
And now they have to work together.
Which brings up the other thing. Alex looksgood, like he somehow aged into his inherent seriousness. Strong and stubborn and glaring at Jake like he might try to choke him. Not in a fun way.
Jake unzips his duffel and begins unpacking, setting his stuff along the wooden shelves of the stall neatly, but not so neatly that guys’ll comment on it, even if it makes him antsy. “Guess we’re gonna be roomies,” he says, as if they’re on speaking terms.
“Guess so,” Alex croaks out.
“You’ll survive.” Jake’s not really sure which of them he’s saying it to.
Their pitching coach, D’Spara, who wasn’t with the club the last time they played for Oakland, circles the room, greeting guys. He comes over to thump Jake on the back. He looks like every other pitching coach Jake has dealt with—white, mustached, like he’s fending off incipient disaster. He gives Jake a critical look like he’s the source of that disaster. Which he probably will be.
Eventually, the boisterous hum in the clubhouse quiets, guys catching seats as Courtland strides to the center of the room.
Jake sits, purposefully ignoring Alex on his one side and studying Charlie Braxton on the other. A lot’s changed in the past ten years, but he hasn’t, still a Cy Young contender in his late thirties. And he certainly hasn’t gotten any smaller, Jake’s height, with a mountainous breadth.
He mumbles a greeting in his low Texas drawl, reminding Jake to call him Charlie—which feels like calling a teacher by their first name, even if they aren’t that far apart in age. He’s focused on Courtland as if intent on what he has to say, though it’s probably going to be an uninteresting mix of platitudes and bluster. One of Charlie’s hands rests on his knee. He’s wearing the same thing they’re all wearing—team-branded gear, the collar cut messily out of his T-shirt, in contrast to his neatly trimmed brown beard—with a heavy wristwatch that shakes as he taps his foot. What he, as the team’s best pitcher, has to be nervous about, Jake has no idea.
He doesn’t say anything else to Jake. Maybe he only had encouragement for him back when Jake’s career still had enough potential to warrant it. Clubhouse veterans are sometimes weird about him, like he’s a perpetual reminder that injury recovery doesn’t always work.
