Page 48 of Diamond Ring
He should settle. Breathe. Smile.
Alex leans forward. For a horrible second, Jake thinks he’s going to do something drastic, like drop a hand on Jake’s thigh, or worse, sympathize with him.
“You mind if I look at these?” Alex doesn’t wait for Todd’s response before he picks one of the things off Todd’s desk—a stress ball he squeezes until it bulges at one end—then replaces before moving to the stacked Post-its and jar of pencils. Each picked up, examined with a grunt, and put down a little neater than it was before.
Jake’s stomach settles. His nails ease out of the furrows he dug in his palms.
Todd doesn’t interrupt Alex’s examination; he waits until Alex sets down the last object then drops his hands to his knees with the finality of a teacher about to assign homework. “For next time, I want you both to think about what you want from this. Since you have history, I want you to do the same exercise I had you do for yourself, but about each other.”
“Three things I know about Alex?” Jake asks.
“Three that are important to him,” Todd corrects. “How does that sound?”
Miserable.A waste of time. “Sure, can do.”
“Great,” Todd says. “Appreciate you having a positive outlook.” And he ushers them from his office before either has a chance to argue.
Jake drags himself back to his apartment that night with a team-provided meal in a takeout container. He eats at the wobbling table in his living room, watching TV and feeling last night’s five hours of sleep—and the fact that the team is forcing him to process through this stuff with Alex rather than just ignoring it like a nagging injury.
He hasn’t been a student in a long time, but he always had the habit of doing his homework the day it was assigned. The habit apparently stuck because he opens his Notes app and types.
Things important to Alex Angelides:
Family
Baseball
Winning
Being right
A list that’s inherently incomplete. Sometimes, when Jake is high or just morose, he thinks about that year in Oakland. How he met Alex’s family and Alex met his. How he once felt Alex’s ear in a bar, evidence of his old punk ways. How intimate that was, even before they kissed on Jake’s porch or made out in his bed. Were they more than friends long before that? Or have time and distance refracted his memories into something else?
Now the only “something else” is that they’re stuck talking with Todd, who has a degree and job security and probably healthy, functional, stable relationships. Fuck that.
Jake switches from Notes to the app where he was chatting with Mike. A few messages are waiting for him: the usual sleaze, which he ignores, a handful of genericheys. And one from Mike.
Mike: You ever have one of those days where the universe is aligned against you?
Ben: Rough day at the office?
Mike: Something like that. What do you do when that happens?
Jake’s real answer is that he either gets high and plays video games or remakes his bed compulsively then confesses it to a journal his therapist makes him keep. Neither of which he wants to admit.
Ben: Not sure I have any good suggestions, unless you like video games.
Mike: Nah not really into them
Ben: What do you normally do?
Mike: Listen to music. Sometimes go hiking. Not sure where’s good around here
An opening for Jake to ask him out. They could meet and hug in a parking lot next to a trailhead and Mike could leave with Jake’s actual number and a story about having once sweated next to a professional athlete. Or at least a pitcher, which is the next best thing.
Ben: I just moved here. I don’t know a lot of people.
Other than the team, and really just Gordon and Alex. Ten years of always being the new guy. Jake likes packing, something that was a joke before the thrill of living out of a suitcase turned into bouncing between so many teams even he’s lost track of them.
