Page 52 of Diamond Ring
They win, not through any brilliant effort on their part, but via the baseball tradition of playing slightly less worse than the other team. Jake goes one more inning, gives up three runs, gets a no-decision. Not an auspicious start, but one they haul themselves through anyway. When Alex retreats to the clubhouse prepared to endure postgame press, Jake is sitting at the chair in front of his stall, stripped out of his jersey. Whatever necklace he was wearing is gone. Alex tells himself the swoop of disappointment in his belly is just postgame hunger.
He showers, dresses, helps himself to the postgame spread. When he gets back to his stall, Jake is still there. “Courtland wants to see us,” Jake says.
They wouldn’t cut either one of them in front of the other—right? In the decade since Alex played for the Elephants, he’s learned that front offices come in two flavors: the warmly incompetent and the coldly mechanistic. The latter’s usually preferable until they send you packing.
Usually if a team is releasing you, a certain uneasiness permeates the clubhouse like a low fog. Sofia would call it an energy, as if Alex is particularly attuned to the vibrations of the universe and not just a career backup catcher who’s seen guys shuffled around.
The clubhouse doesn’t feel that way now, something impossible to communicate to Jake, or more probably that Jake doesn’t want Alex to communicate to him.
“Courtland say what he wanted?” Alex asks.
“Nope.” Jake’s hair is damp from the shower, but it’s already drying on top, brown beginning to tinge red. He looks fatigued, different from just being tired from his start.
“I’m sure it’s just reviewing the game.”
A lift of Jake’s shoulder. “Maybe.” Even that sounds exhausted.
Alex scrapes his mind for what he’d say to any other pitcher coming off a good-but-not-great start. That it’s the beginning of April. That playing for a new team—even if they technically aren’t—is an adjustment. Soothing, meaningless stuff.
Because being a catcher is one part hitting, three parts fielding, and a hundred parts being attuned to pitchers’ emotional peaks and valleys. Most of them at least have the decency to be weird-looking, not in an ugly-hot musician way but in alooks better in a hatkind of way.
Jake is hatless, handsome, and clearly upset, which no amount ofbuck uporget at ’emwill fix. Not that Alex wants to fix him. Or can.
Jake pushes himself out of his chair. “We should go in there, I guess.” He looks around, like he’s taking in the clubhouse walls, the gently steaming catering spread. Their teammates, watching them and pretending they aren’t. “Can we stay here a second?”
A quiet request. Alex’s hand flexes to soothe it across his back, to say words that he might mean even if they’re not strictly true. He stiffens his arms at his sides instead. “Sure.”
Jake shuts his eyes. Lines radiate at his temples, ones he didn’t have a decade ago, though his eyelashes still fall softly against his cheeks. He breathes as if he’s counting down, a ten-nine-eight like a New Year’s clock. “If this is all I get, at least I can say I made it back.” Punctuated by the slight motion of his head, like he’s shaking off disappointment. “Okay, I think I’m ready. Let’s go.”
He walks away before Alex can say anything. Like that he started the season wishing Jake was gone. Like that he now hopes Jake can stay.
Chapter Fourteen
April
Jake
Courtland’s office is even messier than usual. Jake tightens his arms at his sides. Ignores the subtle itch to straighten and neaten and put the world to rights.Ha.As if collating a century’s worth of scouting reports will untangle the stuff going on in his brain. A journal entry he’ll have to write. Honesty he’ll have to swallow along with his meds and whatever Courtland has to say.
It’d be easier if Jake’s start was bad. Bad he could wear. Bad he could laugh about one day. Bad says, Hey, move on with your life. Mediocre is different. Mediocre dangles a slim chance that he can’t stop reaching for.
Alex follows him into Courtland’s office. His shoulders are squared up, a certain tilt to his chin like he’s affronted on Jake’s behalf. It’s possible that they’re going to cut Jake—going to, in the game’s polite terminology, “grant him his release”—with Alex standing there, biting back what he thinks Jake should say, like that Jake should fight.Some things you can’t fight.Like time or baseball.
Courtland looks up from a tablet he’s examining, its glow deepening the lines on his face. “Great, you’re both here.”
Jake braces for that apologetic tone managers get. For theI’m sorry, son,like Jake’s not in his thirties.
Instead Courtland’s mouth turns down consideringly. “What’d you think of that start?”
For a second, Jake wishes the team would just cut him. Better than making Jake have to talk about his own inadequacies with an audience. “My fastball velocity wasn’t quite where I want it to be.” There. Easy. Objective. A decade of analysis on Jake’s pitching condensed into one statement: Jake’s fastball was fast and now it’s not.
Courtland gives a grunt that could be agreement or indigestion.
“I’m making strides on that,” Jake adds.
Another grunt. “Angelides, how’d you think the game went?”
Jake’s back goes stiff. He mentally neatens the office around them, plucking and packing away things into imaginary boxes. Something he might need to do at his own apartment if they release him and he has to pack it up. He reaches for the familiar weight of his necklace, and finds only shirt, balling the collar slightly before uncurling his hand.
