Page 58 of Diamond Ring
For a second, Jake looks like he’s going to argue, like Alex is insulting his ability to pay. “Next round’s on me.” Though when the bartender comes over, he orders a soda.
Alex doesn’t ask people why they’re not drinking. It’s rude, for one thing. For another, he doesn’t drink if he has to drive anywhere. But Jake was never really shy about his fondness for beer or liquor (or champagne). So Alex doesn’t ask. Just swallows the conclusion that things are different than how they were along with a mouthful of beer.
Jake raises his soda in a toast; Alex clinks his glass. “What are we drinking to?” Alex asks.
Jake considers. “A stadium with an upper deck, I guess.”
Alex is grateful he can spend the next few seconds drinking and wiping foam off his lip so that he doesn’t do something he doesn’t want to. Like apologize for a fight he didn’t technically start.
They sit for a minute, drinking, shoulders occasionally brushing. Alex searches for something to talk about. That he stayed up too late playing a video game, which would amuse Jake—not this Jake but the Jake from ten years ago whose suburban quasi-rebellion involved getting high and playing video games.
I started playing this dumb goose game, Alex doesn’t say. Because that will only yield questions about who finally convinced him to get into gaming.Ben. A few photos. A nascent conversation. A comparison he shouldn’t make but does anyway: every relationship held up to the one he needs to let go of and can’t.
Jake said that they spent ten years mad at each other, but that’s not totally it. Alex has a lot of people who he’s pissed off or have pissed him off, usually with the resolution that he just pretends they don’t exist.I tried not to think about you. I tried to move on. Which he can’t say either.
Above them, sports highlights play on the bar’s muted TV. A few clips of the Elephants game from the day before, a game in which neither of them took the field.
No one at the bar seems to have recognized them. He wonders if Ben will know who he is, or if he thinks he’s meeting Mike, the stocky guy with a nonspecific job, who likes playing video games as a chaotic goose and sending sex toys in the mail. Maybe that’s who he is outside the ballpark.
He turns to break the silence between him and Jake, though when he does, Jake’s mouth goes tight as if he doesn’t trust himself to speak.
It hurts like taking a ball off the chest. They could spend the rest of their season fighting. Or they could figure something out. With that, the flash ofWhy should I apologize? He’s the asshole.Except for the pain underlying Jake’s insistence that he can’t pitch any differently than he is, like the real Jake Fischer is trapped under the surface of this new, more brittle version.
“Your friend running late too?” Alex asks. There’s not really a discreet way to take out his phone and check his notifications to see if Ben’s messaged him. It’s also not like Alex wouldn’t notice if Ben came in—someone that tall would be hard to miss.
Jake shrugs. “Looks like. Nice to relax, I guess.” Like drinking a cola in an awkward silence with Alex is his idea of a good time. “Growing up, I never really understood how people could just sit and donothing, but I think I get it now.”
“Baseball’s a lot of sitting and doing nothing,” Alex offers.
Jake gives him an amused look. “Not for catchers.”
“Yeah, some of us have to work more than every fifth day.” A tease, the mildest of possible insults. Still he watches for Jake’s earlier temper. For white-lipped disapproval followed by Jake deciding he’s better off waiting for his friend in a booth. Alone.
Instead Jake smiles, not quite the grin he uses with the press but better for it. A smile like a small private thing.
“When was your friend supposed to get here?” Alex asks, even if now that they’re sitting together, he’s in no rush to have Jake leave.
Jake checks his phone. “A little while ago. How about yours?”
“Same. Maybe I got stood up.” An admission of a date Alex tries to say as casually as possible, though he can’t help looking for Jake’s response, a pleased smile into the rim of his soda glass.
“Guess whoever it was doesn’t know how rare off-days are for us.” The avoidance of specific pronouns that’s itself a question. If Alex still dates men. If he datesonlymen.
“He probably doesn’t,” Alex says.
Another nod and sip of Jake’s soda. “I should probably text my friend to see where he is.” But he doesn’t reach for his phone, leaving Alex to wonder what he means byfriend. If he wanted Alex to know he was meeting a man or just didn’t think anything of it.
A new bartender comes over, a woman with a dyed-black rockabilly haircut and as many earrings as Alex once had. She looks them both over, eyes narrowing, then aims her chin at Alex. “Have you been in here before?”
A lot, ten years ago, he doesn’t say, because it’d be hard to believe that she’d recall him after a decade. Being vaguely recognized comes with being a ballplayer, the squintedDo I know you?that Alex sometimes gets in grocery stores and movie theaters. “I’m a catcher for the Elephants.”
She nods, expression gratifyingly unimpressed. “Thought you seemed familiar.”
“He looks different without his gear,” Jake interjects, miming pulling a catcher’s mask down over his face—a move that would be awkward if it wasn’t also endearing.
“Cool.” She hasn’t aimed a similar recognition at Jake, and Alex gets the acute sensation of when they used to drink here. Of how people would elbow their way through the crowd to fawn over Jake, leaving Alex both grateful not to have to talk with strangers and slightly annoyed they didn’t want to talk with him.
He tries to think of a natural way to introduce Jake—one that would make it clear Jake is also a ballplayer without making a thing of it that she doesn’t know who he is. Something Jake always did, effortlessly, or at least it felt effortless to Alex at the time.
