Page 61 of Diamond Ring
Alex wouldn’t be a career backup catcher if he didn’t know how to talk to guys in intense situations, the particular blankness of a game in which nothing goes their way. But never this combination of absurdity and fear. “Yeah.”
What else is there to say? That they’re linked, inextricably, and have been for the better part of their adult lives. That Alex gets a strange sensation like a champagne bubble making its way up a glass, about to be vented into the atmosphere. One at odds with the possibilities before them—finishing their dinner together on this parody of a date, then leaving asfriends.
Except Jake rises, pulls out his wallet, and throws a few bills on the table like Alex needs him to cover his tab. “You want to get out of here?”
A series of tasks Alex breaks down in an impossible to-do list. Asking for a box for his food. Paying the check. Summoning a rideshare. Ignoring the questioning beat of his pulse.
“My apartment isn’t that far,” Jake adds.
And Alex’s breath goes short in his lungs.
Chapter Sixteen
April
Jake
Alex hasn’t said anything for the past ten seconds. Possibly some of the longest seconds of Jake’s life. He’s blinking at Jake with that particular blink of his, studying the tabletop, the damp paper place mats, their uneaten meals.
If he says no, Jake hopes for a barked rejection like he might issue out on the mound. For Alex to be curt, dismissive. Anything but kind—because if Jake’s learned anything in the past ten years, it’s that a gradual descent hurts infinitely worse than a sudden drop.
He’s about to leave, when Alex stands, adding to the stack of bills on the table. “I already closed out at the bar.” Right, logistics, even if Jake’s heart is thumping hard, his mind torn between two competing foci:This is a bad idea. And louder:I’m going to do it anyway.
“C’mon,” Jake says.
They hustle out, Jake ignoring the bartender’s confused look. When they get outside, Jake fumbles his phone from his pocket and summons a rideshare that pings as three minutes away. A hundred and eighty seconds of Alex next to him, warming the cool night air. Jake only threw a couple pitches that day, but his hands ache, an empty sort of ache the exact dimensions of Alex’s shoulders. It’d be easy to step into his space, to feel his breadth, to kiss him and let Alex lay him across the nearest flat surface and not think about why they shouldn’t.
The car arrives, a compact sedan they fold themselves into, both in the back, Jake’s knees against the passenger’s seat in front of him. The driver grunts to confirm Jake’s name, headphones in her ears like she’s avoiding small talk, and Jake’s grateful they don’t have anything to do but sit in the quiet dark.
Even with traffic, it’s not a long drive. He watches the red taillights of the cars ahead of them and not Alex, whose thigh presses against his own. Who drops his hand on the interior of Jake’s knee.
“You were shaking your leg,” Alex says, low. A squeeze like a possession, like Alex might leave his fingerprints all over him. Jake shivers, something Alex must feel, because he’s gifted the sweep of Alex’s thumb over his kneecap, the molten look in his eyes.
Jake spent the last decade wanting what he can’t have—his life as it was meant to go, the fame, the accolades, a chance to erase the distance between what could have been and what is. Now all he wants is Alex’s teeth on his lips. To have Alex look at him the way he is now and never stop.
The car halts, a distracting squeak of brakes, then dispenses them on the sidewalk. Jake digs out his keys. It takes three tries to get them in the front door, Alex behind him, breath hot on Jake’s shoulders, the slow impossible drag of his thumb against under the drape of Jake’s shirt.
“Don’t,” Jake says, because if they start now, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stop. That whatever barriers that exist between them—ten years, the night air, easily discarded fabric—will vanish.
Inside, into the long hallway, a ride in the creaking elevator. They stand on opposite sides like acquaintances. The elevator chimes at each floor. Jake feels around for reasons they shouldn’t be doing this: That they’re teammates, again. That he and Alex have been many things but normal about each other isn’t one of them. That this will probably end the way it did before—with each of them bruisedly regretful.
The elevator achieves its destination, doors peeling back to reveal the hallway. Jake’s still gripping his keychain in his fist, the slight cut of the metal the only thing keeping him grounded. His key slides into his apartment door; the lock turns almost inaudibly. Nothing to stop him now: not reason or common sense or the weight of Alex’s palm at his hip.
They stumble inside. Jake latches the door and turns on the aseptic spill of the overhead lights. His apartment is like any of a hundred he’s stayed in the past decade, a temporary habitation that elicits a wash of embarrassment different from the feverish one coating his skin.
Alex hasn’t moved any further, standing between Jake and the rest of the living room. For a second, they just look at each other.
“Sorry,” Jake says, “I know the place isn’t great.”
“I don’t really give a fuck about your apartment.” Though it sounds like a compliment when Alex presses him against the shut door and drags the callused surface of his palm up the back of Jake’s neck.
They stay like that for a crystalline moment, like if either breathes it’ll shatter. Alex’s eyes are dark, his lips slightly parted. He’s studying Jake with an expression Jake can’t put words to, a wide-open wonder at odds with the force of his body pinning Jake to the door.
Then the possessive sweep of Alex’s thumb against the tendons of his neck. “I thought about this. When you sent me that picture.”
“About Ben, you mean?”
Alex shakes his head. “No. About you.”
