Page 8 of Diamond Ring
Jake looks vaguely apologetic at that.
Alex nudges him with his shoulder. “It’s how things are—pitchers get all the glory, catchers do all the work.”
“We should do something to remember this.”
“That’s not what we’re doing?”
“Something other than drinking skunked beer and watching ourselves on TV.”
Alex studies his beer. “I thought that’s how this was supposed to taste.”
“I mean it.”
“You wanna go get tattoos?” He suggests it mostly to watch Jake go pale.
“I’m Jewish. It’d be a thing with my parents if I did,” Jake says. “But we could get something to commemorate this.”
“Like matching friendship bracelets?”
His smile broadens as if Alex was being serious. “Sure.”
“What if we end up not liking each other?” Alex asks.
Jake’s forehead wrinkles, like he’s confused at the idea of someone finding him unlikeable. “You really think that’ll happen?”
“I don’t even like you right now.”
For about two seconds, Jake looks crestfallen. Then he laughs and knocks his glass against Alex’s, foam sloshing over the rim. “I kinda want a necklace,” Jake says. “You know, something with some flash.”
“I don’t wear a lot of jewelry.”
“Except for the nipple ring.” Said teasingly, like Jake’s been thinking about it.
“I used to wear more when I was in a band.”
Jake’s eyes go platter-wide. He paws at Alex’s arm, demanding to see Alex’s old, embarrassing pictures on his phone. “You look”—he glances between Alex and picture-Alex, whose hair was up in spikes and dyed an even darker black—“kinda like Wednesday Addams.”
Alex chokes on his beer.
“Maybe it’s the eyeliner.”
Which Alex was undoubtedly wearing, and still sometimes wore, enough that it ends up at the top of his cheekbones like eye-black.
“Or,” Jake continues, “possibly the jewelry.” He taps on the photo in which Alex is wearing at least five earrings in each ear, a series of hoops and spikes lining his cartilage.
Alex touches his ear, reflexively. “Yeah, those suck with my gear on. Still wish I hadn’t taken ’em out.”
Jake tilts his head in question.
“I went to a piercer about reopening them. They couldn’t. Too much scar tissue.” He touches his ear again. Jake tracks the movement. Alex has only drunk half a beer, but he’s still high off the flush of a good win. “Here, feel.”
Jake hesitates. And hell, maybe Alex crossed some invisible line. That the casual kinds of touches that are okay in a clubhouse or in the company of their teammates aren’t okay sitting at a moderately terrible Oakland bar.
Then Jake scoots his barstool fractionally closer. Extends his arm, the pads of his three-million-dollar-signing-bonus fingers. Alex didn’t think about what this would be like—the brush of Jake’s knuckles against his cheek. The rough catch of his calluses. The hitch in his breathing, like he’s doing something more intimate than feel Alex’s earlobe, which has almost no active nerve endings in it, except for all the ones firing now, sending a frisson across his scalp.
A second later, Jake withdraws his hand. “You must’ve had a lot of earrings.”
“It was a phase.”
