Page 96 of Diamond Ring
Alex rolls his eyes. “Pitchers.”
“I know, I know, we get all the glory, and you do all the work.” No one else is in the tunnel with them. Jake leans down, mouth against Alex’s wet hair, a glance of a kiss. “If this is it, thank you.”
Alex shakes his head like he’s disagreeing.
“I mean it,” Jake says. “I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”
“No”—Alex smiles, stubbornly, fiercely, like the world is trying to take what’s his—“this game won’t be all we get. I promise.”
Gordon apparently agrees. A minute later, a telltale crack echoes up the tunnel, the decisive wood-meets-leather noise that indicates a no-doubt home run even against the rain, the wind. Union Stadium sighs a collective complaint. Again when the Elephants third baseman lasers a double off an outfield wall. And again, and again, a six-run inning that tilts its chin to the baseball gods as if to say,Try again tomorrow, motherfuckers.
Jake ices his arm, showers, waits as the outs tick down. Clubhouse attendants bring in carts of champagne. On the field, Alex squats in the dirt, an intractable presence behind home plate. Alex once confessed that he didn’t particularly believe in astrology, but he didn’tnotbelieve in astrology, either. Jake doesn’t know if his stubbornness, his dependability, come from a birthday in May or just the way he’s put together, but he plays with a bullishness that settles the humming anxiety in Jake’s belly. They’re going to do this. Really, actually, truly, they’re going to do this.
They win, the ball settling into Alex’s glove on the last out as if magnetized. Jake jogs to the dugout, happiness expanding between his shirt and his skin like an insulating layer.
Alex comes off the field with the air of a man who just survived three hours of being heckled in the cold rain. He pulls off his mask. He looks like he might sink to the bench and fall asleep, even as their teammates jump into one another in celebration that they’re headed to the division series.
Jake picks up a towel, wiping Alex down, a dugout compliment for a well-fought game.
After a second, Alex laughs and takes the towel, scrubbing his face. His hands are red from the cold. Jake seizes one, rubbing his knuckles, and Alex glances around as if their teammates will notice or care before shrugging.
“You look like you could use a shower,” Jake says. “Or a drink.”
“Maybe both.”
Jake gets a visual of Alex, in the shower on his knees, steam rising around him. “Later?”
“Did you want to go out?” Alex says, with the skepticism of someone over thirty being asked if they want to do shots.
“Absolutely not.”
Alex’s answering smile is as warm as the night around them isn’t. “Then later sounds good.” He lets out a creaking yawn.
“You mad you’re gonna have to play again in two days?” A joke, mostly.
“A little.” He taps a shoulder against Jake’s. “But I might owe some guys here a ring.”
The postseason is a blur of flights and games and media requests. Hotels rooms where Jake unpacks his clothes but doesn’t sleep. Alex, a hallway or floor away, and Jake doesn’t bother concealing that he’s spending the night there, dragging himself back to his room in the morning.
The day after the first game of the league division series—a game Jake didn’t pitch in that they’d won as if it was no harder than breathing—he runs into Gordon.
“Morning,” Jake says cheerily, like he’s coming back from a jog, like he didn’t pick his sweats up from the chair in Alex’s room where he folded them the night before. Like Alex didn’t leave a slight ring of teeth marks between his shoulder blades at Jake’s encouragement, ones that might become clubhouse gossip fodder but that’s a problem for three-hours-from-now Jake.
Gordon lifts an eyebrow with the skepticism of an amused parent catching a kid sneaking in after curfew. Not that Jake ever did. “You good?” Gordon asks.
A big question for nine in the morning, laden with the things they aren’t talking about. “I am.”
“And Angelides—he’s good?”
Alex was half-asleep when Jake left, but he mumbled anI love youafter Jake kissed him goodbye. “Alex is good.”
Gordon nods. “Keep your head up. We’re gonna need it.”
But they don’t need Jake. Not for the league division series. His game-worn uniform bears only the wrinkles from sitting in the bullpen, of having other guys’ names called around him.
They need Alex, though, and Alex squats and fields and bats and argues with their pitchers and collapses exhaustedly on hotel beds. “How much more of this?” he asks, like he didn’t volunteer for it, and Jake rubs his shoulders and ignores the pang in his own chest, an unanswered longing to play.
The media notices them. Jake spends more time in front of the camera than he does on the field, answering inevitable questions about their loss ten years ago.
