Page 98 of Diamond Ring
Todd smiles his slightly kindergarten-teacher smile. “Good. I’m glad we’re comfortable with one another.”
Alex’s expression goes stormily neutral. “Yeah, great.”
“It seems like you’ve been able to put your differences aside,” Todd says.
“We have,” Jake agrees, possibly too eagerly. “That definitely helped with our on-field communication.” Not that Jake’s gotten to communicate on-field much in the past week.
Not that their communication hasn’t been kind of a problem off it, with Alex talking about moving back to Rhode Island. About the various and sometimes contradictory advice for adoptive parents. About a fixer-upper near his aunts’ house he bought after showing Jake approximately a million house listings, then paid in cash when Jake said he liked the porch on that one. Definitely nothing Jake wants Todd’s input in solving.
Jake shifts on the couch. Alex has his hand on the cushion between them, his knuckles still healing from catching so many games in the cold. He deserves rest. Deserves the life he worked for ten years to gain.
“I guess I’m apprehensive,” Jake says. “About the postseason. And, you know, everything. It doesn’t really matter. No one watches games in October to see a team’s fifth starter.” An admission he can’t stop. He doesn’t look up for a second. Silence follows. Jake probably should have just shut the fuck up, should have gone and tossed a throwing session and been grateful he made the league championship series roster at all.
Alex edges his hand across the couch cushion, not close enough to touch, but enough to feel the warmth coming off him. A gesture they shouldn’t be making here, or in the clubhouse at all, but fuck it. Fuck all of it, the secrecy, the weight of the season, the agitation that’s been building for the past week.
“I know it’s selfish,” Jake continues. “I want the team to win. Maybe that means I don’t get to pitch, butIwant to win. For myself. Everyone’s asking about ten years ago, like we’re just defined by that moment. Like I haven’t changed, and Alex hasn’t changed. Like we’re not people with feelings who don’t really want to hear about how we once fucked up. What if we lose? We’re just gonna be the guys who lost a championship twice.”
“Three times,” Alex says.
Jake looks at him.
“Technically, I would have lost three times.” Alex shrugs, like it’s nothing, with one of those grins he dispenses only when he’s really amused.
Hysterical laughter bubbles in Jake’s stomach, the kind he can’t swallow against. So he tips his neck onto the back of the couch, the crown of his head against the wall, and laughs. “You always gotta one-up me, Angelides?”
“Seems like.”
“I’ve been thinking about next season,” Jake says. “A team in Japan mentioned I should get in touch with them.”
Todd, who is apparently still in the room, makes an affirmatory noise.
And Alex is looking at him in question, the polite interest he might show any other teammate contradicted by the slight pinch of his forehead.
“It’s notofficial-official yet,” Jake clarifies, because it can’t be while he’s on the Elephants roster, the conversation filtered through his agent as a set of hypotheticals and caveats. “But they mentioned they’re looking for starters.” A decent salary, the promise of a lively stadium. A guaranteed position—unlike anywhere he’d pitch in the majors especially as teams find less and less value in older players. As easy a landing as anyone in pro ball gets.
Alex claps his hands against his thighs, jovially, though his shoulders are stiff. “Sounds like a personal decision. I’ll leave you all to it.” He hustles out before Jake can object, leaving him with Todd.
Todd reaches behind himself into the tangle of stuff on his desk, the little objects Alex rearranged all those months ago to put Jake at ease. He drops a few things onto the end table: a stack of note paper, a stress ball, a travel pack of tissues, and doesn’t say anything when Jake taps them into a neater row.
“I find when I’m deciding something”—Todd’s tone is purposefully casual—“the process matters as much as the outcome.”
“Alex and I have known each other a long time.”
Todd hums at that.
“I guess sometimes we still think of each other like we did ten years ago, even if we’re both different now.”
Another hum.
“I should probably talk to him, huh?” An admission that he and Alex aren’t just teammates.
If Todd is surprised by that, it doesn’t show. It occurs to Jake that he hasn’t been surprised by anything they’ve laid on him. That he must get all kinds of confessions from players.
“I probably shouldn’t be saying this to you,” Jake says.
“Players tell me things. That’s my job. Some of that has to go to the team. I don’t pretend to keep everything in confidence if someone is in crisis. But there’s on-field business—and there’s stuff that isn’t. Took a while for me to figure that out.”
“What do you think I should do?”
