Page 97 of Diamond Ring
“What’s being back here like?” one asks.
It’d be better if I actually got to do something other than sit around.
“Does this bring up memories of the last time?” another says.
Only because you all keep asking about it.
“Angelides is having a good series.” A reporter Jake normally likes, though would like more if she managed a question to go with it. But it used to bug Alex when they asked him stuff about Jake and he got through it. Something Jake always approached with aGlad that’s not mehe now regrets.
“Alex looks great out there,” Jake says. He smiles at the camera—a sincere, if incomplete, truth.
They win the division series in a three-game sweep, games in which Jake is largely decorative. He comes home from the ensuing celebration champagne-covered, wanting to rearrange every single one of his possessions until the world feels right.
He throws his clothes in the washer, showers, grabs his journal when he’s sitting on his bed wrapped in a towel.This could be a bad one, he writes. The walls of his bedroom press close, the shaking urge to fix stuff an itch under his skin.We’re not doing this.Like it’s him and his own worst impulses, a chorus he can’t ignore.
Okay, okay, get this out of his brain and onto the page. He taps his pen.Might get to play in the league championship series. At least it’s in Texas so I won’t freeze.He needs something else, even if all he has is the hollowed-out feeling of watching other people’s success. It’s not as if he isn’t happy for the team—for Alex, during the last innings of his big-league career.
I want to play. An honest admission. Not just in the championship series, but next year, in a place with more certainty than this one. For the possibility of a ball leaving his hand and what comes after.
I’m grateful I can still throw. A fact that remains regardless of Courtland’s or anyone else’s decisions. What he can control, no more and no less, a revelation that quiets the humming in his head.
His phone buzzes, a message that Alex is standing in his hallway. And Jake kind of wants to be alone right now. Butaloneis always better with Alex there.
When he opens the door, Alex holds up a bottle of champagne. “It’s low alcohol.”
“You want to celebrate?”
Alex shrugs. “I wanted to see you.” Like they didn’t leave each other at the ballpark an hour ago.
“I’ll get some glasses,” Jake says, as Alex sets up on the couch.
Jake’s wineglasses have a visible coating of dust; he rinses them and dries them with a squeak of paper towel. By the time he’s done, Alex’s head is tilted on the back of the couch. His eyes are shut, his shoulders weary in repose.
“Hey,” Jake says softly, and Alex blinks himself awake, “why don’t we go to bed?”
They don’t do more than sleep, Alex slotting behind him, arm at Jake’s waist, face against the back of his neck. “Can’t wait for the offseason,” Alex murmurs, like playing is an inconvenience between him and the rest of his life. He falls asleep before Jake can disagree.
The day before the league championship series involves a buzz of media attention, a simulated game to keep everyone fresh, andTodd.
At least it isn’t just them. Courtland makes the announcement that everyone—“and I mean everyone”—has to check in with Todd.
“We going to go into this series with our heads on right,” he says, as if mental health is a thing to be won, and Jake doesn’t say,If I’m already in therapy, can I be excused?like a kid trying to duck homework. But he’s sorely tempted, especially when it turns out Todd wants to see him and Alex together.
“We just have to go in there and convince him we’re fine with each other,” Jake says, when he and Alex are hanging out in the chairs by their stalls, Jake resolutely not relacing his shoes.
Alex looks up from the tablet of scouting reports he’s been flipping through idly. “Maybe not too fine.”
Right. Because there’s fine and there’sfine, and he doesn’t think Gordon told anyone that they’re together, but maybe other people have figured it out. Another thing Jake doesn’t want to deal with, especially since the postseason has rendered him more or less vestigial.
“This kind of sucks and I don’t really want to do it,” Jake says.
Alex gives him a smile that he definitely can’t do in Todd’s office or in full view of team personnel, like Jake’s done something other than complain. “We can probably make it for thirty minutes.”
Though that’s tested when they get to Todd’s office and he asks them to name how they’re feeling right now.
Irritated, Jake doesn’t say.
“Kinda annoyed, to be honest,” Alex says, and Jake suppresses a laugh.
