Page 68 of Wild Hit
I splutter.
Her eyes narrow. “The ring, you perv.”
“Right.” She has no idea that sometimes—often—she makes my brain short circuit. I grab the ring and start twisting and twisting.
“Don’t tell me…” She gasps softly, enough that I feel it everywhere I have bare skin. “Is your finger swollen?”
The question comes out in horror. It takes me a moment to understand that this is coming from concern, that she may be wondering if I hurt my finger or something.
I clear my throat. My voice is a bit too thick when I explain, “Well, yeah. But so is everything else.”
Silence hangs heavy as her eyes widen.
“I mean!” Now my voice is but a squeak. “Blood flow! When you work out hard. It just goes up—gets faster, I mean. Uh…” I clear my throat again, nearly hacking out a lung in the process.
“What’s going on?” A dude’s voice comes from behind me as my coughing fit starts to ebb away.
Audrey turns a very red, yet serious face toward the team captain. “Hey, Logan. Miguel’s hurt.”
“No, I’m not,” I choke out, thumping my chest.
“Where?”
The pretty snitch points at my hand. “Finger.”
I voluntarily raise my hand up so he can assess the damage. “It’s just a damn blister. Everything’s fine.” My lungs aren’t. Neither is my heart rate. Blood flow is excellent, though.
Logan clicks his tongue several times in a row. “This is why guys take them off entirely or replace them for silicone rings.”
I refrain from pointing out that Audrey had the same immediate solution. However, my mind, ever so useful, decides to run away with a dream scenario—one where my fake wife and I are taking off our very real clothes off. That’d be nice.
More than nice.
“Anyway, I have it under control.” Barely. I keep twisting the ring though, until it finally comes off my very uninjured finger. I keep it nestled in my palm as I raise my hands and find the clasp of my chain and pop it open.
Audrey’s voice sounds more relaxed. “That’s a good idea, too.”
I slide the ring into the necklace until it bumps with the crucifix.
“Pop the blister and come out, the next inning’s about to start,” Logan commands.
“Aye, captain,” I say as I’m clasping the chain back in place.
“What do you mean pop the blister?” And now blondie sounds horrified.
Chuckling, I follow after Logan, tossing over my shoulder a very poetic “it’s cool, sugar. A little blood never hurt anybody.”
*
The embarrassment of that phrase is still haunting me as I sit with Beau and a couple other players for the press junket after the game. We won with a whopping 13-2 and five different team records were broken.
Turns out I got one of them. The speed of my bat for the blister-hit is the fastest in the team’s history. And also of the league—in all its history. A whopping 123.1mph.
“Machado,” one of the journos calls out. “Why do you think the hit that clocked the fastest swing speed in the league’s history wasn’t a home run? Are you entering a slump?”
Once again, I employ my best acting skills and give him nothing with my body language. My hands are laced over the table, and no one can see how I’m fingering the Band-Aid over the hole left by the popped blister.
I have a couple options here. One, I could tell him where to shove it for his sensationalist take, but that works exactly zero percent of the times. Two, I could be honest and piss a lot of people off even while saying things gently.
