Page 100 of Wild Hit
“Hey, Machado,” Cade Starr, the pitcher we’re riding our season upon, calls out from behind the crew where the rest of the team is gathered to watch the show. He brackets his mouth with his hands to really make sure I catch every word. “Looking buff out there, what’s your secret?”
I glance down. To my surprise, my abs are showing. And I’m not even clenching.
Slowly, I look back up at him. “Hard work, man.”
And by hard work, I mean the difficult task of behaving around a certain woman.
Lucky Rivera, the best shortstop I’ve ever seen, of course chimes in with, “Hard marriage work, ey?” He nudges the guy next to him.
The combined braincell of the Orlando Wild bursts into various forms of laughter, the dominant ones being guffaws and giggles. I was wrong when I thought I was acting all high school like. This is middle school.
“Stop acting like clowns,” our captain barks, but this time the comedians are having way too much fun.
I twist my lips and tongue in a very specific way, passed down by my dad, and let out a whistle loud enough to echo around the field and pierce everybody’s eardrums. All the attention returns to me.
“Make fun of me all you want but I will appreciate you not joking about my wife or making her feel uncomfortable, or there’ll be consequences.”
There’s a beat of silence, where everyone looks at me like they’re meeting me for the first time. It takes a while to realize that it’s because I used a new voice. Dad voice, relaxed teammate voice, and heck, even tax prepping voice sound very different.
This was husband voice. The caged animal type that really conveys if you hurt my person, I will destroy your life.
And now Audrey’s certainly looking at me—in a weird way. Like she got a glimpse of something she didn’t want to see.
I run my hand down my face and drop my hands on my waist. “Sorry, I?—”
“You’re right, I went too far,” Lucky says and turns to Audrey. “I’m sorry, Audrey. I really didn’t think before I spoke. I’ll only focus on sock pranks.”
The what?
As other guys join in—including Cade calling hersugarfor some reason—Audrey just waves their remorse away, explaining, “It’s okay, guys. I know none of you are malicious and all of you have too much testosterone to be fully rational.”
That dig brings the mood, or the testosterone, back up. The guys go back to joking around about what has now become a tradition for the team:SPORTYcoming over to photograph or film one of us, and how apparently I don’t have enough baby oil rubbed up on me.
“It’s fine,” I try to argue, but the vultures aren’t satisfied.
“No, our superstar needs to shine the brightest,” Lucky fires back, cracking a grin that I now recognize too well. I don’t know what sock pranks are, but I’m pretty sure what’s coming next isn’t that. “Can someone bring the baby oil?”
His best friend also smirks. “That’s right, when it was my turn at this I got oiled up in every damn crevice. Same for you, right?”
That he asks to our captain, who answers in a nonchalant way with, “It’s true.”
I empty my lungs. It was super weird to have a random person from the crew try to do this, so I politely asked if I could just do it myself. But obviously I missed spots. I was counting on sweat saving the day. After all, we’re standing in the middle of the open field, the sun blaring over us while we cook in a million degrees and a thousand percent humidity.
The same crew member from earlier comes over with a damn bottle of baby oil, but before she makes it a quarter of the way, Lucky finds his moment. “Wait, unlike the case of Starr and Kim, Machado here is married.”
He says nothing further. Just lets the obvious meaning hang in the air.
“I can do it myself, I’m pretty flexible. You just have to tell me where I missed.” I start for the oil girl, offering my hand out for the bottle.
“But what if something goes wrong-wrong?” Lucky asks, widening his eyes in the most earnest way.
Baseball players are notorious believers in luck, omens, jinxes, curses, and everything superstitious under the sun. As I’ve learned, one of this team’s shticks is to not use any word that alludes to getting injured, to guard off from attracting that possibility. And never in the history of the team have we been closer to the World Series. It is especially important to prevent wrong-wrongs.
“Fine.” I return the bottle to the crew member and brace myself.
“I got it.”
We all turn in complete silence. Audrey’s breaking through the line of filming staff and heading over…
