I don’t plan on answering a single one of the ten missed calls on my phone, but they’re a good excuse to leave the clubhouse.
Ten damn minutes on the IL and restlessness is already kicking my ass like a motherfucker.
My job was supposed to be the one thing helping me make it through this bet.
“There you are!”
Aggravation climbs up my back and latches on the final reserves of my patience as the other female I’ve been desperately trying to avoid comes barreling down the hall after me.
I contemplate pretending like I didn’t hear my agent, but Zari has an unmatched talent for hunting me down like it’s deer season.
Five feet tall and angry, the small Nigerian woman appears harmless, but I know better.
“Are you avoiding me? Seriously?” Zari asks, double-timing her strides to keep up with me.
“I’d have hid in the men’s room, but you probably already checked.”
“Oh, real cute, Mikey. We need to talk abou—”
“My answer hasn’t changed. See? Conversation could’ve been an email.” I know I’m being an asshole, but Zari’s the female equivalent to my father. She never knows when to shut up.
“Mikey! This isn’t just about your career!”
“I already told you, Z. If the money’s that important to you—”
“This isn’t about the fucking money and you know it!”
I pause, turning to my agent. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard her lose her temper, but it’s the first time she’s turned it on me.
Zari’s dark eyes flash in contempt and a tiredness I’ve felt for nearly half my life. “I don’t ask you for anything. Not a day off, not to go see the counselor struggling to hold my marriage together by a thread, and especially not for anything remotely for my own gain.”
Except a lot a fucking money. Only my upbringing keeps me from reminding her of that. “Maybe you should take a day off. In fact, take a month. I know I am.”
“Oh my God. You’re seriously not even going to hear him out? I don’t have to remind you, you’re wading in uncertainty right now with this injury.”
I snort. “It’s a broken wrist, Zari. And it wasn’t even my fault.”
“Not to mention . . . ” she continues, ignoring me. “It’s pretty clear this club has solidified their priorities judging by their recent transactions.”
“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
Zari pinches the bridge of her nose like I’m merely a dense child who has yet to understand the way the real world works.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told her I read like one. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. She probably thinks I’m just another one of the stupid athletes from her fancy college that paid girls like her to do their homework.
Still. The fact remains. I might not have been able to get into Harvard, but the people who did have my signature on their checks, and she needs to be reminded of that.
Zari huffs. “That your backup is a navy-and-red cash cow. From where I’m standing, six runs a game isn’t a fair trade for a sold out season.
“But it’s clear to me and everyone else who bothers to pay attention that this owner doesn’t give a shit about winning a World Series unless it’s clogging his solid gold toilet.”
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I pay you to do a job. Your counsel helps me keep my job. This is not a checks-and-balances system, nor are my life decisions a democracy. You can tell my father that when he calls you for an update.”
I start for the door to the physio room, but Zari stops me in my tracks.
“What if it never happens, Mikey? What if you never get a ring here?” Zari asks. “It’s not about the money for either of us. You know that.”
“I can tell you what I’m not doing. I’m not wasting the rest of my life being stuck in the past.”
I wrench the door open and shut it behind me.
My phone rings again, but this time it’s not my own name that pops up, but Zari’s.
I don’t even bother to switch it off. I walk right into the bathroom, drop the cell into the toilet, and flush.
By warmup, I regret that decision.
I haven’t watched a Major League Baseball game from a box since I was seventeen years old, and under normal circumstances, most players, including injured ones, don’t either.
Perks of too many people knowing your father’s name, I guess. That and Eleby backing me into a corner after my run in with Zari.
A phone would at least give me an excuse to leave to take a call and not come back.
I sit in mild disgust, not watching as the Statesmen majority owner tells a petite blonde, barely old enough to serve a drink, she looks like Marilyn Monroe reincarnated.
It’s not the act itself that bothers me necessarily, but rather he reminds me of my father. A powerful figure with more money than sense and the notion that all things sit at his feet because they’re his birthright.
Zari wasn’t wrong about one thing—the green James Eleby’s bottom line sits on is not the grass of Eddie Dixon Park.
But if she thought for one second Vancaretti or Shields would let him call up an experiment for the sake of selling tickets, she doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does.
At least that’s what I hope as I and a bunch of people whose names I’ve already forgotten settle in to watch the most anticipated game in America.
It’s strange being back on this side.
It’s not the first time I’ve had to watch a game and not play. I’ve even been on the injured list before, but I’d typically watched from the bench, the analyst’s box, or my home.
This feels too much like my childhood. Except the resentment isn’t for my dad, rather the fact that I’m ‘socializing’ with old money old men and their playthings when I should be on the field, or at the very least on the bench with my team.
“That woman’s of age, right?”
I glance to my side where a black man, a pretentious lawyer-looking type in a suit, is glancing at Eleby’s roaming hands. He frowns.
“You must be new,” I say, as Holland Woods takes the mound. But no sooner than the words leave my mouth, I realize I know who he is, though I’ve never seen him before.
“Lysander Smalls. Nice to meet you, though I’m surprised you’re watching from up here. Dugout seems like the better view.”
I shrug. “Who else is gonna babysit Uncle Pennybags?”
His chuckle is genuine, unlike most people I’ve met in this world. It buys him my ear for two more minutes.
“How’s the wrist?”
And the two minutes are up. “No comment.”
“I’m not a reporter.”
“I know who you are,” I tell him. Christ. How do I get myself in situations like this? I’d blame my father if it wasn’t so goddamn redundant. “I think you’re right. The dugout does have the better view. Excuse me.” Fuck Eleby.
Fuck Curious with her mango-and-honey scent I swear I can still smell from here. Fuck her agent. Fuck my agent. Fuck my phone that wouldn’t stop ringing until I threw it in the toilet.
Most of all, fuck AC Guthrie.
I push open the double doors and don’t stop walking until I hit the runway pavement.
