Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 24270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 121(@200wpm)___ 97(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 24270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 121(@200wpm)___ 97(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
“You flew across the country to give me this advice?” I joke, then take a drink too quickly. The coffee burns my tongue.
Great. Just great.
“No, I flew here because my guy and I are going to a friend’s wedding before spring training. You just get this advice for free because I’m helpful like that,” he says with a wink. “Bottom line is this—you need to just fuck Chris. Get him out of your system once and for all.”
The ease with which he says it amazes me. First, because Grant isn’t a casual guy either when it comes to relationships. Second, because . . .
“And then I’ll see him again,” I say. “He is in the same city, you know. Oh, yeah, we also happen to work in the same field and all. That’ll be real fun when I play against him.” I don’t dare voice the part that weighs on me though—what if I want more and Chris doesn’t?
“Look, I know you don’t want a relationship after Harrison,” Grant says carefully, reading my thoughts.
I fell hard for the Wall Streeter more than a year ago. We’re talking hook, line, and sinker. We were together during the last off-season. Or I thought we were a thing. He thought we were just having a good time. Turned out, I was reading his signs all wrong.
So, yeah, I just don’t want to go there again. The only saving grace after that bitter breakup was baseball. It saved my sorry ass from moping too much when he broke it off.
Baseball’s all I need. Sure, the game breaks your heart. But it always gives you another chance.
“I’m thirty. I’m over hookups. I want to be someone’s priority,” I say, and it wasn’t always easy to say those words.
For a long time, one-night stands were fun. But sometime in my late twenties, fun turned to fine turned to wanting something more. “I want something serious, and clearly, he’s not serious.”
“Dude. Dude. You don’t know that he doesn’t want the same thing. Did you try, you know, asking Chris?”
Not sure I need to ask him. He made it clear what he wanted in September outside the clubhouse. He made it clear again in October in the parking lot. Sure, I want to see him spread out and panting on my bed, losing his mind as I work him over. But I’d want to see him in the morning too, and he doesn’t seem like a relationship kind of guy.
It’s easier to say no than to get hurt again. That’s why I drove away from him the last time I saw him.
Asking him is not in the cards. I meet Grant’s eyes. “When did you become the Yoda of healthy relationships?”
My friend gives me the smile of the recently married and very well laid. “Or you could just bang it out and get him out of your system.” Then he winks.
I flip him the bird. “Fuck you, Blackwood.”
“Fuck you too,” he says, then takes off to meet his husband.
After I drain my cup, I toss it in the recycling bin at the shop, then head out, debating whether my agent, my teammates, or Grant is offering the worst advice for how to handle today.
But lust is best handled on a full stomach, so I reward myself with a restorative breakfast sandwich at my favorite place.
The thing about New Yorkers is most people have them all wrong. They’re not rude; they’re succinct. They’re not impatient; they’re efficient. And god knows, ask them for anything, and they’ll give you unvarnished advice whether you want it or not.
I ask my bodega guy for a bacon, egg, and cheese. What I get is a “Shoulda gotten that tag down earlier.”
At least it’s baseball advice, not relationship advice. So there’s that.
I ask a cabbie to take me to Chelsea. What I get is a comprehensive history of the woes and struggles of the New York Union baseball organization.
That’s another reason—if things don’t work out with Chris, and they won’t, everyone in this city will sing me some variation on shoulda dated a hockey player instead.
When I reach the building on Eighth Avenue, I wait in the lobby for the security guard to call the studio to confirm I’m allowed up. I don’t tell him my name, but he says, “Yes, that Josh Spencer,” in a tone like I’m going to get an earful about the World Series.
It does buy me a few seconds where I don’t have to see Chris. And remember that kiss against my car, the feel of his mouth on my neck. The way I almost said yes to his teasing. To toasting my own World Series defeat. To letting him slip under all my carefully built defenses.
Instead, the guard passes me the visitors’ logbook. “Sign here, sir.” And I autograph the visitors’ book.