Pitcher Perfect, page 16
No change in expression from Eve. “Because I wanted to.”
Madden made a sound. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Guys . . .” Feeling oddly as though she was interrupting something, Skylar took a few steps in their direction. “Why don’t we go talk in Eve’s office?”
“No,” Eve blurted, eyes widening. A rare glimpse of nerves from her usually deadpan best friend. “No, we can talk here.”
“Why?” Madden asked, gaze narrowing. “What’s in your office?”
Eve said nothing.
A beat passed.
Madden turned on a heel and strode farther backstage, paying no mind to the scattering of scantily clad burlesque dancers, toward the office. He didn’t have far to go, either, only fifteen yards or so and he was nearly ripping the hinges off a door marked “Manager,” while Eve and Skylar hustled forward in his wake.
The last thing Skylar expected to see on the other side of the door was two little kids.
A boy and a girl. Both of them roughly the age of five.
Were they . . . twins? Yes.
One of them played on an iPad, one colored in a Barbie coloring book.
Madden jerked to a stop, as if he’d hit a brick wall.
The kids barely glanced up from their activities at the three newly arrived adults.
Face pale, Eve reached past Madden and closed the office door.
“Are you happy?” Eve wanted to know.
Madden said nothing. Only stared.
“They are my sister’s kids,” Eve said, quiet and firm, visibly keeping herself calm. Poised. “Lark and Landon. They’re mine now.”
“Eve . . .” Madden sputtered. “How?”
“It’s a long story and I don’t have time to tell it tonight.” She caught Skylar’s eye and Skylar watched a shadow of guilt dance across Eve’s expression. Because of her tone, maybe. Or because major life changes had obviously taken place and she hadn’t even called her best friend. Whatever the reason for her guilt, Eve visibly forced herself to soften, though she refused to look at Madden. “I’m selling this place to take care of them. There’s a prospective buyer but . . . he’s hesitant. I haven’t had a chance to build the clientele since I turned it into the lounge. I’ve only gotten the doors open, so . . .” She closed her eyes. “I thought if I performed, word would get around. You know every asshole in this town will show up to see me humbled. If that’s what I have to do to get butts in seats, so be it—”
Madden turned and put his fist through a wall.
While this action made Skylar gasp, Eve, weirdly, didn’t seem the least bit surprised. “I’d like you to leave, Mads,” she said after a gulping breath.
The catcher paced one way, then the other, before giving Eve one final, hard look and kicking his way through the emergency exit. Skylar gaped. What was that behavior about?
Skylar was off-balance and worried on Eve’s behalf, but Madden was . . . incensed.
“Skylar . . .” Eve trailed off while reaching for the silk robe hanging on a nearby chair, finally dropping the fan that hid her brief lingerie and pulling on the garment. She swiped at her eyes and took a long breath, before giving Skylar a quick but crushing hug. “Can we meet up in a day or so? I know you left me a message, but . . . I need to work up a little more courage to talk about this.”
Skylar banded her arms around her best friend, empathy and alarm and love for Eve making her eyes damp. “Of course. You know where to find me.”
“Throwing balls at a tree, probably,” Eve said on an abrupt laugh, her gaze straying toward the exit door. “I’ll call you. We’ll meet somewhere . . . where we won’t be interrupted.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
Eve winked, fanned herself with the feather fan, but the corner of her mouth quivered in an almost unnoticeable way. “I’m always okay, babe.”
Skylar left through the same door as Madden, though he was nowhere to be seen. Feeling disconnected from reality, Skylar circled back around to the front of the establishment while tapping through the process of calling an Uber. Seeing that she had a fifteen-minute wait, she sat on the carved stone bench outside, absently murmuring hello to customers as they walked inside, wondering if they were about to see Eve dance.
While she’d been in the club, the moon had grown clearer behind the surrounding trees, a slight chill flavoring the air. None of the seductive music could be heard from within the Gilded Garden. Only silence. Only the heavy thunking of her own heart. And loneliness started to creep in.
It would be so easy to talk to Robbie, with his perfect balance of humor and honesty, about what had just happened. Wouldn’t it?
Skylar chewed her lip for a moment, judging he’d finished practice and returned home by now. Would it be weird to call him? She’d watched him masturbate this morning, after all. That tended to reduce any and all formalities. If she was being honest with herself, her main concern was that he wouldn’t answer.
Don’t be a wimp. If Eve could give up her dream to raise two kids at age twenty-two, Skylar could call a dude.
Not allowing herself another second of stalling, Skylar called Robbie.
What greeted her ears was a full-on party. No, a rager.
Women and men and music and squeals of laughter.
The clinking of glasses.
She could hardly hear Robbie’s voice over the pandemonium. “Skylar?” shouted his deep voice. “Rocket, you there?”
Calling herself ten kinds of stupid, she hung up without saying a word.
Chapter Nineteen
Two Hours Earlier
Robbie couldn’t put a puck in the back of the net to save his life.
Either he was off his game, or someone had shrunk the goal to fuck with him.
His skates were too tight. The arena was warmer than usual, right?
Waiting for Coach to shut up and blow the whistle, he almost threw his stick in a burst of impatience. Come on. The only way to stop thinking about her was to play. Why did everything have to move in slow motion today of all days? He ground his teeth down hard into his mouthpiece, closed his eyes, and gave in to the inevitability of Skylar’s face and voice and scent materializing in his mind.
Today was the first Page Stakes where I felt like I was on a team.
All the trophies and medals and cups he’s won throughout his life and that might be the most memorable honor he’d ever been given. Having that girl tell him she liked having him on her side. That she felt less alone.
And he’d left.
He’d left with no intention of going back.
“Wake up, shit for brains,” one of his teammates made the mistake of saying on his way past Robbie, a cheap hit from behind nearly causing a distracted Robbie to lose his balance. Apparently, the whistle had blown to resume play—and now he was about to blow, too. He’d always been taught to keep his anger suppressed. To laugh everything off. But nothing was funny today. Not a goddamn thing.
His gloves and stick were on the ice before he could register his own actions. It took him three seconds to catch up with the teammate who’d hit him, grab him by the back of his jersey, spin him around, and sucker punch him in the jaw. Everything exploded into motion at once. The whistle blew, shrill and prolonged, skates moved in their direction, hands twisting in Robbie’s jersey to pull him back, but not before the guy returned the favor in the form of a right cross.
God, it felt incredible. The pain, the distraction, the well-deserved punishment.
He wanted to bleed.
Sig was suddenly in front of Robbie, holding him back, his expression one of pure confusion. Of course, it would be. Everyone laughed at Robbie and he never took offense. He locked down the disappointment, grinned, and kept moving.
Not today.
Maybe not ever again.
Skylar would be cheering him on, too, wouldn’t she? Wasn’t she the one who encouraged him to stop suppressing his anger and discontent? To demand respect from his teammates? Punching someone probably wasn’t what she had in mind, but this was hockey. They had their own methods of getting a point across.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Sig gritted, wrestling with Robbie.
“Call me shit for brains again,” Robbie shouted over his shoulder. “You’ll be watching the playoffs from your hospital bed.”
“Hey.” Burgess skated between the struggling players, blocking Robbie’s view of the offender. “He’s your teammate. That’s enough.”
“Oh, really? Am I on the team, too?” Robbie growled, pushing Sig off and ceasing his attempts to get past him and land another punch. “That doesn’t seem to keep everyone from fucking with me.”
Sig rolled his eyes. “You fuck with everyone, Corrigan.”
“It’s good-natured! I don’t question anyone’s intellect. I don’t disregard anyone.” He took his helmet off and threw it against the glass. “Roll your eyes at me one more time, Sig, I swear to Christ, you’re next.”
Sig’s eyebrows disappeared into his own helmet.
You could have heard a pin drop.
God bless Mailer, though, he finally made it from the other side of the ice and now stood shoulder to shoulder with Robbie, throwing his stick and gloves down, ready to take on the whole team if his roommate asked. “I’ll fight anyone but Burgess,” Mailer said out of the corner of his mouth. “That’s the man.”
“Obviously,” Robbie spat.
Burgess sighed. “In the locker room, Corrigan. Now.”
“Great. Fine. Gods don’t need to practice anyway.”
“We’re talking about practice,” Mailer drawled, giving Robbie a subtle elbow in the ribs. “Listen, we’re about to lose this fight, but that’s fine. I’ve got, like, fifteen girls coming over tonight and the fridge is full of whipped cream cans.”
Nausea rolled in Robbie’s stomach.
Since when did a whipped cream party sound so fucking horrible?
Daydreaming about all the dents he was going to put in the lockers with his fists, Robbie skated off the ice while giving the teammate who’d punched him the middle finger and headed down the tunnel, leaving stunned silence in his wake. That was the one thing that sucked about hockey—skates preventing him from stomping.
As soon as he reached the team rooms, his skates came off and Robbie was in the middle of bashing his left one up against a cinder block wall when Sig and Burgess arrived, looking grim, but kind of . . . sympathetic, too—and sympathy was the last thing Robbie wanted from anyone tonight.
“Couldn’t you guys have let the fight go on a little longer?”
“And risk injuring two players, right before playoffs?” Burgess methodically removed his gloves. “I don’t think so.”
Sig straddled the bench and sat quietly for a handful of seconds, watching Robbie break the blade off his skate and throw the remaining boot down on the ground, kicking it into a locker. “This is about the pitcher, isn’t it? You didn’t listen to us.”
“I’m not required to listen to you,” Robbie bit off. “Jesus, I’m sick of being spoken down to because I’m a rookie. How about you people give me the respect I should have earned just by getting here? Getting here is hard enough.”
Burgess shrugged. “Fine.”
“You could have just asked for some respect sooner.”
Robbie stared. “I hate you both.”
“No, you don’t,” Sig countered patiently. “What happened? Did you tell this girl you’re down bad for her yet?”
“You told me not to!”
“You’re not required to listen to us,” Burgess pointed out. “You just said so yourself.”
Robbie picked up his other still intact skate and slammed it against the wall.
It was either the skate or his head.
The two veterans sat in silence while he got the frustration out of his system, waiting for an explanation, which didn’t come for another full minute, when Robbie exhausted himself, slumped against the wall, and slid down the cinder blocks onto his padded ass.
“She’s in love with someone else. I can’t compete with their . . . history. I can’t compete with him. He’s like you two. He’s someone people take seriously. I’m nothing but some immature player to her. She knew all the worst shit about me before we even met. She’d never go there. She shouldn’t. Even I want better for her . . . than me.”
Burgess looked kind of pissed. “Where is the man from five minutes ago who claimed he deserved respect for getting here because just getting here is hard?”
“He wore himself out. He wants a bath and a lasagna.”
“Okay, let’s start over.” Sig raked both hands through his hair. Man, that guy had such good hair. A normal color, too. So unfair. Life was so unfair. “You went there to pretend date the pitcher so she could catch this other guy’s eye. How is that going?”
“I’ve noticed him noticing her a lot more. Checking her out. How could anyone not check her out? She’s drop-dead gorgeous, even in sweats.” He thought for a second. “Maybe especially in sweats. God.”
“Do you only want her because he wants her?” Burgess asked. “That’s a thing.”
“Nope. I’d much rather he didn’t. I’d saw off an arm.”
“Okay.” Sig chuckled. “You’d saw off an arm for this guy not to notice her, but you’re willing to just accept defeat? Get back up there and win, man. At the very least, give it everything you’ve got. Unless you want to see their marriage notice in the Globe and wonder what would have happened if you’d tried.”
Marriage notice? “I feel sick.”
“Deep breaths.” Burgess had been acting a lot fatherlier lately. He was a father, but ever since he’d hooked up with his daughter’s au pair, he’d been more . . . nurturing. In like a super grudging kind of way, but still. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
Robbie did as he was instructed, eventually calming the storm in his belly caused by the mental image of Skylar and Madden walking down the aisle of a church together. “Is it always this hard when you meet the one?”
“Yes,” Sig and Burgess said in unison.
“Did you ever think life would be easier if you’d just never met her to begin with?”
“No.” Again, in unison.
“Yeah, me neither. She makes me feel like me. The me that isn’t pretending to be someone or something else. Is that stupid?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s like she’s showing me . . . who I am. And I’m just really scared she’s going to leave once she’s done. Once she’s done making me fall in love with her . . . oh fuck.” That four-letter word—“love”—hit the back of his head like a sack of bricks and he dropped his head into his hands. “Fuck. Fuck.”
“Really sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?” Burgess rumbled.
“Damn right.” There was a shadow of something nostalgic, possibly even wistful in Sig’s eyes as he stood up. “I’m only going to talk about this once, all right?” He let out a breath. “Whenever I doubt myself with . . . a girl, I ask myself one question.”
“What is it?” Robbie croaked.
“If there is anyone else in the world who’d work harder to make her happy. As long as the answer to that is no, you’re the right man.” He cleared his throat hard. “So what’s your answer?”
Robbie had no clue. At first, anyway.
Until now, he hadn’t allowed himself to think that far ahead.
Did he know how to make a woman happy? In bed, yeah. He knew very well how to do that, though he didn’t exactly love thinking about being in the sack with anyone anymore. He’d rather sleep on the hard floor beside Skylar’s bed without a chance of sex than accept a sure thing from anyone else. Eye-opening, to say the least, but he’d felt that way since the morning they’d met. Just . . . boom.
He’d been hit by some irreversible magic. Permanently down for the count.
But can you make her happy?
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Think harder, then,” complained Burgess.
“Okay. Jesus.” Robbie massaged his temples, running down the mental list of everything he’d learned about Skylar. “She likes orange juice with no pulp. She likes making lists. She’s obsessed with her planner. Even uses these cute little stickers and colorful tapes . . .”
Sig and Burgess stared back at him, stone-faced.
Robbie cleared his throat and stopped circling around the important stuff. Just put himself out there by proving how deeply she’d scored him. “She’s brave. She’s funny. She’s got this . . . heart of an athlete, but it’s not just winning and competing, she really understands the mentality it takes, how that should be cultivated and coached. She wants to coach . . . no, she will and she’ll be excellent at it. If you gave her a whistle and told her to coach hockey, she’d figure out a strategy by the second period. No lie. She doesn’t take anyone’s shit, but she . . . knows when to pull back and support someone, too. She just wants her family to love her unconditionally. She wants to be loved for being great at softball, but she wants to know she’d be loved without being great at it, too. I don’t know . . . I don’t know if she has that foundation. She should.” His heart was starting to beat in a near-painful way. He was indignant and proud and aching all at the same time. “She didn’t get into Brown. So what?”
With all those words hanging in the atmosphere, echoing back to Robbie in his ears, he suddenly knew. He had to try. He had to try to make Skylar fall in love with him, instead of Madden.
He also knew exactly where to start.
“Get back to Rhode Island and try, Corrigan,” Sig said, correctly interpreting Robbie’s silence as an epiphany. “You might never get this chance again.”
Robbie didn’t get back to the apartment until late.
After practice, he’d showered, changed, and made a stop, promptly getting stuck in the Sox game traffic on the way to his place. By the time he dragged himself into the elevator and hit the button for his floor, he just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep long enough to reset his brain. After all, he’d be driving back to Rhode Island first thing in the morning to win over the woman of his dreams. Rest was key.
