Fire season unwritten ru.., p.28
Fire Season (Unwritten Rules), page 28
“On me, yeah, that’s it,” Reid says. “All over me.”
Charlie comes like that, on Reid’s stomach and chest, a rush of sensation that unfurls within him, collapsing forward.
“I wish we could stay like this,” Charlie breathes. He doesn’t know if Reid heard him until his hips stutter and his hands grip hard on Charlie’s back, fingertips pressing, fervent, as he comes.
Charlie eases himself off, rolling away, Reid’s face against his arm. He shivers occasionally, the aftershocks of orgasm.
“That was...” Reid laughs a little, rubbing his forehead damply against Charlie’s shoulder.
“Good?” Charlie supplies.
“You know it was. I need to go take care of that.” He gestures to the condom but doesn’t move for long enough that Charlie wonders if he’s falling asleep.
“You all right?”
“You’re expecting me to talk right now?” He kisses Charlie on his shoulder before levering himself up with a grunt. He comes back a few minutes later, then Charlie gets up to do the same.
He lies down when he returns, wrapping himself around Reid, his chest pressed against Reid’s back.
Sounds begin to intrude. Their teammates caught up in drunken celebration that will likely last all night. A cheer as someone makes a toast, the dull thump of music.
“I wish we’d done this earlier,” Charlie says.
“Won the division?”
“You know what I mean.”
Charlie drifts, not sleeping, not fully awake, Reid held and warm. His attention cycles through all the places they’re touching: the calluses of Reid’s feet against his ankles, his stomach against the muscles of Reid’s back, the curl of Reid’s hands over his.
After a while, Reid says, “I want to remember how I’m feeling right now.” He inches himself backward, impossibly closer to Charlie’s chest.
Charlie presses his mouth to the base of his neck, rubbing his beard a little to hear Reid’s answering murmur of contentment. The kind of touch where he’s not sure what he’s trying to say, only that if he doesn’t, it’ll be dishonest somehow.
“I tried to ignore this, at least a little,” Reid says. “So that I don’t regret it when I leave.” He turns, lying on a squashed-down pillow and looking at Charlie, eyes dark in the half-light. “I want to be with you. You should know that.”
“I know.” Charlie kisses him, his mouth against Reid’s, an urgent, declarative sort of kiss like the last out of a game. “You should know I love you.”
Reid touches him, the divot below Charlie’s lower lip, at the imperfect border of his beard, the oversized plain of his chest. Places that feel more intimate, somehow, than when Reid was inside him.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve said that to anybody,” Reid says. “It took a long time before I could say that and really know what it meant.”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to.”
But Reid shakes his head. “Let me say it.” Charlie smiles at that, a slow involuntary smile that Reid mirrors. “That’s how I felt before—loved.”
“Good.”
“I always think about how I want more time, that I want all those years back. I wish I hadn’t gotten hurt, that I got my shit together earlier. That I was, I don’t know, someone else.”
“I know what you mean. But if it took all of that for you to get here, I’m not happy it happened. But I’m happy you’re here now.”
“God, I love you,” Reid says, with enough feeling that Charlie kisses him again, arms around him, holding on.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Reid
The next day in the clubhouse, they’re the only ones not nursing hangovers. Everyone’s moving a little sore like they danced all night in the Houston humidity and got both drunk and thoroughly dehydrated. It’s mostly quiet, except for guys cursing every little noise. A few wince when Reid greets them, particularly Glasser, who’s green with nausea and sipping an enormous cup of coffee.
“I guess I missed quite a party,” Reid says.
Glasser shrugs, but doesn’t ask where he was, either. There’s a mark under one of his ears, unobtrusive enough to be from his catcher’s mask. Except he keeps covering it with his hand like he doesn’t want Reid to mention it. Once, then again, to the point where Reid almost claps him on the shoulder the way Glasser did during the game. To reassure him that whatever secrets he has, Reid will keep them too.
“I wanted to say thanks for yesterday,” Reid says. “For trusting me about that curveball—a lot of guys wouldn’t have.”
“Oh, um.” Glasser’s apparently rendered speechless by this show of sincerity or his lingering hangover. “I guess it worked out.”
“I’ve also been meaning to say something to you.”
Glasser gets a look of unguarded panic that he tries to cover with a long swig of coffee.
“You look like I just called you to the principal’s office.”
At least he laughs at that.
“That game when I hurt my leg, and I was all over the place. I should’ve let the team know I was injured instead of trying to throw. So I’m sorry.”
A long blink like that’s the last thing Glasser was expecting. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I could’ve really done some damage.”
Glasser tilts his head from side to side, an unthinking gesture that reminds Reid of his grandma. “I’ve taken a middling fastball to the chest before.”
“Hey, it would have been a great fastball.”
“I’m sure it would have.” Which has the shape of an insult, Glasser actually kind of smiling. So Reid laughs and tells him to drink his damn coffee and goes off in search of Stephanie.
He finds her in one of the visiting staff offices, hair bright under its yellowish lighting. She looks less hungover than the rest of them, maybe from abstention, maybe from a strong constitution.
She asks him how he is, though he’s both well rested—having slept in Charlie’s palatial bed—and tired from the season. He tells her the latter. “I was wondering: that article about my recovery—any chance you got time to work on it now?”
“I should.” She scrolls through her phone, then moves to sit in the chair next to where he’s sitting. The desk has an unopened box of tissues. She reaches for it, peeling off the cardboard strip and pulling out a handful.
“Those for me?”
“For whoever.” She sets a recorder on her phone, telling him she’ll be taking notes as well, that anything he says will be held in confidence. That he’ll get to review the piece as many times as he wants. “I should tell you—I talked to the reporter from the East Bay Tribune. We had some words about what he wrote.”
Reid was already apprehensive; now his palms flood with nervous sweat. “He wasn’t entirely wrong. Most guys can’t get by throwing only one kind of pitch.”
“He’s a smart guy. Smart enough that they’re gonna pull him off the Elephants’ beat next year.”
“He got fired?”
“A promotion. Sports editor and columnist. Sometimes that’s the way things shake out.”
So he gets a better job and Reid gets to bare his guts. Typical. “Yeah, sometimes it is.”
“You ready to do this?” Stephanie adjusts her tablet in her hand, fingers gripping a stylus.
“Probably not. But I want to anyway.”
They talk for longer than he expects, an interview that’s more like a conversation, the two of them trading stories about growing up with big families and all their rituals and expectations. She avails herself of the tissues a few times.
“That bad?” he asks, handing her another.
“No. Usually, when we’re doing stuff like this, it’s because someone said something awful on Twitter. So it’s just different.”
“I don’t want to be a sob story. I mean, you tell people you have a problem, and you get pity and avoidance. I don’t want either one of those.”
“Can I use that in the article?” she says, blotting her face.
“You really never turn it off, do you?”
“Some of us don’t get that option, even when we want to.” She considers the wad of tissues she’s holding. “It’s your story. I just want to help you tell it.”
After they’re done, he drags himself back into the clubhouse wearing the kind of exhaustion that blends with the rest of them. Charlie is on the couch, flipping through channels on the muted TV. Reid drops to sit next to him. Someone left a fuzzy team-branded blanket that doesn’t smell too terrible. He wraps it around himself, then lies down, head against Charlie’s thigh. Enough to make Charlie glance around, though half the team is sprawled similarly in padded rolling chairs, a few guys having pushed two together and resting that way.
“I did an interview with Stephanie for that article,” Reid says.
“You doing okay?”
“No. I mean, yes. It was hard talking about that stuff.” He chews his lip. “I wanted to do it today, maybe to prove that I wasn’t out partying. Maybe just because we won.”
“You mean, because you got the save and we won.” Charlie’s hand drifts to his hair, perhaps too much in the clubhouse, even if it won’t be visible unless someone is standing directly over them. “I’m sorry that it ended up being like this. I know you didn’t want to talk with anyone about it.”
“She’s gonna have it done before the end of the postseason. Might be good—that way if teams are interested, they know I’m different than how I was.”
“Anyone with sense can see that.”
“Yeah, well, not everyone takes the time to look.”
Charlie smiles at that. “Their loss.”
* * *
They’re back in California when Stephanie sends him a draft of the article. It’s sort of hard to read on a phone screen, so he asks Charlie to borrow his laptop.
Charlie’s face goes a brief, incandescent red. “Uh...”
“You think you got anything in your browser history I ain’t seen before?”
“It’s not that. Well, not just that.”
“Let me guess—I’m gonna find searches for ‘hottest New Jersey accents’ or ‘over-the-hill relief pitchers.’”
Charlie hands him the laptop with a new blank browser window open. “Let me know when you’re done.”
Reid goes to the guest room to review the article in private. He emerges half an hour later, throat like sandpaper, eyes sore from swiping at them.
“Would you take a look at this? I want to make sure I’m not overreacting.” He gives Charlie the computer, then sits down next to him, rereading over his shoulder.
The article starts with him growing up in New Jersey, starting with his “just in case” conversion, then tracing his way through childhood as an undersized kid who only wanted to throw.
I used to bug my cousins to play catch with me for hours, until they’d sigh, and say, “C’mon, Mikey, aren’t you sick of this yet?” But I never was.
“Mikey?” Charlie asks.
“I didn’t start going by Reid until I was in the minors. There’s about five dozen Michael Giordanos from New Jersey, and I wanted something easier to find press clippings for. Of course, it means that I can’t ever bury that fucking ‘implosion’ video.”
The article continues: His first big-league game, pitching for the Swordfish in their old park, a half-converted football stadium. How he celebrated with gifts his parents sent, as only New Jersey parents could, a bottle of blended red wine and a box of cookies.
About the loneliness of the road, drinking beer in various hotel rooms for something to do. How that turned into drinking just to drink.
I had two parts to my day, playing baseball and staying drunk. The thing about drinking is that it’s like baseball: it’s a lot of boring, repetitive work. But the more I did it, the better I got at it.
About how he got insomnia during the times he tried to get sober, spending all night on the couch, then pitching on almost no sleep.
I watched a lot of horror movies; I felt like I was becoming something from one.
“Are you sure you want me to keep reading this?” Charlie asks.
“Is it that bad?”
“No, that’s not it.” And he continues reading.
By the time I hurt my shoulder pitching, most of my family wasn’t really talking to me. I spent time at my grandma’s apartment in New Jersey recovering. One night I snuck out—I used to go to bars, but this time it was to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at a community center nearby. I was shaking by the time I got there, I was so nervous. The place where I grew up, everyone knows everyone else. I was worried someone was going to recognize me and tell my parents that that’s where I was.
But it was worse when I didn’t know anybody. People got up, and called themselves “alcoholics,” and all I could think was that that wasn’t me. That maybe I had an issue, but that it wasn’t who I was. Or if I was, I definitely didn’t want anyone else calling me that.
I was pretty upset when I got home. My grandma thought I was out drinking, so she fixed me some soup. I just sat there thinking about how much I put her through. How she supported me through everything, and here she was making me chicken soup because she didn’t know what else to do.
When I talk about having an alcohol use disorder, most people want to hear stories about the bad times or the wild times, or about how I hit rock bottom. But I never felt worse than I did sitting there, sober, watching her try to love me even when I didn’t love myself.
I think I scared her because I started crying, which was something I only did if I got really hurt growing up. And I told her that I might possibly have a problem with alcohol. And I’ll never forget what she said to me. That I should get some help, “just in case.”
I wish I could say that that was the end of my recovery, but it wasn’t. It took a lot of work to get to be where I am now. The idea of going to therapy isn’t something that guys talk a lot about in the clubhouse, so it took a while for me to realize that was even an option. Treatment can take a lot of forms, both the physical and psychological aspects, and what I found was that there isn’t something that works for everyone. I had to find what worked for me.
It took even longer for me to realize that the therapy wasn’t the hard part—I love my therapist, even if she’s a Federals fan. The good part about being a journeyman is that I get to start over. It’s also the worst part. I had to get used to the fact that the game can be really lonely, and that, as ballplayers, we’re not supposed to talk about how that affects us mentally. That swallowing how I felt all the time was normal, but it wasn’t healthy.
It’s funny, but I feel the least alone when I’m out on the mound, sixty feet away from everyone else. I’ve played in some great cities with some great teammates. If I don’t ever pitch again, I have to remember how lucky I am to have done this at all...
Charlie sets the computer on the coffee table, next to a box of tissues, which he pulls one of. There’s a long silence, the house creaking around them, breathing and settling, Avis asleep in her crate, muttering as she chases invisible prey.
Reid got a glass of water earlier. He drinks from it now, soothing to his too-dry throat. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done this. The article.” Because it’s too raw, too personal, like Stephanie grabbed something close to his spine and yanked it out of him, displaying it to the world.
“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to,” Charlie says. “But it’s a good article.”
“I keep thinking about if I don’t make it in baseball. If I just go back to New Jersey or whatever. If people would even care.”
“I would. And I think other guys would too, even if they don’t say it. I know it’s not the same—I was in high school before someone noticed that it wasn’t just that I hated being around new people or in unfamiliar situations, but that I was actually panicking.”
“You seem to be doing okay now.”
“So do you,” Charlie says. “I mentioned to the team that I needed a medical dispensation for some anxiety meds. I got it, but no one asked if I needed anything else.”
“They offered me sleeping pills when I said I sometimes get insomnia. Even knowing that I had a use disorder, and it was just like, ‘say the word.’”
“That’s, uh, really fucked-up.”
Reid laughs, shoulders a little lighter. “Yeah, you know something’s fucked-up when you’re saying it’s fucked-up. But yeah, it’s pretty fucked-up. I’m gonna wait on this article. See how I feel about it whenever we’re done for the season.” His bracelet’s on. He caresses the glass beads on it meant to dissuade the evil eye. A superstitious thing that might seem foolish if Gordon hadn’t banned everyone from saying championship in the clubhouse lest it jinx their chances.
“Even if you decide not to go with that article, I love you, and I’m proud of you for doing this.”
And Reid doesn’t know what to say other than to run his thumb over Charlie’s hand, feeling the familiar ridges of his knuckles, enjoying the tightness in his own chest that has nothing to do with worry.
* * *
It takes Christine’s house in Marin being filled with a hundred people for Reid to really register its size. The place is enormous, even with their teammates and team personnel and all their kids and spouses and friends.
The party’s been going for a few hours. Food steams in chafing dishes. Beer chills in metal tubs full of ice. Reid spends most of his time drifting between tables of their teammates or hanging out with Glasser, who’s also unaccompanied, playing Jewish geography to see how they’re related.
Eventually Reid holds up his empty soda can. “I’m gonna go for a refill.” But the only thing left in the coolers is beer. He makes his way into the kitchen. Christine is there surveying the damage—overflowing trash bags, the lids of chafing dishes. The room smells like lemon disinfectant and hops.
