The Hot Streak Page 14

  “Unless he loses tonight, in which case, well, The Streak’s broken.” Missy shrugged.

  Casey was surprised to find she didn’t want that to happen. She still wanted to kill Tyler Hammond, but she didn’t want him to lose. He’s crazy, baseball’s crazy, and I’m crazy, too, she thought.

  * * * *

  The massage and facial were so relaxing that while the masseuse was working on her back, Casey fell asleep. The woman gently woke her to turn over a while later, and she promptly fell asleep again on her back. She hadn’t been sleeping well at all, and she awoke feeling slightly refreshed. She also learned they could walk to the ballpark from the hotel. Missy wanted to take a cab, but Casey convinced her to put on more sensible shoes and they walked down the hill to the park. Off to one side of the ballpark, a bridge that looked a lot like the Brooklyn Bridge spanned the river. The park itself was round and white with colored accents; from a distance it reminded Casey of a big cake.

  Up close it was like most other ballparks. Missy got her ticket at the window and Casey was surprised to find she had not just a ticket but what looked like a backstage pass to wear on a string around her neck. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  Missy helped her put it on. “It says it gives you field, press box, and clubhouse access, which is unusual. Wives usually aren’t allowed in the clubhouse. Why don’t we go to our seats? My guess is Tyler pulled some strings to get it for you, hoping you’ll come down and talk to him.”

  “As if.” Casey had deleted several more text messages from him without reading them, as well as some voice mails. She knew he knew she was doing that, as the message went back to him via the Madisons.

  They made their way to their seats, which were right beside the dugout. The Robins were on the field taking batting practice. As in Atlanta, it didn’t look like Tyler was out there. They hadn’t been sitting there for ten minutes when a reporter recognized Casey and came hurrying over. “Um, Miss Branigan, could we interview you about Tyler Hammond?”

  Casey and Missy exchanged a look.

  The reporter was a fresh-faced kid, probably younger than Tyler, in a very expensive suit that gave him the look of someone who wore clothes his mother picked out. “I know it’s kind of personal, but people are loving the love-at-first-sight angle, you know? So we were thinking if we had a few segments from you, we could play them during the game if he pitched well. You know?”

  Missy leaned over and whispered in Casey’s ear. “The press doesn’t know you’re on the outs.”

  “Shit,” Casey said under her breath. She smiled up at the kid. “Um, I don’t know. What kind of thing would it be?”

  “Oh, er, well, here, these are the questions I have for you.” He pulled a notepad from an inside pocket of his jacket and flipped one page, then showed it to her. The questions read:

  How did you meet?

  Was it love at first sight for you, too?

  Do you think love can really make a difference in a game like baseball?

  How does it feel to be part of a potentially history-making accomplishment? Your name in the baseball history books with his?

  Casey handed the notebook back to the kid. Just thinking about her potential answers had misted her eyes and she tried to speak calmly. “I… I really can’t. Maybe… maybe if he wins tonight, though, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks for considering it.” He hurried away.

  Missy exchanged a look with her. “If he wins tonight?”

  “I’m going down there to give him a piece of my mind,” Casey said, standing up. “The rat bastard. Does he think I’m just going to sit here and be on all the cameras and everything and that will make it okay?”

  Missy waved to someone on the field frantically. Casey wasn’t pleased to see it was Ken. “Come here, come here! Ken, can you take Missy down to the clubhouse?”

  “I don’t actually want to go in there,” she said. “But I want to talk to him.”

  “Well, I… ” Ken stammered.

  “You owe her,” Missy growled.

  Ken sighed. “Yeah, I do. Come on.” He held his hand up so Casey could take it and climb over the short wall onto the field. “I’ll take you up the tunnel from the dugout to there.”

  The dugout was empty except for a bat boy who didn’t pay them any attention. All the Robins players were on the field taking batting practice or shagging fly balls. Ken and Casey made their way up a narrow concrete hallway to a wider concourse. Across that hall was a heavy metal door marked “Visitors.”

  “Stay here,” Ken said. “He’s in the bullpen warming up right now, I’m sure. I’ll go around to there and tell him you’re here.”

  Casey found herself standing there for what felt like quite a while. Various employees and other traffic made their way past her, including some large golf carts moving kegs of beer and other supplies, but no one paid her any attention. At one point a gray-haired man in a security guard’s uniform came by and blinked at her, but after a glance at the tag around her neck, he meandered on.

  The door burst open with a loud bang as it hit the wall and Tyler flew into her arms. Well, more accurately, he flew at her and she put her arms up in defense and ended up in a bear hug. “Oh God, you’re here, you’re here. Thank you. Oh my God, thank you.”

  She pushed at him until finally she pinched him hard in the ribs through the many layers of his uniform and he jumped back with a yelp. “Tyler! You asshole! Keep your fucking hands off me!” He smelled like grass and sweat and laundry detergent.

  He stared wide-eyed for a second. “Okay.” He looked like he really didn’t know what to do with his hands, then, and he jammed them into his back pockets. “Sorry. I was just… I couldn’t help it. I’ve been dying to see you.”

  “I bet.”

  “No really, Case.” Now he was looking at the concrete floor between them, head hanging. “I just… I know I fucked up, big time.”

  “This isn’t like grade school, Tyler, where you can just promise to try harder next time and everything’s okay.” She crossed her arms.

  “Okay, I know that, I do. But I have to start somewhere. I figure an apology is a good place for that.” He suddenly looked up as the sound of something crunching reached their ears. “Oh shit, here comes the team. Look, I have to go back in there, but I’ll be back. I’ll come talk to you in the top of the first, okay? While we’re batting I’ll have time. I just have to ask you to promise me one thing.”

  “What?” She turned and looked down the tunnel and sure enough, the players’ cleats crunched against the fake grass-style carpet, getting closer.

  “I need you to be totally, completely honest with me, okay?”

  “You need me… ? “She stared incredulous. “Tyler, you’re the one who hid things, who… ”

  “I know. I know. Total disclosure from me, too, okay? Both of us, the whole story, the true story, we don’t hold anything back, okay?”

  “Okay, but… ” But the rest of the team had reached them and Tyler let himself be carried by the tide back into the clubhouse. Mad Dog saw her standing there and gave her a grim nod of acknowledgement.

  Then she was standing alone at the top of the tunnel again. A few minutes later, Mad Dog came back out and handed her a cold, unopened bottle of water.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” That was all he said before he disappeared back into the locker room.

  Casey found herself pacing up and down the corridor some. In a little nook off to one side, she eventually found a white bucket that had only a few dirty, worn-out baseballs in it. She dumped them out and carried the bucket back to the spot by the door, turned it upside down and sat on it. She cracked open the water and took a sip. The summer heat of Cincinnati that had not seemed like much on the breezy walk to the ballpark as the sun set now seemed to be seeping into her as she sat there.

  There was a clatter as the team emerged again, heading down to the dugout. As Tyler passed her, he said “National Anthem!” and
gave her a thumbs-up.

  About five minutes later, he came hurrying back up the tunnel. “Okay, sorry about that. We get fined if we miss the anthem.”

  She stood and crossed her arms. “You sure it isn’t just that you’re superstitious that if you miss the anthem, you might lose? You’ve heard it before every game you’ve won, after all.”

  He shook his head. “How about that promise? I promise. Casey, I’ll answer any question you have. I’ll tell you everything I’m thinking. All of it, the truth, completely.” His eyes were wide and he looked like he wanted to chew his lip and was only stopping himself by sheer force of will.

  “All right, I promise.” She lifted her hand like she was taking the Boy Scout pledge, but she was serious. “So? You were trying to apologize and doing a crap job of it.”

  He leaned against the wall like he didn’t have the strength to hold himself up. “Yeah. Okay. I was wrong not to tell you about Linda. We are trying to get divorced. Truthfully. We did most of the paperwork, or, our lawyers did, but there’s a last few things we both need to sign, and well, you probably know by now, we never signed them. Um, I was supposed to sign them when we were in Tampa during spring training and I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I… I don’t know. I just couldn’t. I gave her the house, all that stuff, but I just couldn’t put my name on that paper without talking to her one last time, you know. She wasn’t there. Her lawyer brought me the papers. Her lawyer looked like he was going to kill me. But then she didn’t call me to bitch me out. Linda, I mean. So I started to wonder if maybe it was a reprieve. Maybe she had second thoughts after all. Maybe we had a chance, and a break from each other was all we needed. I e-mailed her to say, you know, she was there when we tied the knot, so I really wanted her there when we untied it.”

  Casey gritted her teeth. “Are you telling me you’re still in love with her?”

  “I’m getting to that! One thing at a time. No, no, I’m not in love with her, but at the time I didn’t know that.” His head jerked up as a sharp whistle came echoing up the tunnel. “Damn it. That’s the bat boy telling me I have to get my ass down there to pitch. You’ll stay here, right? I’ll come back up next inning, okay?”

  She sat back down on the bucket. “Okay.” She tried to imagine Tyler arguing with Linda. It’s not just a piece of paper. It’s our real marriage, he’d say. She could imagine it in his voice. Was Linda one of those “real” women he always said he prized, or was she the supermodel type? Casey had no idea.

  From here, she also couldn’t tell what was happening in the game. She could hear the bursts of music, some applause. If Tyler was pitching, applause was probably bad since they weren’t at home. Oh, who the hell cares how the game is going? But after all those months of hanging on every pitch, she found she couldn’t just ignore it.

  She texted Missy. What’s happening out there?

  A text came back almost immediately. Where are you?

  Right outside the clubhouse in the tunnel. Tyler says he’ll talk to me while the Robins are batting.

  What did he say so far?

  Nothing much. Divorce never finalized because Linda sent her lawyer and he wanted her to come face to face. So what’s happening in the game?

  Tyler has struck out one, then walked a guy, oh look, double play. One more out and then he’ll be on the way to you.

  Casey sighed. About five minutes later, Tyler came back up the tunnel, out of breath and sweating. “Okay, so where were we?”

  “You weren’t in love with her but you didn’t know that,” Casey said, standing up.

  “Right.” He took a deep breath and then went on. “Yeah, so, I haven’t been in love with her for a while, but… that didn’t mean I wasn’t trying to be optimistic and hope that things could still work out, you know?”

  “Just like you’re doing now?” she demanded.

  He blinked. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, if I didn’t think there was some chance to work it out between you and me… should I even bother, Casey? Do you love me?”

  Now it was Casey’s turn to blink. She’d just made a promise to be completely honest. That meant with herself and with him. “Yeah, Tyler, I love you. The question is if I can keep loving you when you’ve broken it all so badly.”

  He nodded. “That’s fair. For what it’s worth, Case, I meant every word I said on TV. I fell for you really hard right away. I mean, hard. I could barely believe it when you agreed to go to that game, and then me skipping out on the team early? I know they all say I do crazy things, but I’d never done something like that.”

  “How big was the fine?” Casey asked suddenly. “You told me before you were fined, but you didn’t say how much.”

  “Oh, um. I think it was ten thousand dollars. Because they were really, really pissed at me and it wasn’t my first offense. The fine goes in the form of a donation to the team charitable foundation, so it’s not like it really matters. But, yeah.”

  Casey just shook her head, thinking Monopoly money. But still. He’d essentially paid ten grand to take her on a date.

  “Anyway, I really fell hard for you, and just… well, you know how things went that night.”

  “You didn’t even tell me the truth that night,” she said. “That you lived at the Ritz. That you ate there almost every night. You said ‘oh, I come here a lot.’”

  He had the good grace to look guilty at that. “I just… didn’t want you to think I was pathetic and lame. Ah, shit.” There was the whistle again. “Back in a few.”

  He jogged back down the tunnel and Casey finished off the bottle of water.

  He’d given her a lot to think about and now she had ten to fifteen minutes to wait for him to come back. If he was telling the truth, if he really was keeping to his promise and telling her everything, then he really was as good as divorced from his wife, wasn’t he? Could she really blame him for not having signed the final papers yet?

  But was she in love with the real Tyler, or the Tyler who tried to put on a good image for her, who didn’t tell her about where he lived because he was afraid of what she might think? Didn’t she know him better than that, though?

  She texted Missy. Is it stupid that the person I want most to comfort me when my heart hurts is Tyler himself?

  The answer came back. Not stupid at all. Three outs, here he comes.

  Tyler leaned against the cinderblock wall next to her. “Okay. I’m sorry about that, too. The Ritz thing, I mean. There really isn’t much else I hid, though, Case. You got to know me really fast.”

  She shook her head. “What about the whole fact that you had a winning streak going?”

  His face fell. “Um, yeah, that was the other big thing. But I couldn’t tell you about it.”

  She crossed her arms again. “Because of superstition? Like with a no-hitter?”

  “No, because it would have meant telling you how in love with you I was.” He shook his head, as if he hardly believed how stupid he’d been. “And I didn’t want to do that and scare you off. Because I thought, this girl, maybe she just wants a summer fling with a ballplayer, you know? I just wasn’t sure. You didn’t… you never said anything really… commitment-y.”

  Casey’s jaw dropped. “What did you call all that about… about… about sex without a condom and being exclusive with each other?”

  He stared at her. “You never said it was because you loved me. You seemed to think it was really hot, but you never said anything to me. I got… I had the feeling you were still trying to figure out how you felt about me. Even when we met up with your parents. It really seemed to me like you were not really sure. Am I totally off base?”

  “Yes.” But Casey bit her lip. Total honesty, remember. She was starting to realize why he’d made her promise it, too. “Well, no. You’re not off base. I was… kind of trying to figure it out for myself at the time.”

  The damn whistle jarred her out of her train of thought, though. He touched her lightly on the shoulder before running
back down the tunnel.

  Casey kicked the clubhouse door as soon as he was out of sight. Was it her fault? Because she hadn’t been able to tell how she felt, he’d held back how he felt?

  No. No, this is not my fault. She banged her fist on the door, and then was surprised when it opened. “Can I help you?” A short man in a polo shirt with the Robins logo on it was standing here.

  She was red-faced and stammered. “Oh-h-h, n-no. Sorry. That was an accident. But um, you don’t happen to have more bottled water in there?” She held up her empty bottle. This arguing stuff was thirsty work.

  “I can refill it if you want,” he said. “Water or Gatorade?”

  “Just water, thank you.” She handed him the bottle, and he shut the door in her face.

  A minute later, he reappeared. “Here you go, miss.”

  She sipped it gratefully as she sat on the bucket. Then she texted Missy. Is it my fault if I didn’t know how I felt, whereas he actively hid how he felt?

  Of course not, came the answer. How were you supposed to figure out how you felt if he was hiding from you?

  That seemed to make a lot of sense, so when Tyler came back during the top of the fourth inning, that was what she told him. “Don’t you dare blame me for this mess. I couldn’t tell you how I felt because I was trying to figure it out, and how did you expect me to figure it out if you were hiding your part of the relationship from me? No wonder I was so confused.”

  “But if I’d known you wouldn’t run away, I would have told you sooner,” he said plaintively.

  “So what was I supposed to say? ‘I promise I won’t run away if, by the way, you might be hiding something from me’? Tyler, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Um, I guess not. But it’s still true. I wanted to tell you. But I was afraid.” He slid down the wall and sat on the concrete floor. He looked tired and worn, and his uniform was sweaty. “I wanted to tell you about how I felt, and I figured The Streak wasn’t probably going to keep going, though, you know? I figured I’d lose a game, or the bullpen would blow one at least, and then I could at least forget about that part of it, and just deal with the normal relationship issues, you know?”