“I would have assumed you were a strawberry shortcake kind of guy.”
“Why would you assume that?” I ask her.
“You’re not quite vanilla, definitely not commanding enough to be a chocolate lover, which leaves you as a strawberry shortcake.”
I pause and face her. “If you’re referring to how I fuck, then you’ve got me completely mislabeled. There’s nothing strawberry shortcake about me.”
Her eyes roam me again, more intensely this time. And when she’s done, she says, “Yeah, maybe I am mislabeling you, but I guess I won’t ever know.” Then she starts moving forward again.
I fall in line with her strides and drape my arm over her shoulders. “Yeah, you probably won’t,” I say, just to see her reaction.
“Firsthand experience with you in the sack, yeah, I think I’ll pass.”
“Same,” I say. “A night with you in my bed doesn’t quite scream a good time.”
“Not even close.” She reaches up to my hand on her shoulder and links our fingers together. “Glad we established that. Would hate to put in all this time just to get back to your place and be bored out of my mind while you attempted to pelvic thrust in my direction.”
“Yeah, saving ourselves a shit load of time.” I pull her in closer so her side is right up against mine.
When we turn the corner, the convenience store comes into view. I open the door for her, and she goes straight to the freezer section where the individually wrapped ice creams are. We each grab a Drumstick, and when she goes to pay at the register, I say, “I can take care of it.”
She holds her hand up to me. “No, this one is on me. I owe you after all.” She pulls a five from her back pocket and tells the cashier to keep the change before picking up our ice creams and walking out of the store.
Across the street is a small park, so we make our way in that direction and find a bench to share. She hands me my ice cream and then unwraps hers.
“What’s your favorite part of a Drumstick?” she asks.
“The bottom, obviously,” I answer. “Where all the fudge has collected. Easily the best bite.”
“Hmm, maybe you’re not so bad after all, Bisley.”
“Not so bad, huh? Was I a monster before this?”
“Borderline eel-man.”
“Eel?” I laugh out loud as I drape my arm over the back of the bench while she turns toward me and sits cross-legged. “What kind of eel are we talking about? Because if it’s an electric eel, then I’m game.”
“Electric eel?” She lets out a large guffaw. “Ha! You wish. You’re more like part eel, part salamander.”
“Flattering,” I reply, which makes her smirk. “So you’ve been here for a year and didn’t bother to harp on me about my batting cage videos. What’s that about?” I take a large bite of my Drumstick, the cold of the ice cream lighting up my mouth.
“I told you, if we crossed paths, then we did. I wasn’t about to search you out.”
“Why not?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Not really into forming attachments. I kind of let fate drive me forward at this point in my life.”
“Okay, so what do you think about fate bringing you to the bar tonight and to my table to join my team?”
“I think fate was looking out for you.”
“How so?” I ask.
She licks her ice cream, and I try not to watch closely as her tongue drags along the cold cream. “Well, you were surrounded by fans, and fans who hate you, so the stakes were high for you, and embarrassment was at risk. Fate brought me to you so you didn’t fall flat on your face at trivia night in front of the raucous haters.”
“I see. So basically, you’re saying that fate brought us back together so you could save me.”
She pats my leg. “Glad you see it that way.”
“If that’s the case, I should have bought you ice cream, not the other way around.”
“Not true. I ate half of your burger and fries and stole your beer, so, yeah, I owed you. I might have been brought here tonight to resurrect your image, but I’m not blind to the fact that money is money, and I owed you a bit.”
“You owe me nothing.”
“Not how I see it.” She bites into her cone, and a flake of chocolate falls to the corner of her mouth. Reaching out with my thumb, I snag it before sucking the chocolate into my mouth. “Smooth,” she says with a wiggle of her brows.
“Maybe we’re even now.”
She shakes her head. “It’s going to take a lot more than you dusting some chocolate off my mouth for us to be even after the performance I gave tonight. But it’s really adorable that you’re attempting to balance the playing field.”
“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment. So what have you been doing in Chicago?”
“Like job-wise?” she asks.
“Yeah. Or just in general.”
“Well, when I left Phoenix, I didn’t really have any attachments to jobs, so I found a waitressing one out here. It pays well, and I’ve just been enjoying life. Nichole and I go to a lot of concerts. We’ll hang out down by the lake often, too. During the winter—even though it was frigid—we made the most of it and did some ice skating, went to some off-Broadway shows, and even took a short trip to San Diego, where I had the best tacos of my life.”
“What kind of tacos?”
“Shrimp.” She kisses her fingers. “Chef’s kiss. Freaking delightful. Oh, and Nichole and I have been searching out the best place to get brunch around Chicago. Have you noticed my mimosa posts? Those are all from different brunch spots we’ve tried.”
“I have noticed them. So did you find a good place?”
She bites into her cone and then says, “There’s this rooftop restaurant downtown that moonlights as a nightclub, and I swear it’s the best-kept secret. The brunch is phenomenal, the views are everything, and because it’s also a nightclub, the breakfast drinks are a bit stronger than usual, which adds to the experience. It’s called Bar Seventy.”
“Oh, you know, Banner has been there a few times. He’s told me about it.”
“It’s worth all the rage. You haven’t been?”
I shake my head. “Not much time to do anything during the baseball season, especially in the morning. That’s when I usually visit kids at the Children’s Hospital.”
She clutches her chest. “You do?”
“Yeah. There are a lot of Bobbies fans there, so when I don’t have an early game, I try to visit as much as possible, or do whatever is on the list of charitable visits the Bobbies have created. And when I’m not doing that, I’m in the gym or in the cages, getting reps in.”
“Baseball really is your life, isn’t it?”
“It’s been that way for a really long time,” I answer as I lick up a drop of ice cream dripping down my cone.
“Do you ever wish you had a life outside of baseball?”
“All the time,” I answer truthfully. “I miss out on a lot of things in life because I’ve been consumed by my goals. And there are times at night when I stare up at the ceiling, unable to sleep, wondering if it’s all worth it, especially now hearing about your adventures. I can’t remember the last time I took a vacation or focused on something other than my swing, my reps in the gym, or what I put into my body. Sometimes I just wish I could . . . relax.”