Page 56 of The Art of Catching Feelings
Now it was her turn for her cheeks to heat. Any other time, she could’ve played it off as a minor flub, an error that she knew happened all the time to Battery players and they’d learned to take with good-natured humor.That’s what we get for being the only team without a pluralsname, she’d heard the outfielder Beau say, to which catcher Kendall would say,What about the Red Sox? The White Sox?and Beau would hiss,Red sockssssss, come on, you hear it, same difference.
It would’ve been a little embarrassing, given that she was the team reporter and shouldn’t make such an obvious error, but whatever. She’d live with it.
But given how red her face probably was, the way she was only now hearing the way she’d saidwe’ll get off a quick…No wonder Randy had left with that parting comment.
“Whoops,” she said faintly.
“It happens,” he said. “One guest commentator got through two whole innings onSunday Night Baseballbefore anyone thought to correct him.”
With that, he signaled that he was going to treat her mistake like ithadbeen a run-of-the-mill verbal mix-up, which she appreciated. She should’ve taken that as her cue to shut up, but for some reason, she couldn’t stop the words coming out of her mouth even as her brain looked on in aghast horror.
“Obviously I wouldn’t use anything withbatteries,” she said. “I live in the modern era. All my toys are rechargeable with USB.” That made it sound like she ran a veritable sex shop out of her tiny apartment. “Notalllike I have a million or anything like that. I mean like a couple. That are rechargeable. And then, um, one that’s…”
She trailed off. Her brain had completely given up on her, gotten a new identity and was somewhere down in Mexico.
“…analog.”
He took a step closer to her. “Why are you telling me this?”
“That’s a great question,” she said. A prickling heat had started to spread over her limbs, making her want to sink back down into one of the chairs, but something made her stand her ground. “I have no idea.”
His fingers brushed her skirt, causing the gauzy fabric to flutter against her skin. She could imagine the pressure of his hand at her waist, the firm way he’d hold her, and she swayed slightly toward him.
But the kiss never came. Instead, he pulled back, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“I, uh.” His hazel eyes were dark as they briefly met hers, before he looked away. “I gotta go.”
And she was left standing there in the clubhouse by herself, wondering what the hell had just happened.
TWENTY-THREE
Chris acted totally normal with Daphne in the days after what she started to think of in her head as, alternately,the day I made a complete ass of myselforthe day Chris Kepler almost kissed me I’m positive of it, depending on what time of night she was lying awake thinking about it. He was professional; he answered her interview questions; he gave her a smile and a nod if they passed by each other in the clubhouse. Really, she could have no complaints.
She had complaints.
Somethinghad happened…right? The air around them had been so charged she’d been surprised she didn’t get a static shock when he’d touched her. But then his touch had been so light, a mere whisper of his fingertips on her skirt, that sometimes she wondered if she’d imagined it. Sometimes she felt like she was walking around still waiting for that electricity to neutralize.
And she thought there had been something else building between them, something close to friendship. But was that real, a genuine rapport that developed in the, what, two times he’d given her a ride? Or was that just her projecting because shehadbeen friends with him back when she was texting him as Duckie, a friendship that she’d completely fucked up?
A friendship that had definitely been more than that. A friendship that she missed.
Now, they were on the road in Minnesota. It was Daphne’s first time traveling with the team, and her duties were lighter on the road, because she still reported on injury updates and did postgame interviews with the players, but she didn’t have as much to do with the main broadcast. Today’s game had ended by late afternoon and tomorrow’s didn’t start until almost twenty-four hours later. It would’ve been the perfect opportunity to go out and explore a little, take advantage of this rare chance she had to travel to all these cities she’d never been to.
Instead, she’d stayed in her hotel room all day, reading, until finally she realized she’d barely eaten. She pulled on an old college sweatshirt to disguise the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra, slid her feet into some flip-flops, and made her way down to the hotel bar to see if it was still serving appetizers.
She stopped short when she got there. She had no idea what the players did during any downtime in between games—bench-press more? Look at a clipboard with somex’s ando’s scribbled on it and talk strategy? Go out and try to find a way to blow off steam?
She’d imagined Chris doing all of those things—okay, she was pretty sure thex’s ando’s thing was more football, and she didn’tliketo think of the ways he might be blowing off steam, but the bench-press fantasy wasn’t too bad. Still, in all her speculation she’d never thought he’d just be…sitting at the bar. Alone.
He seemed to be reading something on his phone, his elbow on the counter, his cheek against his fist as he scrolled through the phone with his other hand. Once whatever he was reading made the corner of his mouth twitch slightly, and that was when she realized she’d just been standing there, staring at his profile like a weirdo. She slid onto a barstool at the counter perpendicular tohis—if he looked up, he’d surely see her, but she wasn’t about to take the seat next to him or disrupt whatever solitude he was looking for.
“Get you anything?” the bartender asked, sliding a napkin and a bowl of nuts toward her.
“Oh,” she said, realizing she’d barely had time to think about what she wanted. “Just a Coke to drink. Do you have, like, chips and hummus, anything like that?”
“We have spinach dip.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’s fine. I’ll take one order of that, please.”
