I love her. She loves me.
And we live happily ever after, right?
Isn’t that how it works?
Is the charmed life I’ve lived up until now about to somehow get even better?
That’s what it feels like as we fly back across the country, sitting side by side in the massive seats on the Eagles’ private jet (which she nearly refused to get on and I had to call Stew, interrupting him in the middle of his quest to get her un-fired, from the tarmac to insist she hitch a ride back with us).
She’s got her laptop open, scrolling through some documentation she has on the current Yankees roster with one hand and the other is firmly in mine.
We’re probably over Kansas or Missouri when her fingers squeeze, tightly and not that affectionately.
“What’s up?” I ask, leaning into her a bit.
She points to a message on her screen from an unknown number with a +81 at the beginning.
A Japanese number.
—Daniel Wilson is no longer my agent. I will be in touch soon.
Kai Nakamura. It has to be.
I knew that kid was special. He saw through Wilson and fired his ass before they even inked a deal. It takes guts. It takes balls. And that’s the kind of player I want playing for me for the next dozen years.
“It worked,” she whispers. “The plan, taking him to the game, introducing him to the boys. It . . . fucking worked. I knew it.”
Lifting our joined hands to my mouth, I press hard there in place of what I really want to do, pull her out of her seat and into my lap and kiss her until she’s breathless from it and – if it were just the two of us in this cabin – join the mile high club right here in my seat.
But we’ve traumatized poor Javy and Gregory enough for one day.
She’s still staring at the screen, expressionless, until she laughs.
“What?” I ask, confused, and she turns to me, laughing so hard that tears start to form at the corners of her eye.
“I managed,” she says, inhaling and trying to fit her words in around her laughter, “I managed to nail the top free agent in the last five years and get fired in the process, only to get a job with the cross-town rivals. We’ll probably have to face him in the World Series in October. God, baseball is always so incredible, even off the field.”
I think back to Stew, waiting for us in Brooklyn, probably jumping through a shit ton of hoops to get in front of Hannah Vinch today after she axed Frankie, to try and make it right. I know my old manager. I know what he’s capable of. And I know it won’t be long until the news that Nakamura fired the top agent in the game is everywhere.
And the thought pops into my head and then out of my mouth before I can stop it.
“What if you didn’t leave?”
“What?” she asks, brow furrowed. It hadn’t occurred to her,at least not yet. And I’d be thrilled to be ahead of that incredible mind of hers just once, if it didn’t mean what I think it means. It didn’t occur to her because, as far as she’s concerned, she’s already gone.
And why not? After the way Vinch treated her. Of course she wouldn’t really consider coming back, not when she has another option and that option is actually a major step up from where she is right now.
But it’s too late. I can’t take the words back, so I double down.
“Stew’s going to talk ownership around, especially now that Nakamura is probably headed to Brooklyn. What if you stayed with . . . us.”
Not us, me. Stay with me.
She knows that’s what I’m saying.
Stay with me. Win a championship with me. Marry me.
All of those things. Together.
