She gives herself a little shake and a droplet runs off the tip of her nose and lands on her bottom lip, where her tongue darts out to catch it.
A jolt runs through me, the same kind of feeling I used to get when a runner would arrive just behind the throw home and blast into me to try and knock the ball loose.
That’s what that kiss felt like two years ago. At least some things haven’t changed.
Thank God she’s already turning and stepping into the car, balancing on those heels as she climbs into theSUVand then slides across the backseat to make room for me.
“You never answered my question, Sullivan.”
“What?” she asks, like my voice pulled her out of some deep thought. Her mind always seemed to be whirring at a hundred miles an hour and I never could get a read on her, even after working together for five years. At first it was an irritation, but, as time went on, it morphed into a real problem. We were never on the same page and I couldn’t predict what kind of shit she’d pull, always somehow talking the front office around to her way of thinking. And making my life harder in the process.
If I take this job, I’m gonna need assurances from Stew that she won’t be able to overrule my calls on the field. I’ll have it put in my contract if necessary.
I’m not getting back into the game just to be undercut over and over again by someone who never played at day at the major league level.
And if that makes me the asshole, so be it.
“I wasn’t jacking your ride,” she insists. “Or, I am, but . . .”
Frankie hesitates and I look over at her, her hair still damp, easily the least put together I’ve ever seen her.
“We’re going to the same place, so I thought . . .”
“It’s fine. You can admit it: you just missed my face.”
Her jaw drops open again, the second time I’ve made her do that in as many minutes. I might start a tally. I wonder how many times I can make it happen before the season starts.
If I take the job, that is.
Because I still don’t know if I’m going to do that.
I retired for a reason and it wasn’t just because my knees broke down.
I was tired. Tired of the long plane rides and the bland hotel rooms, of my body breaking down and of trying to fend off kids half my age from stealing my job, of never being able to figure out if a woman wanted me for me or because I was Charlie Avery, Los Angeles Dodger.
Twenty years, a lifetime really, and I was done.
But you can’t do something your whole life and not miss it. And I do; I miss it a lot. The game itself. Baseball has always been more of a calling than a job. Some guys just happen to be good at it. Some guys love it more than anything. I was both.
I missed it almost as soon as I hung ‘em up.
Everyone told me it would pass, though, that I was just used to it and that I needed to move on, find something else outside of baseball to spend the rest of my life doing.
But there wasn’t anything. No wife, not anymore, and Gemma and I didn’t have any kids. My friends were scattered across the country and some around the world. I never planned for life after baseball. And so, after baseball, I didn’t have a life.
I tried, though. I tried golf and I tried travel. I even tried, for one fucking shitshow of a summer, to do some broadcasting.
Nothing stuck because it wasn’t the same.
And then, a couple of weeks ago, Stew called.
Stew managed me in the minors, back when I was just a struggling kid, signed right out of high school and absolutely terrified that I’d made the wrong choice and should have gone to college. That was the first time I considered being a manager. But then everything clicked, both at the plate and behind it, and I never looked back.
Until now.
The Eagles need a manager. They need someone to pull the sorry excuse for a Major League Baseball organization out of their decades-long rut as third-class citizens in their own town.
And Stew thinks that guy might be me.
