I slid the waiter my card when we got here and Frankie rolls her eyes when he brings it back, check already paid, muttering about being able to expense it to the club, and we walk the boys back to the parking lot.
“You coming to the game tomorrow?”
My eyes flick to Frankie for an answer. It’s her call.
“No, we have to get back to New York. Winter meetings are coming up in a few weeks and we still have some moves we want to make.”
“Thanks for this, Ms Sullivan, Skip. We really appreciate it.” Davis says, clearly speaking for all of them.
“Yeah, our meal money doesn’t really cover this,” Esposito pipes up.
“We’ll see you in Florida?” Greene asks, like he’s still unsure any of this was real.
“We’ll see you in Florida,” Frankie confirms, and we wave them off as our Uber pulls up.
“Wait, did you make a hotel reservation?” she asks, brow furrowed as I hold open the door to the backseat for her.
“I have a condo here.”
“You do? Wait, of course you do.”
It’s only about a ten-minute drive from the restaurant to my place. It’s been a minute since I’ve been there, though a cleaning crew comes in every couple of weeks to keep the dust from piling up. I should probably sell it now that I’m with a team that hostsspring training in Florida. No sense in holding on to a property I’m never going to use.
Ugh, Florida. Humidity and rain instead of Arizona’s brutal but dry heat.
That I’m not looking forward to at all.
But it’ll be better than January through March in New York, with slush in the streets and bitter cold air biting at your skin every time you go outside.
“This is . . .” she trails off, “very clean.”
“You don’t have to be polite. It was basically a crash pad for spring training every year. I didn’t need much.”
She’s trying to be nice, but her face gives it away, a nose wrinkle. I bought it a couple of years into my career, a simple one-bedroom condo within five minutes of the Camelback Ranch complex. All the walls are painted white with a ceramic white-tile floor. A large gray area rug with a black leather sectional defines the living room space, with the kitchen on the other side, also white, the only thing breaking that up is the dark countertops.
Gemma always hated it. Called it my bachelor pad and that we should upgrade it to something nicer.
Huh.
That’s interesting.
I haven’t thought about Gemma for days. Weeks even. Not since . . .
Not since I landed in New York.
And the reason why laughs at me. “You have a couch, aTVmounted on the wall and two bar stools in your kitchen. Did you have some kind of spartan philosophy about depriving yourself during training or something?”
“There’s a bed at least.”
“Well, I’m thrilled to know that you weren’t crashing on a couch all those years. It does look pretty comfortable, though.”
“No way, you’re taking the bed,” I insist.
She shakes her head. “You didn’t fit on the couch in Bozeman and there’s no way you’re not still sore. I saw the way you stood up at the airport this morning. Your knee is acting up.”
“Knee’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. The couch is massive. I’ll be good out here.”
