Ben saw hundreds of thousands of women on a daily basis. Some of them were so beautiful, he couldn’t help but stare whenever he had the chance, but they would eventually get lost in the crowd.
That changed today.
While on the field catching with his teammate, Nate, Ben noticed a gorgeous woman walking down the steps towards the front row. He looked away and threw the ball back to Nate. Once the ball was back in his glove, he glanced towards the stands expecting her to have vanished, but there she was, still radiating beauty.
“Hmmm,” he hummed while hurling the ball to Nate.
“What’s up?” Nate asked, slamming the ball into his glove.
Ben shook his head and raised his glove to receive the ball. Once he caught it, he turned his whole body towards the woman in question and found her staring at him intently, but she quickly turned away and pretended to engage her oblivious friend in conversation. Adorable, he thought and chuckled.
“What’s going on with you?”
He smiled at Nate, one of the minor league players playing in today’s game. “I just caught a beautiful woman staring at me, and I’m eager to see what that blush looks like up close.”
Nate glanced in the direction of Ben’s nod and grinned.
“Well, you’re in luck, old man. The other beauty sitting beside her is my guest of honor.” He started walking towards the women and Ben followed closely.
He discovered that her name was Anna, and he took pleasure in the way her name rolled off his tongue. Ben thought to charm her with a compliment, but instead of her smiling shyly as every other woman did, she fidgeted uncomfortably and turned bright red.
Anna wore her dark blonde hair in a loose ponytail and strands fell around her face. The redness of her cheeks lit up her green eyes which only intensified her beauty. He smiled at her and ducked into the dugout. After Ben put on his catching gear and sat on the bench, he found that he was unable to stop thinking about the woman sitting above them. It took the shortstop grounding out for the third out of the inning to pull Ben from his thoughts. He grabbed his face mask and ran out to home plate to start warming up his pitcher and closest friend, Johnny.
After each pitch, his mind wandered towards the simple characteristics he was able to memorize in the sixty-second introduction to Anna.
He thought of the flustered way she looked away from him.
Strrrike one!
Or the way she laughed without meaning to.
Strrrike two!
And finally, the stunned look on her face when he told her in a nonchalant way that she was breathtakingly beautiful.
Strrrike three!
He took a deep breath and threw the ball to Johnny. Ben knew that if he didn’t get his shit together, he was going to call an awful game and most likely get blamed for the loss. After six more strikes, he waited until Johnny ran past him and he smacked him on the back before following him to the dugout.
Ben locked eyes with Anna once again. Not wanting her to notice how she affected him, he tried to act cool. Unfortunately, this caused him to miss the bottom step leading down into the dugout and he tumbled to the ground.
Teammates hurried to his side, and the doctor checked for injuries while people in the front row peered in to see the commotion. He looked up to see his beauty staring at him, eyes wide. She wore a secret smile on her glossy red lips he knew was meant only for him. It was that moment he knew he had to have her. Ben wasn’t sure what he was going to do with her once he achieved that notion, but he knew he had to try.
With the help of his coach, Ben slowly got to his feet and brushed himself off. He didn’t dare look in Anna’s direction again for fear that he would find her laughing at him. The only way he thought he could rectify the situation was to play the best game he could to try and impress the woman. Except, his coach had another idea. In light of his little fall, his coach thought it would be best if Ben sat the rest of the game out in case an injury should arise from it. Feeling slightly embarrassed, he sat in the corner and sulked, hoping that the lovely Anna was ignorant when it came to the logistics of baseball.
At the end of the game, he followed his teammates towards the locker room and was disappointed to find that Anna and her friends were no longer in their seats.
“Damn,” he said to himself when someone punched him in the arm.
“Lighten up, brother,” Johnny chuckled. “It happens to the best of us.”
“Yeah, well, when’s the last time you fell on your face in front of a stadium of fans?” Ben questioned.
He laughed. “Okay, so maybe it just happens to you. I know something that’ll make you feel better.”
Ben shook his head. “I am not interested in helping you get laid.”
Johnny clutched his chest. “You wound me, man.” They entered the locker room. “I was just going to invite you out for an innocent round of drinks, but if your old ass needs to go back to the hotel to recover, I’ll understand.”
Ben swung his fist and a laughing Johnny dodged it. Even though he really did want to be alone so he could drown his bruised ego in a bottle of scotch, he accepted the invitation to go out with the guys for drinks.
Showered and dressed, they were on their way. “I still can’t believe you ate shit today. In all the years I’ve been playing this game, I’ve never seen that happen,” Johnny joked as they took a seat at a table close to the bar. He prided himself on being the class clown and was relentless when it came to giving someone a hard time.
“Ha, ha. Laugh it up boys.” Ben took a long sip from the beer that was placed in front of him and scanned the room. Gorgeous women inhabited every inch of the place, but he still couldn’t take his mind off Anna.
“Did you see the size of that woman’s tits?” Johnny’s gruff voice bit into the vision he had of Anna’s piercing gaze. “They were huge! Too bad they were probably fake. I’m not a fan of the fake ones. I like holding on to a real breast while she’s bouncing on top of me.” Johnny laughed and the other men joined in. Ben chuckled and took another sip of the cold beverage when a young, attractive, starry-eyed woman walked up to him.
“Ben Whitley?” she asked eagerly.
“Yes?” He predicted what was coming next.
“I knew it! My friends over there didn’t believe me when I said it was you. I am a huge fan. Can I bother you for an autograph?” She practically trembled with excitement.
“Sure,” he started but quickly paused. “What is it you wanted me to sign?” She had walked up to him with nothing in her hands except a black sharpie.
The brazen woman pulled her turquoise shirt down to reveal the bulge of her left breast and pointed the marker at him. “Here, if you don’t mind.”
Johnny whistled. “Why is it the most beautiful women flock to Ben? I mean, he’s easily dipped his pen in more than a hundred ink pots if you know what I mean.” He elbowed the man sitting beside him and winked.
Most women would have been appalled by his comment and fled in disgust, but instead of finding his words offensive, she smiled. “That’s exactly what I was hoping to hear.”
Ben was drafted in the third round by the Diamondbacks organization when he was just twenty years old and was assigned to catch for the class single-A team, the Visalia Oaks.
Within the first three years, Ben had caused quite a stir among the higher-ranked scouts. His powerful hitting and ability to call a game behind the plate helped him work his way from single A to triple A, and it wasn’t long after that when he finally got the call he had been waiting for. Becoming a major league baseball player for the Diamondbacks was something he had always dreamed of, and he was thankful it had finally become a reality.
However, his contract with them was to expire at the end of the season, leaving him with an uncertainty about his baseball career. The thought of playing for any other team made him feel anxious. Luckily, he was highly sought out by other major league teams and the Diamondbacks weren’t about to let him go.
Over the years of his baseball career, Ben had developed a reckless playboy reputation. Young, rich and good looking, he thought he had it all. He was starting to be recognized by all kinds of women in public and when they threw themselves at him, he was all too eager to please. Sports magazines praised him for his ability to crush the ball over the wall but argued whether he should be worshipped for his uncanny way with women, or criticized because he was never seen with the same girl more than once.
Now, ten years since his big league debut, he felt a little older, felt a little wiser, and the scene had still not changed.
Except he did.
The chase wasn’t as exciting as it used to be. Instead of sleeping with everything that walked, he craved good company and great conversation. So, in order to keep up with his reputation, he continued to be seen with different women in public but rarely did he end the night with them.
The big-breasted woman waited patiently for Ben to pull himself from his thoughts. She sighed with pleasure when he lightly pressed the tip of the sharpie to her creamy skin and proceeded to scribble his name.
“Can I get you a drink?” he asked before glancing at his friends.
“I’d love one.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him in the direction of the bar. He heard a couple obscene comments from Johnny and prayed the loud bar masked the sound of his voice. Drinks in hand, they rejoined his group of friends who had moved to the patio to smoke.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name before.” Ben leaned forward to hear her better.
“My name is Erin.” She smiled sweetly and sipped her vodka cranberry through a straw. There was a time when he would have envisioned her lips around him instead of that straw, but the lateness of the hour was more his concern.
“Do you live around here?” The question was meant to be innocent as he engaged her in small talk, but Erin took it a little differently.
“I do, actually.” She brightened. “Right around the corner. Care to walk a girl home?”
Not wanting to hurt her feelings, Ben nodded and said, “Sure,” then followed her towards the exit.
“When you say that you live right around the corner, exactly how far do you mean?” He was sore from his fall earlier and wasn’t in the mood for a long hike.
“You see that building right there?” She pointed to a building that jutted out higher than the rest. “That’s my apartment complex.”
Good, he thought. He’d be able to walk her to the door and bid her goodnight before coming back to the main road to hail a cab home.
Once again, Erin had another idea. “It’s just right around here.” They turned the corner and climbed the stairs. “Come in for a drink?”
Ben stood outside her door contemplating whether he should accept or not. He should be happy she was inviting him in, especially since it had been quite some time since he had been with a woman. The younger version of him would have eagerly marched inside, excited for the invitation, but the old Ben was exhausted. It didn’t help that the image of a particular somebody kept invading his mind.
“A drink sounds great,” he said, surprising himself. A distraction was what he thought he needed to forget about his little fall earlier that day, and Anna, so he followed her in and was a little taken aback by the décor. A large poster of an underwear model hung on the wall near the kitchen and a hot pink shag rug covered the beige carpeting in the middle of the living room. Twinkle lights strung around the room illuminated the bright white walls and bounced off the crystal beaded curtain that hung in the doorway separating the living room and hall.
“Wow,” Ben uttered. “Do you live here alone?”
Erin giggled. “Of course not. I have two roommates. We left them back at the bar.” She came around the counter and handed Ben a beer.
“How old are you ladies?” He took in more of the room and noticed that they had futons for couches and a TV tray that acted as an end table to hold a silver lamp.
“Does it matter?” she said in a seductive voice, and Ben tried not to laugh. It was clear he had stumbled upon a vivacious college girl who was probably trying to have her way with him so that she could brag about sleeping with a major league baseball player to her friends.
“Excuse me a second while I go and freshen up.” Erin disappeared through the crystal curtain. Ben took advantage of her absence and flew out of her apartment and down the stairs. He knew it was a dick move, but he couldn’t bring himself to spend the night with a woman who reminded him of his little sister. The guilt simmered in the pit of his stomach as he hurried through the darkness but vanished when he emerged into the light. Once Ben was far enough away from her apartment, he pulled out his phone.
“Hey, Nate,” he spoke into the mouth piece. “I need a favor.”