Hardball by CD Reiss (13)

nineteen

Vivian

I didn’t have long to get dressed. I ran past Dad, who was standing at the counter and cooking something that smelled wonderful, so he wouldn’t see the La Perla bag.

“Hey, peanut!”

“Hi, Dad!” I said as I walked by.

“You staying for dinner?”

“Um, no. I have a date,” I called from the den.

“What?”

Shit. I shouldn’t have told him. “A date, Dad!”

I rushed into Mom’s old room. I slipped into the closet and snapped the door shut.

A knock came soon after. “Vivian?”

“He’s coming at eight. I’m nervous. I’m going to have a stroke. Please don’t make it worse. Don’t even mention it. Just don’t even say anything.”

A moment of silence.

“All right. I’ll save you some dinner for later. Or tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

He shuffled away. I heard the bedroom door click. Thank God. He was really leaving me alone.

I brought my stuff to Mom’s bathroom because it was next to the closet where my dress was. I always cleaned between my legs, but that night, I was extra thorough. I bent over to see my flattened blond hairs. Was I supposed to shave?

Of course I was supposed to shave. I soaped up and took my razor off the shelf. How old was it? Should I get a fresh one?

I was being silly. Razors didn’t have…

Expiration dates.

I had to stop myself to think about that. He’d agreed that we didn’t have an artificial end date. That worked for me. But why was I going into this with my legs open? If we were going into spring training and beyond, then there was no rush.

Right?

Could I trust him? Could I trust that he wasn’t going to use me and throw me away? Did it matter? I was a grown woman. Not terribly experienced, sure, but I was perfectly capable of enjoying sex when I wanted to. I didn’t need artificial timelines any more than he did.

I put down the razor.

I believed all of that, and I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t even ready for what we’d already done on the kitchen bar stool. I needed to get to know him better. I lacked a very basic trust in our relationship, in him, even in myself.

Right. Okay.

I shut off the water as if the decision had nothing to do with my hair care choices and everything to do with the shower itself. But it was a punctuation at the end of the process.

Deep breath.

I toweled off and peeked in the bag. My new underwear was wrapped in gold tissue paper. I undid it carefully and folded it up. It was too nice to just throw away.

I laid out the black stockings and lace panties on the bed. The bra was the same as the salesgirl’s but had a star in the center.

“You wear this when you want to get laid. Not when you don’t.” I said it to myself because I was the one who needed clarity.

I wanted to wear it because I’d just sold the farm to get it.

As long as the dress covered it, I was okay. That was what I told myself as I chose a bra-hiding burgundy dress with long sleeves and a flouncy knee-length skirt. It was so chaste I would have worn it to work if it wasn’t so expensive and rare.

Done.

“Here goes,” I exhaled.

I got the stockings, panties, and garter on, and I was hooking the bra when the bed buzzed. I rifled around for my phone.

I can’t wait to see you

I smiled to the phone. Another text came before I could reply.

Wear something comfortable

Now was the time. This moment. If I was going to prepare him to be refused for tonight, then now was the time to warn him.

Slow is my middle name

That’s not true

My middle name is Beaumont, but that’s a secret. If you tell another soul I’ll deny it

It had a terrible ring to it, and I laughed to myself.

Next week I’ll cook you Mom’s Scotts/Norman specialty. We’ll see who laughs then

I bit my lip. He was planning something for next week. That was a good sign. I typed something polite into the phone then felt the skin of my hips goose-bump, and I looked down at my body. I was texting him in this getup, and I was going to see him in—

I’m out front. In the car. I got here early and didn’t want to crowd you

I saw myself in the closet mirror. I looked like the mannequin. A little less waxen. A little more human. A little like a sex kitten.

Holy shit. Was that me?

It was, and I was pretty hot.

I slipped on the black heels. Turned and looked at the seam down the backs of my legs. My ass cheeks stood firm and round in the warm lights, curving the back of the lace panties. I put my hand on my ass and felt the warmth of my own palm.

I’d just turned myself on.

Deep breath.

I put on the dress and a little mascara.

“Someone’s here for you, peanut,” Dad said from the other side of the door.

“Coming.” I stuck the ball in my little beaded bag. It bulged. I felt like the bag. Bigger on the inside. Too full. Ready to burst out of my casing.

Dad was at the front of the house with Dash, who wore a suit and carried flowers. They were laughing about something. Me? I had no idea. I was stuck on the bright bouquet of daisies.

He’d brought me flowers. No one had ever brought me flowers.

“Hi,” I said. Whispered. Breathed.

Dash’s eyes ate me alive, and my skin folded outward to the dark, raw parts where I wanted him to touch me.

“Hey,” he said. “Your dad was telling me you were a ball girl back in the day.”

“Dad!”

“Five more minutes and I’d get the pictures out.”

Mortifying. Me in my little ponytail and white pants, chasing after fouls.

“And what you guys did for game six last year,” Dash added.

I didn’t think I’d been gone that long, but Dad talked fast.

“It’s a funny story.” Dad shrugged, and I rolled my eyes.

It was only funny the way Dad told it. We’d bought tickets on eBay, which was completely against the rules unless you bought a four-hundred-dollar hat that happened to come with two nosebleed tickets. When eBay had taken the listing down, we’d done a reverse search on the ticketholder’s email, hunting her back to Lancaster. Then we drove up there in my Nissan, up the mountains while my car choked and hitched, almost got eaten by her four angry pit bulls, paid her cash, and made it to Dodger Stadium with not a second to spare.

“It was crazy,” I said. “We almost missed the national anthem because of traffic on the 5.”

“I struck out that night, I think?” Dash said.

“Stand-up double, two Ks, and a walk, actually,” I replied.

“I only remember the strikeouts.” He looked at the flowers as if he’d forgotten he had them, and he handed them to me.

“Thank you, they’re perfect.” I didn’t know what else to say. They were.

Dad took them from me. “I’ll put them in water. Get out of here. The two of you. I want to go to bed already.”

Dash shook his hand and led me outside, where a black Volvo sedan waited for us in the driveway. I paused, trying to remember if he’d had a Volvo the other night.

“Like it?” he asked as he opened the passenger door.

“You had something different yesterday.”

“That one got in a little fender bender.”

“Are you okay?”

“I went to the doc this morning. My arm’s bruised, but that’s it. It was nothing.”

“Nothing? You got a new car.”

“This one’s safer. Get in before I put you in.” His lips tightened as if holding back a smile.

He’d have loved to pick me up and put me in. I might not have minded it either, but Dad was watching. He’d have denied it, but he was watching.

“Where are we going?” I asked when he got behind the wheel.

“Someplace fun.”

I felt the scratch of lace on my skin as he drove. It wasn’t uncomfortable. It reminded me of what I was wearing under the simple dress. I crossed my legs and folded my hands in my lap.

“Did you eat?” he asked.

“A little.”

“Can you wait a few hours? I have someplace I want to go first.”

“Sure.”

Traffic was nonexistent as he brought me into downtown.

“Dash, I don’t want to bring this up…”

“But you kind of are.”

“The pin.”

“It’s fine,” he said.

“I can’t tell you how bad I feel.”

“Then don’t.”

“I feel like it’s my fault.”

He took my hand out of my lap and squeezed it. “If that glove hadn’t been taken, we wouldn’t have met.”

“I know but—”

“You were worth it. If I’d been given the choice to trade that good luck charm for you, I would have done it in a second.”

Was this the same guy who’d wanted to pre-dump me? I was confused, but I wasn’t ready to replace… what? Important artifacts? His sister?

I shook it off. He was just talking.

“Well, when I wish, I wish big. You should have me and the pin.”

“I went to that library ready to pound on your desk and demand you find it or I was going to call the cops. But I saw you coming down the hall, and it all went out the window.”

“Thank you. I would have broken down crying.”

He squeezed my hand. “Glad I didn’t.”

After the red light, his hand stayed in mine, even when he turned onto Pershing Square and stopped in a red zone. A man in a tuxedo rushed toward the car and opened his door.

“Hang on,” Dash said before getting out. After chatting with the tuxedo guy and handing him the keys, Dash crossed in front of the car. Then he opened my door. “He’s going to park it downstairs in the lot.”

I took his hand and stepped onto the sidewalk. “You could have taken me down there. I’ve been to the Pershing Square lot before.”

“Not looking like you do. It’s filthy down there. You’re too good for it.”

“Silly,” I said even though I loved every word.

We held hands and walked into the square. It was empty and mostly dark. The playgrounds were locked, and the temporary outdoor skating rink was bathed in white light. The booths were locked. The skate rental had been dismantled until next Christmas season.

“I hope you’re a size seven,” Dash said.

“In what?”

“Skates.”

I gasped. “Are you taking me skating?”

“You’re taking me skating.”

“It’s closed.”

“Not tonight it’s not. Not for us,” he said, opening the gate to the skating area.

“Oh, Dash, I love this!”

His smile was so wide it could have just about broken his face.

Once we were on the turf-covered platform that surrounded the rink, another man in a tux handed us two pairs of skates.

“Thank you,” I said.

I threw myself onto a bench and kicked off my heels. Inside the boots were a new pair of good, thick socks. Excellent, because the stockings were a hundred fifty dollars and would have gotten ruined in the skates, never mind my feet.

Dash held a pair of hockey skates as he said a few quiet words to Tux Man, who nodded and disappeared.

“This is so great!” I said. “How many guys in black suits are helping with this illegal trespass?”

“It’s totally legal and paid for.” He laced his boots up quickly. “They’re just parking the car, keeping people with cameras away, that sort of thing. Here, let me help you.” He kneeled in front of me and methodically tightened my laces.

“The cameras,” I said. “That’s why you don’t do interviews. You don’t like cameras.”

He stopped lacing and put his hand on my calf, brushing his thumb on the smooth stocking. “I like these.”

“Stay below the knee, sir.”

He looked up at me, all mischief, and tied the laces without breaking our gaze. “Really?”

“Really.”

He leaned down and put his lips on the inside of my calf. I gasped. Having him so close to home when we were outdoors made me wild. Even if no one was around, the presence of the sky above felt as if Los Angeles was looking.

“I can respect that,” he whispered. “For now.”

He worked his mouth up along the inside of my leg. Pressed my legs open. Kissed inside my knee. I gripped the edge of the bench.

“Are you wet, Apples?”

Wet? Wet was an understatement. I was soaking a pair of panties I couldn’t afford. “I’m not telling.”

He stood and held his hand out for me. “You don’t need to. Come on. Show me what you got.”

I took his hand, and we went onto the empty rink.

My muscles remembered what to do, pushing side to side, balanced in movement. I couldn’t have worn a more perfect dress to allow my legs proper movement, though keeping the underwear under wraps would be difficult. I pressed down the flared skirt.

He skated to me, pants fluttering against his legs, grace and power in male form.

“You skate?” I said.

“Everyone in Ithaca plays hockey.” He circled me twice, and I spun to keep my eyes on him. “I was a traitor when I went to baseball.”

“Why did you change?”

“Love. I just loved it.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me along.

The wind blew my hair all over my face, and I sped up to catch then pass him. “What did you love?” I said as I passed him.

“The downtime. You can process every play, then there’s this burst of activity, and all the processing just clicks. Like dominoes. All the calculations you made in the past two minutes, it fills in like an equation.”

“And you catch the ball.”

“Sometimes.”

“Always.”

He put his arm around me, and we circled the rink. I turned my face to the sky. The speed, the scratch of blades on ice, the crisp January air, this man’s ridiculous body next to mine. My heart felt lighter than it had in a long time.

He twirled me under his arm then pulled me with his arm around my waist. We synchronized our steps, laughed when we missed, turned, and did it again.

I didn’t know how long we were circling before he got ambitious and sent me spinning to the center of the rink. It could have been an hour, but when he did that, I forgot what I was wearing and went into a scratch spin. It was slower than I did when I was more practiced but fast enough to pick up my skirt.

When I slowed down, he was standing still on his skates, mouth open, hands slow-clapping.

“What are you gaping at?” I asked, still thinking it was the spin that had impressed him. I skated over to him, and he pulled me into his embrace.

“We’re going now,” he growled.

“So soon?”

Before the words had left my mouth, his hand was up my skirt, tugging on the top of my stockings. He’d seen what I was wearing under the dress. In the exhilaration of skating, I’d forgotten I’d expose myself in the spin, and now I had his arms around my waist, his lips finding mine, the thrust of his body pushing me back against the wall.

“You wore those for me?”

“I’m wearing it for me.” I didn’t believe myself, but I said it anyway.

“I’m going to eat you alive.” His mouth coursed the length of my throat, and his hands gripped my ass.

He’d been attracted to me before. I knew that. But I didn’t know what a garter belt did. I’d hoped it would make me a little hotter. I hadn’t known it would make him crazy.

The sudden increase in heat sent my alarm bells screaming. It was too soon. He wasn’t committed to me or my feelings. My sexual arousal had always been tightly tethered to love, romance, the promise of something more. A future. We had none, and I was clear about that. It was the weight that spun me in his centrifuge. We were just bodies, and I couldn’t drag him down. I couldn’t weigh on him.

I was burning up from the inside out, melting flesh and bone against him. I couldn’t put together a thought, only a series of images. All were affected by gravity. Falling. Sucked down. My consciousness, thought processes, ability to keep my body from molding itself to his got swept into the black hole of our shared need.

“Wait,” I gasped.

“What?” he answered in my ear, breath hot, hands settling on my waist.

What did I want to say? Did it have words? I just needed to stop breaking apart into a million hot shards, or I was going to lose my mind.

“I mean it. I didn’t wear this for you. I just didn’t expect to be doing scratch spins.”

He nodded once. Slowly.

“And I don’t even know you. It’s too soon for you to take me home. I’m scared of getting attached to you. Really scared.”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

Mentally, I stopped dead in my tracks. Whatever train my thoughts had been on screeched to a halt between stations. I looked in his eyes, searching for a bit of guardedness, a little double meaning, but there was none. He wasn’t lying.

“I tell you what,” he said, drawing his finger along the ridge of my jaw. “Come home with me, and let’s get to know each other. But we can reserve sex for later.”

“Define sex. Penetration? Coitus?”

He laughed. “You sure you don’t teach sex ed?”

“I’m trying to make it less appealing.”

“Didn’t work. But I’ll use your words. I’ll get my mouth on you, my hands all over you. We can enjoy each other tonight, and I’ll fuck you later.”

“Those weren’t my words.”

“I meant the words you were thinking.”

“You’re a little crazy. Do you know that?”

He dropped his hands, smoothing down my skirt. His cheek against mine, I felt him smile. “Any man would get a little crazy around you.”

I put my hands flat on his chest. He was so solid, so real, yet he’d mistaken me for a woman who drove men wild. He saw some mirror image and not the real Vivian. What would the anti-me do right there, with her hands on him and his body so close she could feel the heat coming off it?

“Take me home, Dash.”