Now Alex’s attention returned to the girl. Her iced-coffee skin, those dark curls, the light brown eyes. God, it was like a tiny girl-shaped clone sitting in front of him. The similarities were so close he was surprised he hadn’t seen it before.
“Your dad plays baseball too, hey?” he said, glancing back to Alice. She wasn’t looking at him now. Instead she stared into her coffee like the secrets of the universe were being unlocked in the swirling cream.
“Yeah. He’s real good. You know him?” Suddenly Olivia was excited. She’d put her spoon aside and was watching Alex, waiting for his reply.
“We play in different leagues, but yeah, I know him.” The way most players with the same amount of active time knew each other. They weren’t buddies, but they’d met enough times to recognize each other and make friendly chitchat if they crossed paths.
“He’s pretty great, right?” Her cheeks were bright, eyes wide with enthusiasm. He had a feeling she didn’t get to talk about her dad a lot. It certainly seemed like a topic Alice preferred to avoid.
Which shed a lot of light on her misgivings about Alex himself.
“Sure,” Alex lied. The Matt Hernandez he knew was a selfish, self-centered prick with a sense of entitlement almost equal to the size of his ego. But no little girl needed to hear those things about her father. “He’s a great player.” That, at least, was true.
“I knew it.” Olivia nodded proudly and resumed eating.
As silence descended on the table, Alex began to consider all the things Alice had told him, all her reasons for thinking they could never have a functional relationship.
It wasn’t about him at all. And it was only half because of what he did. All her excuses stemmed from her history with Matt Fucking Hernandez. Alex sat back, the coffee still in his hands, and thought about Matt Hernandez, trying to wrap his head around Matt and Alice being together. He couldn’t picture it, and when he could, he wished he hadn’t.
Who had Matt been nine or ten years ago? Alex was pretty sure he’d been drafted right out of high school, so he would have already been in the mix with the Mets at that point, but still in their farm league. An up-and-comer, not the superstar he was now. Ten years ago Alex had been moving into college, all his hopes focused on being a big league prospect. Alex hadn’t been drafted until his junior year, almost four years after Matt.
That was four extra years for Matt’s head to grow, and four extra years for Alice to foster her misgivings about baseball players.
Alex wanted to talk about it. He wanted to tell her they weren’t all like that, he wasn’t like that, but he couldn’t very well make any convincing arguments with Olivia sitting across the table. And even if he could, how much of what he said would she believe?
The truth was, if all went well, he’d be going back to San Francisco in a couple of weeks. And as much as he liked Alice and wanted to be with her, he also needed to be back in the game. Baseball was his life, it was his guiding passion, and though being with her felt good and right, something was missing.
Until he was back in a Felons jersey, he wasn’t going to be completely himself.
But he didn’t think baseball and Alice needed to be mutually exclusive. There had to be a way he could convince her they might work out, even if he still played in California.
Mostly, though, he wanted to convince her he wasn’t Matt Hernandez.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The ball was long gone.
Alice—still wearing her grease-stained work apron—leaned against the chain-link fence and watched Alex’s home run peel out of the park and into the stadium seats. The small crowd went wild, and the pack of kids in the outfield lawn clamored to find the souvenir.
She couldn’t make Alex out all too well from where she was standing—he was a small figure wearing the team’s white home game jersey—but she’d heard the announcer call his name when he’d come up to the plate.
It had been two very long days since Alex had woken up beside her and they’d shared the dreaded Bad Breakfast. When she’d opened her eyes that morning, she’d felt bright and sunny and happy. Even the awkwardness of having Alex share breakfast with Olivia hadn’t sent her into a panic.
Until those two awful little words.
My dad.
Translation, two less little, equally awful words: Matt Hernandez.
Leave it to Matt to find a way to ruin things without being around.
And leave it to you to blame everything on Matt, her brain scolded. She hated being right about that too. She was using Matt as an excuse to push all her problems onto someone else. If not Matt, then Alex, but her problems were never Alice problems.