Perfect Catch(63)

“Chips,” Liv said, not moving her eyes from the screen.

Alice was about to counter with a healthier offer when Kevin said, “Actually, yeah, chips sound great. And maybe a Coke.”

She sighed, defeated before she could try to fight. Since Kevin had come home, and since his…incident, she found it hard to say no to him. She knew it wasn’t in his best interests to baby him, but at the same time she desperately wanted to make him happy. If chips and a Coke would make him happy, then she wasn’t going to turn him down. And she couldn’t very well park a bowl of chips in front of Kevin and deny them to Liv.

“Okay.”

In the kitchen she emptied a bag of BBQ chips into two bowls—a large one for her and Kevin, and a much smaller one for Liv—and brought out two canned drinks and a cardboard container of chocolate milk.

She did her best to avoid looking at the television while she doled out the goodies, but naturally that was the moment the announcers decided to discuss Alex Ross’s recent surge.

“I don’t know if it was the Florida air, Ken, but something certainly lit a fire under his tuccus. He’s been playing like a new man since he came back.”

“More accurately he’s been playing like he did last season, and that’s something this Felons offense was desperately needing. It’s nice to see them playing like the Felons of old again.”

“It might be a bit early for sweeping statements, but I’d say if they keep this up, their playoff shot is a sure thing.”

They continued to banter, rattling off a mind-bending list of Alex’s stats since he came back to the team and the team’s stats as a whole moving towards the mid-season break. Even for Alice, a baseball fan, the list was too much to take. But announcers needed to fill airtime with something, and there was nothing baseball loved more than numbers. Fans and experts alike could turn anything into a baseball statistic. She was often amazed they didn’t run things like “on-base percentage while wearing orange shoes” or “number of home runs with black batting gloves versus gray.” And the funny thing about baseball was those stats could be compiled. They just weren’t as popular as some of the others.

Liv munched happily on her chips, slurping up chocolate milk through a straw while she peppered Alice and Kevin with questions about the game.

“Why is it only a strike on some of the hits but not all of them?” she asked when a batter fouled off a ball.

“You can’t get your third strike on a foul,” Alice answered.

“Why not?”

Since explaining it was outside her reach right then, Alice said, “It’s just the rule.” And Alice knew a thing or two about stupid, pointless rules.

“Is Alex good?” Liv asked.

“Yes.” Alice didn’t want to get into it more. She didn’t want Liv bringing up all sorts of questions about Alex because there were no easy answers there. Explaining where he’d gone had been the simplest—he went back to San Francisco to play baseball. But when it came to “When will he be back?” and “Do you think Alex misses us?” the answers were trickier to come up with.

Did Alex miss them?

Should Alice care whether or not he did?

She tried repeatedly to convince herself she didn’t. She’d ended things, and she needed to put her time with Alex behind her. After he’d denied having any part of letting things slip to the press, she’d tried to figure out who might have done it. She’d even asked Liv about it after Alex was gone, trying to suss out whether the child had told anyone. Liv insisted she hadn’t.

So Liv hadn’t done it, and Alice no longer believed Alex had either. Maybe it really was just bad luck and a piss-poor job of covering their tracks after all. She felt guilty for even asking Alex if he’d had a part in it.

The repercussions of the blog post had screwed her. No matter how tame the picture had been, it had ruined her professional life. None of the guys from the league would talk to her, and she was a laughingstock among the community.

Worse, she knew she’d managed to inadvertently make life difficult for every woman who would try to be an umpire after her. She’d fought hard to be taken seriously, to be seen as more than just a baseball groupie, and she’d ruined it all in one fell swoop by falling for a player.

What an idiot she’d been.

She hadn’t made up her no-players rule on a whim. Sure, a lot of it had been a result of how much Matt had hurt her. But once she became an umpire there were very real, very logical reasons she had refused to get involved with players. Yet those had faded into the ether when Alex looked at her. Now she’d been cruelly reminded why she had those rules to begin with.