“There’s this doctor, Elias.”
My eyes widen as my stomach sinks. “Shit, are you sick? Leighton? The kids?”
Is he going to ask me for a kidney or something? I’d give it to him. That’s not even a question. And, of course, he’d come to me before Easton and Foster. My clean diet would make me a better candidate.
Hayes shakes his head. “He works with Leighton.”
I rock my head and try to keep my mind from going to the worst-case scenario like it usually does. “She’s not cheating on you, man. Leighton loves you.”
“She better not be, but that’s not why I’m telling you. He’s single.” His voice is low. Just loud enough for me to hear. Whatever this is, he really wants to keep it a secret.
“You do know I’m heterosexual, right?”
He blows out a breath and groans. “I’m not trying to set you up.”
“Then why do I give a shit about this doctor, Elias, who works with Leighton?”
His teeth bite down on his lip, and he looks as if he just took a hundred-mile-per-hour ball to the inner thigh. But still I’m coming up empty on why he’s telling me all this.
“Leighton gave him Penelope’s phone number.”
The inflicted wound is fast and effective, a glint of light off the knife, then pain before I can make sense of what’s even happened.
“Oh… okay.” I glance past him out the window, watching the highway lights streak by, trying to contain my immediate reaction.
“I just thought… I don’t know… that you should know.”
The bus increases its speed, matching my heartbeat as the image of Penelope in the arms of someone else pummels me.
There’s no use in reacting before I can decipher how I actually feel. Right now, I feel something close to anger, something close to grief, and about four other things I’m not going to name because they won’t help.
“Leighton suggested it, or Penelope asked for it?” I’m not sure why I’m asking—it doesn’t factor into anything other than the fact that she’s moving on, and I’m still stalled in neutral.
“She told Leighton she was ready to start dating.” He pauses. “Leighton alluded to it having something to do with Hazel.” He shrugs. “But I don’t really know.”
And there’s the one reason I can’t take issue with any of this. The one reason that makes complete sense and also makes my stomach feel as if a line drive hit me square in the nuts.
I think about Hazel at field day. The way she looked back at Penelope when she was trying to get the hula hoop to spin—because her first instinct was to find her mom. And Penelope was already watching with a proud mom smile, clapping for her.
She’s doing the right thing. That’s the conclusion I keep arriving at no matter how many times it runs through my mind. Penelope’s doing the right thing for her and her daughter, and there’s not a version of this where I get to be annoyed about it.
“I’ll be honest—there was a point when I was jealous of this guy with Leighton. But he seems like a good guy. He’s always making the staff laugh at his stories. You don’t have to do anything with the information… I just figured you’d want to know before you heard it from someone else.”
I swallow hard, willing my voice to work. “No, yeah. I appreciate it.”
He nods and leans back, and we don’t say anything else about it. That’s what I’ve always liked about Hayes. He delivers the news then lets you absorb it.
Across the aisle, Easton is already asleep, his head tipped against the window. Foster is reading something on his phone, pretending he didn’t overhear anything, but I’m not sure how he couldn’t have caught at least some of it.
A doctor. Someone with a better schedule than I have during the season, a permanent parking spot, and no agent calling him about trades and the possibility of setting up his life in another city. Someone who doesn’t have his career up for review at the end of every season. I let myself sit with that for exactly as long as it takes the bus to pass under one overpass. Then I tuck it away.
I go over the rules I’ve had for myself for years. They exist for a reason, and they’ve kept me standing when circumstances tried to take me down.
Rule Number One—don’t take what isn’t yours.
Although she’s never been mine, if Penelope likes Elias and she becomes his, I won’t try to ruin that for her.
I followed Rule Number One when she moved to Chicago. I followed it when she started showing up at every friend group dinner and every game. I followed it when Porter ran his mouth at second base tonight and I wanted to do something about it that would’ve been broadcast all over ESPN.
