Instead of turning to me.
I’m overreacting. I know I am. It’s my own personal trauma when it comes to phones after the scandal with my father, and I’m taking it out on her.
Still, it just proves to me that even if it were a possibility on the table, which it’s not, this would never work between us in the real world.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
She clears her throat and turns her phone off, setting it on the end table. “Nothing.”
I tilt my head as I stare at her for a few beats. She looks bored, and it’s either because she’s not working or because she’s not doing something.
An idea plants itself in my mind. She thinks she’s relegated to this hotel room because of her injury, but she’s not. At all. Yeah, she needs to rest her ankle, and I can keep an eye on her and make sure that happens, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go out and do something.
In fact, a whole list of ideas is forming in my mind.
“You look like an idea just hit you,” she says, and it’s a little weird how she can already read me like that.
“One did. Hang on a second.” I send Clive a text, and when I glance up, she’s pursing her lips at me. “What?”
“So you can be on your phone, but I can’t?”
I roll my eyes. “I sent my personal butler a request for something for you, and he’s going to bring it here to your room.”
“Oh,” she says.
I laugh. “That’s not what you were expecting?”
She shakes her head. “I figured you were checking social media like everyone else in the world does when they pick up their phones.”
“A, no, they don’t, and B, I don’t have social media.”
She grabs her phone and pulls up some app. “What’s this, then?” she demands.
I shrug. “Something my publicist probably set up for me.”
“You don’t even know you have an Instagram account? And meanwhile, you have one-point-seven million fans who go crazy every time you post anything at all. Only…it’s not you, and you had no clue that this even existed.”
My brows push together. “What is it?”
She flashes her phone at me and shows me the profile. She reads the bio aloud. “Archer Bradley. LF @vegasheat. That’s it. As simple and as private as can be.” Then she clicks on a photo of me. “Look at this. Your engagement is nuts. I’d give my good ankle for sixty-two point three thousand likes and a thousand comments per post.”
I look at the photo. It was posted during spring training, and it’s of me on the field in my usual stance as I wait for the batter to connect with the ball. The caption says something about how I’m ready for anything.
It looks like Kendall, my publicist, was posting every few weeks, but she stopped once my suspension started. I’m sure there’s a reason for that.
“What does yours look like?” I ask.
She taps on her phone and shows me her profile. The bio part is packed with details, the photos are clearly curated, and there’s a little circle around her headshot that my profile didn’t have. “What’s with the circle around your picture?”
“That means I posted to my story. There’s a new story to view.”
“What the fuck is a story?” I ask.
She laughs. “God, you have a lot to learn.”
“Feels like I’ve been getting by just fine not knowing any of this,” I mutter, though it does feel a little weird that I have an entire platform I didn’t know existed.
A knock at the door prevents me from having to sit through any more of this lesson, and I open it to find Clive with my request.
