Doors off the locker room lead to the team dining room, the gym, the pool, the rehab and conditioning suites, the executives’ floor, and the only place in the entire complex I remotely cared about – Marnie’s office.
I’d walked past it more times than I wanted to admit over the last month as I waited for her to arrive.
Fuck. What was I going to do?
Sometimes it felt like my chest was about to cave in, I was so desperate to see her again. I’d even settle to just be in the same room in silence, but right now, it felt like she was behind a massive brick wall that I couldn’t punch my way through.
I opened my locker, the one with my name on it, and threw my bag inside. Pulling my hoodie over my head, I fished around my pockets for my earbuds then shucked out of my track pants. “Fields, you working out first?”
He sat in front of his locker, pondering my question with a long stroke of his thick beard. “Yeah, I guess I can wait a bit longer for hash browns. I can even have an extra one if I burn it off first.”
“Great, move your ass then.” I waved over my shoulder as I headed out.
A little over an hour later, after a gentle six-mile run, some conditioning exercises, and a scalding shower, I sat down opposite Stone, and watched while he inhaled two of his beloved hash browns in less than thirty seconds.
I wasn’t even sure he chewed them.
“You’re going to give yourself a hernia if you eat any quicker – or at the very least, a nasty case of heartburn.”
“I have to eat them like this.” He took note of my raised eyebrow and continued, “If I eat them quickly, I can pretend I didn’t eat them at all; that I did, in fact, stick to my nutritionist approved breakfast.”
You had to admire the logic.
“Right, but all the food here is nutritionist approved.” I pointed my fork toward his mouth. “It’s not like they came from Mickey-D’s. I think they’re made with sweet potato.”
His giant shoulder heaved upwards. “Same diff. I need to shed fifteen pounds this season, but I can’t quit the browns.”
“So you just eat them and forget about them?”
“Exactly!”
I swallowed my mouthful of omelet. “So what happened this morning with Carrie?”
He put down his fork and pinned me with a look of frustration, adding a deep sigh to boot. “She won’t come to the game today; said she wanted to go shopping instead. Fucking shopping! We’ve been away all week when she could have gone shopping, but she does it when I’m back. It’s bullshit.”
Even in my very new and inexperienced position as a relationship participator, I could see that it was, indeed, bullshit.
“How long have you guys been together?”
“Couple of years, but if I’m honest it’s been dying off the last six months. She wants kids, and I’m not ready. I’m still only twenty-eight. Plus,” he dropped his gaze and began pushing the remainder of his food around, “she only seems to have an interest in spending my money, and I’m sure the kids part is to get a bigger chunk of change.”
I stretched my hands out, linking them behind my neck. I’d never been in his situation, but I’d seen plenty of guys over the years get embroiled in a thousand court cases over kids and money. It was never pretty, and it never ended well.
I wasn’t any better off though. My money was safe, but I’d been alone since I was eighteen.
Finding your forever person was goddamn hard – especially if you lost them once already.
“Man, I’m sorry. That really sucks balls. What are you going to do?”
“I dunno. Break up I guess. She didn’t want to come to New York anyway, so maybe it won’t be too bad.”
The door to the dining room swung open and Ace Watson, The Lions’ pitcher, and Parker King, our catcher, sauntered in, with all the swagger a pair of twenty-two-year-olds in their second year of the major leagues could muster, thanks in no small part to the interview with Jimmy Fallon I’d pointedly refused to do, they’d taken my place, and New York had fallen in love with their bromance. It was rare to ever see them apart; they’d even started finishing each other’s sentences like an old married couple.
I groaned to myself. They were at the more junior end of the ladder, and I hadn’t decided yet whether I liked them. King was okay, but I could do with Ace talking less, because once he started, he never seemed to stop.
Stone looked over his shoulder to see who’d just come in, and dropped his voice. “Don’t say anything about Carrie, will you?”
“Take it to the grave, man,” I promised solemnly.
