He tossed his duffel bag into the backseat of his SUV and paused with his hand on the open door, eyes flicking out of habit to the banner that wrapped around one corner of the stadium.It readOUR YEARin giant black letters outlined in white, and Evan sighed. The marketing department had put that up in March, when the entire season still held promise and no one knew how badly they would implode after the All-Star break. Now, in late October, the banner’s teal background was faded, the edges fraying a little more each day.
He could relate.
The off-season always made him restless, but that wasn’t the right word for what sat in his chest this year. Restless was impatience and the urge to do something. This felt more like being untethered, like there was a sense that something was shifting, but he couldn’t see what yet.
His stomach rumbled and dragged Evan out of his thoughts, and he realized it had been several hours since the toast he’d had for breakfast. Shoving the back door shut, he climbed behind the wheel and pointed his car toward his favorite restaurant. Tonight called for comfort and a friendly face.
There wasnothing little about the Little Italy section of San Diego. It was almost fifty square blocks of restaurants, cafés, and shops, and Evan spent as much time as possible there. It helped that he’d purchased a condo on the edge of the neighborhood. There was something about the area that felt like a movie set. String lights draped from streetlight to streetlight, and at night, they cast a warm glow over the outside seating of the restaurants. Couples leaned into each other in a way that made their world tilt out of focus while servers carried plates held high as they weaved their way through the tables. The air smelled like garlic and crushed tomatoes, fresh basil grown by hands that worshipped it, and espresso meant to be lingered over.
After parking in his assigned spot at his condo, Evan walked the six blocks to Rosa’s Trattoria. It was easier than finding parking near the restaurant. He could have gone home. He could have opened the fridge and stared at the half-full jar of pickles and the yogurt he’d had just long enough that he couldn’t trust it. He could have paired those with the bottle of wine he didn’t want and called it dinner. But again, ritual. On clean-out day, he went to Rosa’s, the way he had every year for the seven he’d lived in the city.
The antique brass bell over the door announced his presence and someone yelled out a greeting without looking at the front. The dining room was small, its square tables covered with pristine white linen and flameless candles, giving it a romantic ambiance without the fire hazard. Brick walls held framed vintage movie posters and a shelf of dusty, unopened Chianti bottles in their straw baskets. A takeout counter took up most of a wall, next to a glass case with perfectly lined-up cannoli shells and a tray of fresh tiramisu.
“Evan!” Rosa looked up from the stack of that night’s tickets and said his name like a song.
She came around the counter with her arms open and pulled him into a hug. Her dark hair was colored eggplant purple this month, and she had it twisted off her neck with a pen stuck through the bun like a harpoon.
“Mio ragazzo,” she said into his shoulder.My boy.
Evan wrapped his arms around her shoulders and sank into her embrace, soaking up her affection until she stepped back to hold him at arm’s length. She scanned him from head to toe, lips pursed and unhappy. “You’re skinnier. Don’t argue. And I can tell you didn’t sleep last night.”
“I’m always skinny,” he countered. “It’s basically my brand.”
“Your brand is handsome and tired,” she corrected with a click of her tongue. “You need a holiday. One where you don’t spend all your time chasing after sex like a wolf.”
He smiled, a small curve of his mouth that even he knew didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s oddly specific, Rosa.”
“I know you,” she said with such certainty that he wanted to agree.
She knew enough. That much was true. She knew his usual order and the rhythms of his season, and how he would order something new when his mood shifted during a losing streak. But she didn’t know everything. Not the parts he kept off the surface. Not the pieces that might rearrange the way she saw him. Rosa was sharp, but he was practiced, and he wasn’t willing to risk losing her affection.
She lifted her chin toward the counter. “Sit. I’ll get you water. You eating here?”
“To go,” he said before habit pushed him onto a stool. “I’m going to watch the game at home.”
He gestured toward the TV hanging in the corner near the ceiling. Pregame graphics flashed on the screen, the captions shoutingWORLD SERIES: GAME SEVENin the obnoxious way that only a TV graphic could manage.
Rosa’s face softened. “Ah. The last one. I will pretend to be happy for them.” Them meaning the teams still playing when the Barracudas had been done for weeks. Loyalty, but also pettiness—Rosa honored both. “What do you want?”
He almost said, “the usual,” but tonight didn’t feel like a night for autopilot. “Rigatoni Bolognese,” he said instead. “And a salad. And breadsticks. Two orders.”
Rosa wrote it down, nodding approval like he’d passed a test. She called the order into the kitchen in a quick staccato of Italian, and then, instead of hurrying off to take care ofrestaurant business, she leaned her elbows on the counter and studied him. He tried not to squirm under her stare.
He knew what she was seeing. He’d seen it himself often enough before deciding he was better off skipping the mirror after midnight.
He was twenty-nine, and the season had left its fingerprints on him. He had a face that was called sharp before handsome, and a straight nose with the tiniest bump from a foul tip that hit the wrong part of his mask. Dark hair that would curl if he let it was currently cropped close on the sides but left a little longer on the top because he’d fallen asleep in the chair at his friend’s barber shop and she’d left it that way on purpose. His mouth was fuller than the rest of his face said it should be, and he’d been teased through high school and college until people learned that a smile from that mouth could change an entire room.
He hadn’t smiled like that in a while.
He was built like a catcher—broad through the chest, thick in the legs, solid in the middle—and he had the kind of muscle you could only get from thousands of squats, bracing for collisions, and throwing from your knees. By the end of the season, the grind had worn him down to what Rosa would consider skin and bones, but there was still a weight to him that said he wasn’t easy to move unless he wanted to be. His black T-shirt hung loose on his torso, but still stretched tightly enough across his arms and shoulders to provide a map of the work he’d put in over years, not months.
His eyes were what Rosa had zeroed in on now, and he wondered what color they were. Hazel on paper, but never the same twice. When he was worn thin, they settled into a deep brown that held the weight of every game behind them, with just a faint ring of green around the edge. A reminder of how they could spark under better circumstances. Tonight, they didn’t spark.
Tonight, he met Rosa’s gaze head-on, unguarded in a way that came less from trust and more from being too tired to mask whatever she was seeing.
“Something is wrong,” Rosa said finally. “What is it, mio raga? You miss playing.” She answered her own question. “Not the flights or the hotels. Not the grind.” He nodded his agreement because that sounded like a good reason for him to be in his head, but Rosa narrowed her eyes. “No. You miss how it used to feel when you still loved the game.”
He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh at her blunt insight. “Yeah. How did you do that?”
