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“Games,” he echoes flatly.
My eyes flick up from my coffee to meet his heated blue ones.
Shit. That came out wrong.
“I just meant …” Sigh. Prepare backpedal sequence. Activate. “I meant I wish I had time to—”
“Play games,” he finishes for me, eyes half-lidded.
My shame is instantly traded for frustration. I’m hearing that haughty tone in his voice I can’t stand, except usually it’s directed at someone else. “Well, that’s literally what they are, Stefan. We even call them baseball games. It wasn’t meant insultingly.”
“Oh. I’m not insulted.” He lifts his chin superiorly. “Especially when games like mine come with seven-figure salaries.”
My eyes turn to stone. “Seven figures?”
The tiniest hint of a smirk teases his own lips. “Well, I didn’t say I was one of the ones scoring seven figures. I wasn’t. But the potential was there.” He takes a gulp of his coffee.
The potential was there. Did I hear him right? I grip my mug tighter and, with a hint of anxiety, ask, “So what happened?”
“I’m proud of you doing your whole counselor thing,” he says suddenly, leaning back a bit in his chair with a single bite of toast pinched between his fingers. “Only reason I asked if you still play ball is to see if you still got it … or if you’ve gone all soft on me.”
I straighten my posture and throw him a smirk. “Like hell.”
His eyes draw down me appraisingly before he pops the last bite of toast past his lips and gives me a little approving nod. Then his gaze drifts off, looking toward the living room, then the ceiling and the back windows.
And I just watch him … watching stuff.
His eyes are so gorgeous, like two bright blue pools of ice. I could watch him watching stuff for hours if it wasn’t so creepy. He always seems to be figuring things out all the time, the intense way in which he looks at everything around him, sizing it all up. Even as kids, I assumed he was super smart and always knew how to solve problems, or what to do to beat a video game we were playing, or how to turn around a ball game our team was losing.
He had the answers no matter what.
And I still feel that way, looking at him now. Every part of him emits confidence, right to his fingertips with tiny crumbs of toast still hanging on them.
The mood feels different suddenly. Better. Lighter. It inspires me to shift the spotlight with a little question. “What about you? I don’t know the first thing anymore about you, it feels like.”
His eyes meet mine right away. “You haven’t been watching?”
A lightning bolt of guilt cast its way down my body, killing the light mood in an instant.
Then he smirks. “No worries, bro. Isn’t a big deal.”
It is to me. “I … I do watch baseball now and then,” I defend myself, “but I can’t always catch the games, and I lost track of which team you play for, and … well, and …”
And I’m a shitty friend.
And when we parted ways as teenagers, I spent a year or more vehemently not giving two shits what team you were on because I more or less hated you.
All these feelings I thought I’d processed are bubbling up to the surface and making a mess of my stomach before I’ve even had a single bite of my own pile of eggs.
I shut my eyes and set down the mug of coffee, untouched.
Am I about to cry like a little bitch in front of Stefan now? Maybe I really have gone soft.
“Torn ACL.”
His words pull me out of the depths. My eyes pop open to find him half-leaned over his plate, elbows propped up on the table, and his eyebrows lifted, producing all those adorable wrinkles in his forehead and making his blue eyes sparkle.
“Torn ACL?” I prompt him.
“Year and a half ago.” His eyes narrow. “Then had a surgery. Then therapy. Didn’t make the cut into the major leagues. Stopped playing. Came back home. Gave up the condo in Frisco.”
“You stopped playing?” The news guts me. If I wasn’t already freaking out about how much I’ve missed out on in Stefan Baker’s life, now I am. “Tore your ACL? What’s … What’s the ACL again?”
“Anterior cruciate ligament. You know that.”
“Is that part of your ankle?”
“Knee.” He gives a nod downward. “One fateful fuckin’ little twist and … pop. End of my career.”
I cover my mouth with a hand, then bring it right back down to the table. No need to act like a gasping drama queen in front of Stefan.
But that’s exactly what my natural reaction would be. I want to apologize for some reason, but that feels stupid and wrong and utterly inadequate to do. What good is an “I’m sorry”, anyway?
