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“Crazy.” She speared a piece of pineapple with her fork, wondering how fresh fruit in Cleveland would compare to that in California.
“So what are your superstitions?” he asked again.
“I don’t think I put much thought into it before. Philz coffee before home games? But that’s more of a life essential than a superstition.”
“What do you do when you’re at away games?”
“Suffer, usually.”
Miles laughed, and she was struck again by how young he was. Emmy barely remembered her early twenties, but she knew she’d been an idiot. Here was Miles, on a near seven-figure annual salary, and he was famous. How the hell could a kid deal with that kind of pressure? She admired how he was able to hold it together.
“What are your superstitions?”
He chewed hard on a chunk of hash brown. “I have one thing. It’s something I’ve done since little league.”
“Lay it on me.” She thought about Tucker and his grape bubble gum and wondered if Miles’s superstition would be as quirky and endearing.
“It’s a bit weird.”
“Aren’t they all? Isn’t that a byproduct of superstition? Wade Boggs ate a full bucket of fried chicken before every game. I’m not totally sure how he didn’t die of a heart attack by thirty-two. But yeah…superstitions are all weird.”
Miles reached into the back pocket of his jeans and withdrew a beat-up leather wallet. From inside he took out a creased, faded baseball card that had obviously been laminated as a last-ditch effort to keep it from falling apart.
“Nolan Ryan?”
“Yup.”
“Good choice. Never a bad call to pick the guy who owns stake in one of your rival teams.” She winked and passed him back the card. “So the card is your superstition?”
“I keep it in my sock when I play.”
“Every game?”
“Every game.”
“Sounds itchy.”
“Nah, you get used to it.”
“So that’s your dirty little secret?”
“That’s it.”
“You need to work on something weirder. Like, Roger Clemens used to wipe his sweat on the Babe Ruth statue at old Yankee Stadium.”
“So I need to be grosser?”
“Grosser about what?” Tucker put his plate down on the other side of Miles and pulled up a chair.
“We’re talking about superstitions,” Emmy explained. “Tell Miles about yours.”
“Is it gross?” Miles asked.
“My dentist thinks so.” He poked a bit of vegetable omelet with his fork, reminding Emmy she still hadn’t touched her pineapple. She popped it into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully while Tucker told Miles about his bubble gum habit.
“We’re trying to figure out Emmy’s superstition. If she has one, she won’t tell me.”
“She listens to Hall and Oates’s ‘Private Eyes’ before she starts any of her warm-ups.”
