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“All right,” I said. “Two Jack and Cokes.”
The bartender nodded and disappeared behind the bar, grabbing glasses and filling our drinks. Mallory pushed her hair back over her ear as she leaned on the bar beside me. Our elbows were touching, and the electricity of that simple touch was overwhelming. When the drinks came, we sipped them quietly for a moment.
“So tell me, how did all this come about?” she asked. “I mean, I know you entered the draft in college. But you’re like a superstar now.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I got lucky. Right team that needed arms and were willing to take a chance on me very early. I didn’t actually pitch that great in the minors, but I got better once I hit the majors and had some time to adjust.”
“So you live in Montreal? How is it up there?”
“I don’t actually,” I said. “I live in upstate New York in the offseason. I have an apartment a couple blocks from the stadium in Montreal for the season, but I don’t live there except eighty some days a year.”
“So cool,” she said.
“Enough about me, though,” I said. “My whole life is an open book on ESPN. What about you? You ended up here in New York? That’s great.”
She blushed a little and took a sip of her drink.
“Yeah, I did end up here, which was the plan all along, I guess,” she said. “I actually took a year off after college to earn money to make the move. It was super tough both working and leaving my friends when it was time to go.”
“I bet,” I said. “It was hard to leave Murdock for college.”
She nodded.
“And also not hard, too,” she laughed. I joined her and nodded.
“Yeah, also true.”
“It’s quicksand, that town,” she said. “I knew if I stayed longer than a year to build up the money I would never leave. So, I just circled the date on the calendar, threw everything into my car, and left home that day. Thank goodness I met Tamara on my second day in town. I was staying at a hotel and joined an acting class and met her within twenty-four hours of being in the city. She told me about the apartment below her being subleased, and I jumped on it.”
“Is Tamara the girl you were with at the game?”
“Yes,” she said. “She’s as close to me here as Tessa and Kat were in Murdock. Really sweet girl. She’s an actress too, but we aren’t really in competition with each other since we’re so different looking.”
“Are you in anything right now?” I asked.
“Nothing playing,” she said. “Rehearsing one that I am doing with Tamara and a couple other friends, actually. But it doesn’t have a performance date set yet.”
“Look at you,” I said. “You made it. You’re doing the thing. I always knew you were going to be someone when I saw you performing in high school.”
“I still can’t believe you saw those plays,” she said, blushing. “I had no idea you were there. Probably a good thing. I would have been super nervous knowing you were out there.”
“Why?” I asked. “You were great. I really liked them. I thought you were really impressive in them. Especially inOur Town.”
“Wow, you saw that?” she asked. “And you liked it?”
“I did,” I said. “It was a little dry, but it was good. And you were great.”
She blushed again and bit her bottom lip. It was such a cute thing to do that I nearly pointed it out. But I held back, letting myself just enjoy her in all her adorableness.
“Why didn’t you say anything to me?” she asked.
It was just like she asked me in the bar, years before. And just like then, I didn’t have a good answer. I shrugged, taking a deep pull of my drink and realizing I had emptied the nectar inside. I didn’t need to alert the bartender. He was already there with another one.
I was sure some of it was because of the people I hung out with. There was a pressure to be a certain person back then, to act a certain way, be seen with certain people, all that. One of those people was my sort-of, on-again, off-again girlfriend at the time.
“Deb,” she said, almost as if she could read my mind.
I huffed a mirthless laugh and took a deep sip of my new drink.
