“Of course.”
“Anyway, with Kyle, I managed minor league ball fine when we were dating, maybe because he lived close by. It was casual and all. But when it turned more serious, and it was time for spring training, the distraction became too much. I wasn’t very good at keeping things light and uncomplicated.”
“Are you better at it now?”
I scratch my jaw, but there’s not much to consider. “When I get involved, it’s not usually for very long, and mostly just during the off-season.” I’ve learned I need limits, even if they’re self-imposed. Given the way my parents’ marriage imploded with the force of an F5 tornado, I’m best off keeping relationships on a tight leash. “It’s just easier that way. Cleaner.”
“Less complications and less distractions,” Grant agrees.
“That’s why I had to end things with Kyle. It was messing with my head,” I say. “Worse, it was messing with my game.”
I’m saying it for him.
And, even more so, for me. Because as we run and talk about the minors, I need the reminder.
I can enjoy these mornings with Grant as a workout.
And that’s the limit.
The week unfolds like that—extra workouts in the morning as the sun rises then team time after nine.
Drills, exercises, sprints.
Batting practice and field work, then extra time practicing the new rules for sliding into home, meant to reduce punishing collisions at the plate.
I stay in touch with my friends and family—texting baseball updates to Mom and Tyler, trash talking Fitz, and enjoying Emma’s funny observations after moving to New York City. (So much scaffolding! How can there be this many dry cleaners? I am in diner heaven!)
My favorite text conversation comes from Emma and Fitz in a group chat.
* * *
Fitz: I’ve got a game against Phoenix in March. Want tix?
* * *
Declan: Hell, yeah. So long as it doesn’t conflict with a spring training game.
* * *
He sends the date, and I check my schedule. The timing lines up.
* * *
Declan: Center ice, baby. I want center ice.
* * *
Fitz: And I want first baseline when you play the NY Comets. Do we have a deal?
* * *
Emma: Hello? I’m still here! And I want to go to Phoenix too!
* * *
Fitz: Say the word and I’ll fly you in, Ems.
* * *
Emma: Word.
* * *
As I close the thread with Can’t wait to see you, I smile, glad they’ll be in town.
Yes, life is good.
Ticking along.
I’m One-Track Steele—friends, family, baseball.
The one glaring exception? How much I look forward to morning workouts with Grant. How they’re becoming the best part of each day for the next week.
Saturday morning, it’s a game day, and once more I find Grant on the track, ready to hit the golf course path as the sun rises.
We didn’t discuss switching to the golf course. It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out why we gravitated that way.
It’s more private, with more shade and less chance of being seen. Even if I didn’t find him wildly, insanely attractive, I’m hanging out with the other queer dude on the team. Rumors would fly, and there is no need to fan ’em.
“Have you always been an early-morning-extra-workout person?” I ask.
“Definitely. Gotta stay a step or ten ahead, you know?”
Do I ever. “Work harder and better,” I say with a nod.
There’s an understanding with Grant that I’ve only ever had with Fitz—the awareness that we have to work harder, have to constantly prove we belong.
Sports has changed so much over the last ten years, thanks to a guy named Sandy Hildebrand who bought the Dallas football team, making headlines then as the first openly gay team owner. Soon, he banded together with other queer business leaders and spoke up about wanting queer athletes to have the same sponsorship opportunities, respect, and chances as straight players. Soon more athletes came out—in high school, college, and the pros.
Still, I feel the pressure of what it means to be part of that change. Of being lucky to be on this side of it.
“It’s a good pressure though,” I say to Grant.
“Same. Reminds me of Apollo 13. The movie,” he adds.
I jerk my head back in surprise. “Wait a hot second. Are you referencing a movie from the nineties? And you said I was from another generation.”
“I am a study in contradictions,” he says. “It makes me all kinds of fascinating.”
“It sure does,” I mutter under my breath as we near a small lake along the edge of the course.
“And the flick is from 1995. I’ve seen it about twenty times because it’s my grandfather’s favorite movie. There’s this line early on when Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise are running a sequence for the moon landing, and Sinise wants to run it again. At first there’s some resistance, but then Tom Hanks says, ‘Well, let’s get it right.’”
“And that stayed with you? ‘Well, let’s get it right’?” It says a lot about him—about his work ethic, which matches mine.
“It applies to a lot of things. Doesn’t matter how much you practice or how many hours you’ve put in. The goal isn’t to check off time on a box. The end game is doing it till you get it right.” He shrugs, but I know what he’s saying is important to him. “That’s why the early morning workouts. Not to log hours or reps or miles, but to win games.”
I nod along. I see it that way too, but I like how he’s said it. “Words to live by.”
“Movies have some good ones now and then,” he says.
For a flash of a second, I imagine watching a flick with him, then turning it off because I’m overwhelmed by the way he smells and how much I want to lick the column of his throat, drag my lips over his jaw, rub my face against his stubble.
God help me.
A caw rends the air—we both jerk our gazes to the edge of the lake as a heron swoops down, joining another one. The male snaps his bill then stretches his neck.
“Ah, the mating call of the heron,” I remark. Maybe it should be “Heron help me,” because the break in tension has saved me.
“How do you know they’re mating?” Grant asks. “They aren’t banging. Also, how do birds bang?”
This, I can talk about easily. “He’s preening for her. Soon he’ll bring her twigs. They might even exchange them.”
“Ah, the twig exchange. Of course.” Grant shoots me an amused smile. “And my other question, Mr. Ornithologist?”
“The how-do-they-bang one?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Grant,” I sing-song, “when a male bird loves a female bird very much . . .”