Page 72 of What's in a Kiss?

I jump, wiping my eyes.

Jake’s rapping on my window, wearing a jersey that readsYankees, and baseball pants that fit precisely as I’d hoped. He’s a little sweaty, a little grass-stained, and entirely delicious. I roll the window down.

“You’re here!” He sounds amazed, excited, like he hadn’t just seen me this morning. Like we hadn’t spent all day together yesterday. He reads my expression and his face changes. “What’s wrong?”

I sniff. There’s no way to broach this topic here; all I can do is put Lorena out of my mind for now and remember that I’ll be going home soon, where I can hug her and thank her for loving me.

“Allergies,” I tell Jake, switching gears. I lift my special guest in my arms. “Meet Gram Parsons, your new mascot.”

Jake laughs and shakes Gram Parsons’s paw. “Where’d you come from, handsome?”

“I rescued him from a pound called Aurora.”

“Did you name him?” Jake asks and takes me in his arms. Gram Parsons seems to enjoy this, too.

“It came to me from another realm,” I say.

“We should take him to Joshua Tree,” Jake says, “and let him commune with the ghost of his namesake.”

I hug Jake back and look into his eyes. “How do you always know the right thing to say?”

“Practice,” he says.

And there it is, a thousand layers of relationship history.That Jake knows how to put my troubled mind at ease feels like a gift. I’ll take it.

“This is a nice surprise,” he says. “I didn’t think you were coming.”

I blink, confused. It’s in the calendar. “You want to win, don’t you?”

When he laughs, I frown. Am I not on the team? Why wouldn’t I be on the team? Is that why I couldn’t find any left-handed gloves or cleats my size in the garage?

“We’re probably going to forfeit anyway,” Jake says.

“For-what?” I say. “I’m not familiar with the word.”

“Eli and Masha are on their honeymoon—”

Ding ding ding. There’s the ugly answer. My High Life husband plays my favorite sport without me because my Real Life BBS cannot stand High Life me.

“And Vic called in sick. So we’re down to eight.”

“Sounds like Mudville needs a hero,” I say, needing to channel my pain and confusion into something useful, something physical. I kiss my biceps and say, “Put me in, Coach. These pythons are ready to squeeze out some ribbies.”

••••••

Dusk is fallingand the field lights are coming on when the umpire shouts, “Play ball!” The scent of fresh cut grass is rich on the light spring wind, and I’m transported back to my youth, to my happiest days spent on these fields.

I’m playing catcher, which gives me a front row seat to Jake’s deft pitching. I watch his muscles twist and tighten, hear the grunt that accompanies each exertion, the grunt that soundsjust before Jake shows me what he’s got. I’m sweating and not just because of the gear.

Gram Parsons jumps nervously at the first few balls coming his way. But soon he grows accustomed to the excitement, lies down, and takes a nap. I knew he’d be groovy. As in one world, so in the other.

The sting of Jake’s ball whacking my glove hurts so good. We’re flirting as we play, but we’re also so in sync that it’s three up, three down in the first two innings.

In the third inning, we’re batting, two outs, and I hit a deep pop fly to center field. I run, hearing Jake cheer when my ball drops before the outfielder can reach it. I round first and slide in safe at second. My heart is pounding, my legs strained with the effort of running faster than I knew I could.

Jake steps up to the plate. My body is keenly attuned to his, watching the way his knees bend, watching the twist of his shoulders, knowing what he’ll do before he does it. On his second pitch, the catcher drops the ball, and I take third. Jake grins at me from home. We can almost taste the first run of the game. When Jake swings at the next pitch, I feel it in my nervous system, the winning connection between us as he lines the ball into shallow right. They throw him out at first, but not before I cross the plate and put the Yankees up by one.

At the top of the seventh and final inning, Jake calls me to the mound for a huddle.

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