Page 3 of Naked

Denial is Not a River in Egypt

Tilley

Ilike numbers. I like them so much I made them my career. I know a lot of people feel like numbers are a foreign language invented by aliens from a distant universe, but to me, they are the constant in my life. They don’t change. When you find the right combination, everything makes sense. They are the backbone of logic, music, DNA, and art.

I’m good at what I do and at the ripe old age of twenty-four I’ve already been hired by one major sports team and then hired away by another. Most of the time I’m really proud of that fact, but any time I slow down long enough to feel anything, I remember that I’m also a horrible human being. A terrible friend.

A coward.

That’s right, I said it. I’m a freaking coward.

“Tilley, can you explain how you use continuous data?” That was my current boss, Adam Callaway. As owner and team principal of Vector Racing, he gave me free rein to indulge my ideas. In this case, it paid off big time.

“Yes, I’m very excited to see how this worked out and how hard it will be to implement here.” That was my former boss, Drew Skelkie. To him I was always the fresh-out-of-college-underling with “potential.” The Mantas already had a statistical team in place and I was merely the newest cog in their machine. That was part of the reason I was interested in taking my talents elsewhere.

Another part was that I was desperate to travel and see the world. Thewholeworld. All of it. The rainforests, the deserts, the ancient cities, and the continent of Antarctica.

But the final reason—and truly most important reason I took a job thousands of miles away—was that I couldn’t stand to be near Hunter Holland any longer. He made me feel too many things. In my heart and in my lady parts. Being near him while knowing absolutely nothing was ever going to come of it physically hurt.

I mean it. I’m not being dramatic. After work I’d go home and throw on my shorts and t-shirt and hang out with my friends. Hunter being my very best friend was there any time the Mantas were at home. The exact same progression of soul crushing pain took place every time. First, we’d make eye contact and my skin would tingle everywhere. Then, my insides would twist and swirl until it felt like up was down and down was up. We’d laugh and joke around and pretty soon the next stage of Hunter Syndrome—that was what I termed this awful and painful condition—would hit.Longing.This ache in my chest would develop. It would dictate that I must touch him and, preferably, snuggle against his chest. Since fulfilling this longing was impossible, it would simply grow and grow and grow until I physically couldn’t stand the ache any longer and I’d excuse myself for the night.

At which point Hunter would hop up and demand to walk me home, thus beginning the next to last stage of Hunter Syndrome: denial. He’d talk while we walked, meanwhile I would tell myself I felt nothing for Hunter. There was no ache, no longing, no desire to touch or snuggle. All of it was a figment of my imagination. I was usually so good at denial that by the time we reached my doorstep I was capable of saying goodnight without any pain.

This would only last until I crawled into bed, however. Once alone in my room with the lights out and the sheets against my skin, thoughts of Hunter would creep past my firewall and into my barely conscious thoughts. The final stage of Hunter Syndrome involves really hot sex dreams that result in my waking almost nightly to a sweaty body, legs wrapped around my pillow, on the verge of climax.

Having dreams of this sort about your best friend—someone who sees you asonlya friend—is highly inappropriate.

I was already a bad friend before I did “the thing.” I know I’d never be able to get past this obsession as long as I continued to dangle Hunter candy in front of my starving face. So I did the only logical thing I could think of: I took a job across the ocean, thus setting us physically apart for an indeterminate amount of time.

Except, at the last minute, in a fit of insanity, I indulged my baser instincts. Fueled by alcohol and an unsatisfied libido, I did “the thing.” And then I did the worse thing, by leaving him asleep in his bed and disappearing forever.

Except forever only lasted six months, and now I was standing in a Mantas headquarters conference room giving a presentation to my former team about how I’d help build my current team, knowing there were traces of Hunter around every corner.

Luckily he was in Seattle with the rest of the team for a two week west coast tour. I could allow myself a few memories. But mostly I stayed in this conference room. I used Adam as a human shield (I’m sure he noticed and was concerned, but I refused to address the issue) every time we came or went.

“Instead of the pregame analysis that we employed here, I’ve implemented a continuous analysis program that constantly processes the real time changes throughout a race, providing updated information to our drivers as their status changes on the track.” You’d think moving from baseball to racing would be difficult but it wasn’t. Numbers were numbers.

“And this is all done on site?” Drew asked. He had dirty blond hair he kept short except for a perfect spike of hair in the front. He didn’t even use product—that I could detect—it was all natural and made him look like a nerdy supermodel.

“No. We have a super computer at the factory that is run by my colleague Frakes Opa. He runs the bulk of the data there and feeds me the pertinent information. I make adjustments and send back requests from the track.”

“Fascinating.” Drew stroked his chin and turned to Marissa, one of my former coworkers. “I want to research what it would take for us to have this kind of setup and whether it would be legal.”

She smiled. “No trash can banging around here, boss.”

“Heavens no.” Drew shuddered, referring to the sign stealing scandal that was still causing a ruckus throughout the leagues.

“But even if we don’t use as robust a model or nearly as much data, I do think there is clear room for improvement with the kinds of data we are currently crunching and how in-depth we’re looking.”

Marissa nodded once. “Agreed. Thank you for sharing so much with us, Tilley. I think that’s enough for today. Tomorrow we’ll share our updates with you and I think you’re going to find our longitudinal data very interesting.”

“We’re looking forward to it.” I glanced at Adam, already dreading the walk from the conference room to the parking lot.

“This was a productive day. Again, thank you for being so open with us and for letting me steal Tilley from you.”

Drew stood up and shook hands with Adam. “What are you doing for dinner tonight?”

“We’re headed over to Eve Spencer’s for dinner.” Adam tucked in his chair.

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