Page 10 of Caught Offside

Soon, he’d get into his own rhythm. He needed to head down to his parents’ place to get warmed up. The benefit of having both a former pitcher and catcher as parents was that they understood what it was like. Neither had taken on the responsibility of coaching him when he was younger, but they were always there for critique whenever he asked.

Spring training was three weeks out. Somewhere in Milwaukee, Navarro was rehabbing a wrist that had been questionable since September, and Asher was next on the depth chart. He mentioned none of this to Patrick. It was too early for the parts of his life that mattered most.

Despite the fact that Asher would rather text than talk on the phone, he hated messaging back and forth with Patrick. He liked this guy, which was strange since he hadn’t known who he was before the gala and their entire weird friendship had been built on messages sent whenever they had time. At least they’d reached the point where they exchanged phone numbers rather than messaging through social media.

For some stupid reason, hitting the call button felt like a progression in whatever they were doing, and he wasn’t sure Patrick wanted that. For all Asher knew, he was someone Patrick could vent to after a rough day and nothing more.

You’ll never know if you don’t suck it up and do it.

He’d been typing a response to Patrick’s game recap and the text kept growing. Patrick had taken a gnarly hit in the game that night, and Asher wasn’t sure he was as fine as he kept insisting. He hit the call button before he could talk himself out of it.

Patrick picked up on the third ring. “Did you just butt-dial me or are you calling on purpose?”

Asher heard him suck in a sharp breath. “Your definition of fine needs work. Where did the shot hit you?”

“Square in the chest. Luckily, we wear protection,” Patrick explained. “Like I said, I’ll be fine. Just tender. I’ve had much worse.”

“Why do you say that like it’s a flex?”

“Because it’s all part of the game. Would you get all mother-hen if one of your teammates got hurt?” Patrick sounded annoyed. “Would you be on the phone making sure they weren’t hurt worse than they told you?”

Asher had to laugh at that. Patrick obviously didn’t know the lore, didn’t know what led up to his parents coming out to the world and Pops retiring from baseball. Then again, Asher wasn’t the one who’d injured Patrick, so it wasn’t at all the same.

“Fine. Point taken,” Asher conceded. “Maybe I just wanted to talk to you. Is that okay?”

Patrick sighed. “Yeah, that’s fine. It’s actually good to hear your voice. I was starting to tell myself you weren’t actually you.”

“Oh? Then who was I?” Asher chuckled. He felt better knowing he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been satisfied with where things were.

“Some weirdo who saw a picture of the two of us chatting at that gala and decided to pretend they were you,” he admitted.

“That’d be a lot of work to go through just to talk to you. And what if you’d walked away thinking I was a complete asshole? That’s a lot of risk for very little reward.”

“Hey now, I’m a fucking catch,” Patrick scoffed. “And who says I don’t think you’re an asshole?”

“I’m charming as fuck, and you know it.”

“And so damned humble.”

They talked for over an hour. Somewhere around the forty-minute mark, Patrick started telling him about a road trip where the charter bus driver took a wrong turn heading to the arena in Indianapolis and the backup goalie, who was from Indy, spent twenty minutes trying to convince him to use Google Maps.

“The driver wouldn’t do it?” Asher asked.

“He said he’d been driving buses for thirty years and didn’t need a phone to tell him where to go.”

“Did he find it?”

“Eventually. Pruitt started doing play-by-play from the back row. ‘And Driver Mike takes another left. Bold strategy. The arena remains elusive.’”

Asher laughed hard enough that his ribs hurt. On the other end of the line, Patrick let out this quiet exhale, the almost-laugh he did when he was pleased with himself but wasn’t going to show it.

“You should do that more,” Asher said.

“Do what?”

“Be funny.”

“I’m not funny.”