Page 40 of Caught Offside

His phone showed Asher’s message. I’m here when you’re ready.

He set it face-down on the counter. He wasn’t ready yet. But he left it there instead of clearing it, Asher’s words waiting for whenever he found the nerve to answer them, and for tonight, that was the most he had in him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Bottom of the sixth, Asher drove a slider into the right-center gap and pulled into second standing up, and as the dust settled around his cleats, he did the thing he’d caught himself doing all week. He looked for Patrick.

He found him a dozen rows up behind the plate, in the seat he’d taken every night of the homestand, a guy in a plain ballcap nobody would clock as an NHL defenseman. He watched with the same flat, total focus he brought to a hockey game, except tonight it was aimed at Asher, and when the ball found the gap, he came up out of his seat with the rest of the section. Asher stood on second in the late-May heat with his pulse still up and grinned at the dirt like an idiot. He’d never once played in front of someone who’d cleared his whole week just to sit in a ballpark and watch him. Apparently, that was all it took to undo him completely.

He came around to score, and when the inning ended, he pulled his gear back on and went out for the top of the seventh, which used to be the kind of inning that came apart in his hands. The bases were loaded, one out, and the lefty cleanup hitter had already squared up two balls off him. A year ago, Asher would have been three pitches ahead of himself, second-guessing the sequence, gripping the ball. Tonight, his head stayed quiet. The lefty chased a slider in the dirt for strike three and a soft tapper in front of the plate ended the inning.

Delgado caught him in the dugout between innings, a hand on his shoulder, and didn’t waste words.

“You keep catching like this, people upstairs are going to run out of reasons to leave you down here.” He let it sit. “This is the guy who gets the call, Tuck. Don’t change a thing.”

It was the sentence Asher had been chasing since he was eighteen, and his first instinct, before he’d even gotten his glove off, was to find Patrick in the stands. Not because Patrick could have heard a word of it from up there, but because telling him was suddenly the first thing Asher wanted to do.

Patrick was waiting by the truck when Asher finally came out, showered and changed, ballcap low, hands in his pockets, in no apparent hurry to be anywhere. He pushed off the door when he saw him coming.

“You got greedy on the slider in the eighth,” Patrick said.

“I went three for four and threw a guy out, but sure, let’s lead with the slider.” Asher dug out his keys and reached past Patrick for the door. Patrick didn’t give him the room, so they ended up close in the dark of the half-empty lot.

“You dropped your hands.”

“My hands are perfect. My hands are the one part of me that has never let me down.” Asher didn’t step back, and neither did Patrick. “You’ve sat through one homestand, and now you think you understand baseball.”

“I understand you dropped your hands.” But he said it low as he reached up and pushed a damp strand of hair off Asher’s forehead, unhurried, the lot quiet and nearly empty around them. And that was what got Asher, not the touch itself but the ease of it. He’d had spent the spring keeping a careful count of every place they made contact, and somewhere in the last few weeks, he’d quit counting.

They got in.

The drive back to his apartment took ten minutes, Patrick’s hand on his thigh the whole way, not doing anything, just there. Asher turned the radio low and let the quiet sit, which he never did with anyone, and it didn’t feel like work.

Inside, he dug through the fridge for something to feed them both, and Patrick leaned against the counter, watching his hands like they were going to teach him something.

“Delgado pulled me aside tonight,” Asher said to the inside of the fridge because saying it to Patrick’s face would have meant admitting how badly he wanted it. “Told me I’m the guy who gets the call, and not to change a thing.”

The quiet behind him shifted. He came out of the fridge with the eggs and a foil-wrapped something he didn’t really look at, bumped the door shut with his hip, and turned. Patrick wasn’t leaning anymore. He’d come off the counter, the crease gone from between his eyebrows, his whole attention on Asher all at once.

“Asher.” Patrick said his name like it was the rest of the sentence. “That’s got to feel good.”

Asher shrugged. “I mean, it always feels good to hear you’re playing well, but it’s just Coach. I’m still waiting for an actual call-up.”

“Sure, but at least you know you’re getting closer.” Patrick crossed the kitchen and reached for Asher without effort, one hand at his jaw, and the rest of Asher’s brain went quietly offline. “I’ve watched you all week. You earned it. Every word.”

And it wasn’t really the praise. His dads came to his games when the schedule let them and meant every word they said, and his friends were always good for a round and a slap on the back. This one landed somewhere else because it came from Patrick, and what Asher felt for him had long since stopped being something he could pretend was casual. He kissed Patrick in the kitchen with the lights on and didn’t reach for a joke.

Patrick woke early, even with nowhere to be. Asher had surfaced most mornings of that week to the shower already running, or to Patrick already up and dressed and moving around the kitchen.

This particular morning, Asher came out and found Patrick at the counter with the little French press he took everywhere he went because of course he did. He worked at it unhurried and exact. Asher stopped in the doorway in his boxers and watched him, a guarded Chicago hockey player perfectly at home in Asher’s kitchen at seven in the morning. He’d wanted Patrick since January. That part he was used to. What kept sneaking up on him was how ordinary it had started to feel having him here. Patrick up before him and moving around the place like it was nothing, like it was just where he was supposed to be.

“You packed a coffee maker,” Asher said from the doorway. “You drove all the way up here, and you packed your own coffee maker.”

“I packed a French press.” Patrick didn’t turn around. “It weighs nothing, and it means I never have to find out what you’d have made me drink.”

“I’d have made you drink coffee. From my coffee maker. Like a normal person.”

“Mm.”