This is for the wonderful Lookingforhoofprints, who swooped in like a fiend during Fandom Gives Back to snap up the random pairing that is TheHeartOfLife and Hmonster4. She let us run free, while only extracting one promise - give good Garrett. We hopefully will live up to that.
Lily – Happy Birthday, babe – this one is all for you.
Thanks to lightstardust for being her.
Characters and quotes contained within are not ours. Everything else is.
Chapter 1 – A Beautiful Day for a Game
It was hard growing up a Mariners fan in Eastern Tennessee. As a little boy, I had this silly notion that the M's were 'my' team, given the serendipity that we both came into existence on the same day (April 6, 1977). I could name every player, every stat, and every little detail that any 'true fan' would know.
When my father moved us from Seattle to Gatlinburg in the second grade, I was absolutely despondent, thinking I'd never see another M's game as long as I lived.
Seven year olds can be melodramatic that way.
My granda, a big baseball fan himself, took pity on me, doing everything he could to help me get my fix, so long as it fell into 'his way' of doing things. He signed up for cable just to get an up and coming channel that would keep us up to date on the latest (you all know that channel today as ESPN). He allowed me to watch highlights and keep track of major league news, but he had one hard and fast rule - under no circumstance did we watch games on TV. We had to do it the old fashioned way.
The minute dinner was over and the table was cleared, my granda and I would peel out, leaving my sisters to mess around with MTV while my grandmother wrote letters or talked to friends. We'd roll down the windows of his Buick Skylark and turn on the radio so we could hear whatever game was being broadcast (usually Cincinnati or St Louis, and once in a blue moon the Mariners). I would run around the backyard, pretending I was actually 'in' the game while my granda tinkered with his old Nikon 35 millimeter camera and 'officiated.' When the sun hung just low enough that it lit up the back stoop, Granda would use the face of his watch to catch the sun, creating a pretend baseball on the pavement. I would line up, my imaginary bat on my shoulder, happy to swing for the fences, never questioning when he called a ball foul or fair. That's how I spent the summers of my childhood, free of technology, using my imagination while Granda watched on. I can't think about baseball and not think about him – the two will always be linked in my mind.
In 2001, I sat by my granda's hospital bed as the M's won game one hundred and sixteen, tying the Yankees for the most wins in the regular season. I was twenty-four years old, a rookie sports reporter for a small town newspaper. It was one month after September eleventh and two weeks before my granda died.
He was in a lot of pain during that game, but he tried hard not to let it show. He demanded that we stick to our traditions, keeping score and playing a modified version of pretend baseball. With the lamp light reflecting off the face of his watch, Granda sent me sliders and knuckle balls, which I swung at as hard as I could without knocking anything over (the room was too small to allow for a full fan). When he got tired, we sat and listened to the game on the radio until the final outs were called.
The only thing missing was his beloved camera and the slanting afternoon sun.
"What you are hearing there, Emmie, is history," he told me. "Bad stuff happens in this world, but it's the simple, pure things that get us through. There is good everywhere, you just have to look for it."
Those words have carried me through a lot of tough times. Baseball is the purest form of perfection, something that brings people together with nothing more than a radio or a newspaper, and unifies us in our love of a game. The M's might not be making a post season run this year, and it might be a while before they do, but that doesn't mean that any of us will stop loving them, because to me, they are everything that is good and right about the world.
To paraphrase Bull Durham, this is a simple game: You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. Sometimes it rains.
Life isn't always simple, but that doesn't mean we can't strive to make it that way. Tomorrow is going to be a beautiful day for a game. I'll be at the ballpark, but I'll have the radio on, wishing I could be outside running pretend bases and focusing on the good things in life.
I think my granda would have liked that.
It's a Beautiful Day for a Game by Emmett McCarty, The Seattle Times
-0-0-0-
One of life's little ironies is that it can take a sharp left turn when people least expect it. Random events, which alone might be unremarkable, can crash together, creating a supernova that rocks lives and sends people careening off course.
It's at those times that characters are tested and paths are changed.
They are also the times when Emmett McCarty wished he could just turn his phone off. His cell (placed on vibrate after a series of panicked early morning calls) had been buzzing away on his desk for the last two hours. When he did finally get around to checking, his voicemail would no doubt be filled with a litany of colorful commentary: angry rants from his mother, tearful pleas for help from his sisters, and yet another offer of explanation and apology from his father. All this noise because his parents happened to bump into each other at the airport.
Them bumping into each other after years of no contact would have been momentous enough, but that wasn't what spawned this latest chain of calls.
No, the calls came when the occasion for the trips were revealed. Apparently, Emmett's father was on his way to the Virgin Islands to marry wife number three (the second marriage to Emmett's mother was not added to the total) while his mother was on her way to Napa for a long weekend with her latest boyfriend.
They were completely innocuous, unrelated trips, which, upon collision, set off a chain of events that pulled the entire family into the fallout. A devastated mother, an apologetic father, and a new stepmother, an unidentified woman the McCarty children had yet to meet.
The last time there was an explosion of this magnitude was just after the McCarty's second divorce. Emmett's mother had called him at work, sobbing and ranting, too focused on her anger to remember it was her only son's twenty-sixth birthday. It would have been easy to hate her, and a lot of people probably would have, but Emmett knew his mother was in a bad place. Her oversight was not intentional – it never was.
That didn't make it hurt any less.
After twenty minutes of halfhearted commiseration, Emmett had disconnected and ran in the most literal of senses. Devastated by his mother's own pain and her inability to see anything around her, he jumped online and cobbled together a series of flights that would shuttle him from San Francisco to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. He'd barely made it out of the rental car and up the back steps of his grandparent's house before collapsing on the stoop in tears; the hurt, the loss, and the realization that his parents were finally over tearing him up just as badly as it had when he was seven. To top it off, Emmett was embarrassed and disgusted by his childish response, which only made falling apart that much worse. It was ridiculous, a grown man crying because his parents loved each other too much to stay apart, and were too damn proud and angry at the world to stay together and work through their problems.
The screen door had creaked open behind him, and the smell of freshly baked bread and lemon verbena wafted out of the house and wrapped around Emmett like a warm hug. They were the scents of comfort and home. He'd never felt that in any of his parents houses, apartments, or condos, only here in Gatlinburg.
"Don't cry, Poppet," his nan cooed, running her hands through his dark, wavy hair. "They don't mean to hurt you. They just don't know how to not destroy each other."
Nan always knew what was wrong, especially when it came to him. She continued to comb her fingers, gnarled by age and arthritis, through his hair, waiting as Emmett wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Do you know why your granda taught you so much about baseball, Emmie?"
Emmett shook his head. In this backyard, he would always be a child, pretending to play baseball with his granda. He wished he could be that little boy again, and forget about all the baggage that was dumped on him. They were his parents - they were supposed to be the responsible ones. They were supposed to deal with this shit, not expect him to fix it.
"Your granda wanted you to be able to love something that was yours, lad. That way, when you were ready, you would know how to see beyond all the shite-"
Emmett snorted, unable to suppress a reaction to the vulgarity, which was no doubt his nan's intent. The snot and tears burned the back of his throat, raw from flight and exhaustion, as he started to laugh. Nan merely flicked his ear, just hard enough to sting, and continued on, "Yes, I said shite, Emmett McCarty, deal with it. Now stay here, I have something for you."
She shuffled into the house, her pristine white Keds whispering against the old wooden floorboards. When she returned, Nan carried an old faded shoebox, a thick layer of dust coating the once glossy surface.
"I was hoping for a warm cookie," Emmett said glibly. "You sure know how to wow a guy, Nan."
She sat back down on the stoop, and jabbed her slim, bony shoulder into his bicep. It was a gesture of camaraderie or kinship, something shared between two battle-scarred veterans who had learned to live through worse days than this.
"Take these, Poppet. Know that you were loved, and someday you'll find that kind of love with someone who's worthy of you. You don't have to repeat your parent's mistakes."
"But Es and Alice did," Emmett said, his voice husky from crying and hours in a pressurized cabin, thirty-five thousand feet above the ground. It was true. His older sister, Esme, had fallen into an abusive relationship, leaving and returning to her dickwad of a husband multiple times. She'd only just gotten the courage to break free and file for divorce - no doubt prompted by Emmett's threat to kill the bastard if he ever touched her again. It was at the hospital, during a counseling session, where she met her current boyfriend, a British doctor who granda would have loved (and teased for being a limey git).
"Es worked it out," Nan insisted. "And Alice is getting better. I know it was hard for to take her to that clinic, but she's healing because of you. And now it's time to focus on yourself, Poppet. You've been strong for everyone else. It's time to think about you."
With a kiss to the top of his head, she left him alone with his parting gifts - an old, battered Nikon 35 millimeter camera and his granda's watch, a British Royal Air Force issue Omega, given to him during World War II. The face was scratched and casing battered after years of use, but to Emmett, it was perfect. At the bottom of the box was a sheet of paper, folded in half and yellowed with age.
The note, its black ink faded to a dark purple, was placed in a heavy wood frame and held a place of honor on Emmett's desk, a reminder of simpler days.
Keep pitching the imaginary balls, Emmie. Someday you'll find someone who will hit them back to you, just like you used to do with me.
"Yo, dream girl!" The shout was accompanied by a soft smack on the top of Emmett's head. It broke him out of his daze, but not the self imposed funk that had colored his morning. "You were supposed to be off today. Come in to check your fan mail?"
Emmett placed the framed note, which he'd been holding a bit too tight, back on his desk and forced aside his foul mood. No one at the Times knew his personal history, and Emmett found it was easier to compartmentalize that part of his life. With partitions up, it was easy to close doors and contain the areas with the most damage. They were like flood doors, containing the damage and keeping him afloat.
"Fuck you Gar, you're just pissed they chose me to be 'Ett 1," he shot back, affecting an easy smile. This was the response people expected of him here - The clown, the joker, the cool guy who flirted and told slightly off color jokes.
It was the only side he allowed anyone to see.
Garrett Adams, a business and technology reporter for The Seattle Times, sat on the edge of Emmett's desk, the morning paper rolled up like a baseball bat in his left hand. Garrett had been with The Times for two years, and had taken Emmett under his wing after Emmett joined in February. They shared a love of sports and an acerbic, irreverent sense of humor, and an appreciation of good practical jokes. After encasing the food critic's stapler in a block of red Jell-o, one of the copy editors dubbed them 'Ett 1 and 'Ett 2, an homage to Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat.
Thing 1 and Thing 2 had nothing on them.
"How'd you pull that off anyway? Everyone knows I'm better looking," Garrett said, grabbing an Ichiro bobblehead off of Emmett's desk. He shook the plastic toy, snorting as the giant head bounced back and forth on the flimsy spring mechanism like a demonic leprechaun.
"You're just jealous you don't get proposals from your columns," Emmett teased. Garrett liked to needle him, and he refused to buckle, dishing back as good as he got. "And speaking of which, aren't you supposed to be off today?"
"You aren't the only one that gets fan mail, punk. It's just that my groupies are hot, where as yours are old, fat and likely have facial hair. " Garrett placed the bobblehead back on his desk. "And to answer your question, I left my phone here. I'm lost without it."
"Oh the things I could say…" Emmett said with a melodramatic sigh. In the short time he'd known Garrett, he'd come to realize that Garrett would lose anything that was either not nailed down or watched over by his girlfriend, Kate. Garrett often made passing remarks about how Kate kept him grounded. Before that, it had been his roommate, Rosamund or Rosemary or something like that, who had the dubious responsibility for keeping his head on straight. It would seem that Garrett was the type of guy who needed a woman to function.
Kind of like Emmett's dad.
"Funny, you're overly pretty for just forgetting your phone. While I'm flattered you made the effort to get all dressed up for me, I prefer women, G."
Garrett cracked Emmett over the head again and dropped the newspaper on his desk, where it flopped open to display a series of photos, the familiar images disfigured - cartoon mustaches, horns and other different accoutrements doodled in black ink. "Which is why you're still single, no woman would put up with your shit. Flatter yourself all you like, this is for Lauren. I've got an article I want her to proof. Yorkie did it last time – that little fucker spelled out every damn acronym. LMAO needs to stay as LMAO!" Garrett ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it so the front spiked up and sucked in his cheeks. "How do I look?"
"I sure as hell wouldn't do you."
"Perfect, I'm gorgeous then." Garrett grabbed at the paper to smack Emmett again, but Emmett beat him to the punch, scooping up the business section and standing quickly. The height difference allowed him to thwack Garrett across the side of the head in retribution.
"Dude, not the hair!" Garrett cried. He mussed his hair again, then dropped his arms and shook his shoulders, reminding Emmett of a prize fighter getting ready to enter the ring. When going a few rounds with Lauren, the analogy wasn't all that far off. "Okay, time to brave the gauntlet. I'm taking care of this, then I'm outta here. We still on for tonight?"
"Like I have a choice," Emmett said. Garrett had been on his ass about having drinks with the roommate for weeks. Emmett had always come up with some excuse not to go, but the excuses were starting to wear thin. Short of needing a liver transplant or being attacked by a bear, Emmett would need a miracle to get out of it. "Is she going to bring me cake?"
The joke was in reference to the lone photo that sat on Garrett's desk, a faded image of two blonde toddlers, their faces smeared with ice cream and chocolate cake. The little girl, her blonde hair pulled back in two stubby pigtails, had wedged her food-covered hand in the other baby's hair. The first time Emmett saw it, he made the mistake of asking if they were Garrett's children.
"As if anything could ever be as gorgeous as baby G," he'd said, rubbing his knuckles proudly against his shirt.
"Is that like the royal we?" Emmett had shot back, forming the foundation for a relationship that had grown into a real friendship. "And if so, I didn't realize you were a queen. Nice pigtails."
"I'm all the man I'll ever need," Garrett corrected him. "That's my theoretical little sister and roommate. I was the first one to ever see her naked and I never let her forget it."
It was shortly after that conversation that Garrett started his frontal assault. Come hell or high water, he was going to force Emmett to meet his BFF with the cake fetish. Excuses were not accepted.
"I need to wrap up a few things here," Emmett said, not meeting Garrett's eye. "What time do I face the execution squad?"
Maybe Seattle public transit would put him out of his misery on the way over.
"We should be there around six. That is, assuming I survive." Garrett snapped his fingers, slamming his hand into his fist twice before composing himself. "Ready or not Lauren, here I come."
"Get her done, baby," Emmett called after him.
Hesitating at the edge of the bullpen, Garrett pulled his shoulders up to his ears, shaking his head in revulsion. "I might have just thrown up in my mouth," he said, and dropped his hands protectively to the seat of his pants. "But I'm giving up if she pinches my ass again. I'll see you in an hour, if not, please send help."
"As if. Think about who you're talking to. Lauren can bruise your candy ass for all I care."
"No love," Garrett sighed, hiking his bag up over his shoulder. "Six o'clock. No excuses."
Emmett waved him off, and turned back to his desk. He spent the next fifteen minutes coloring in the o's and d's on the front page, wishing he could have been the one to disfigure Garrett's byline picture.
The horns really had been a nice touch.
Most of the reporters called it a day around two after their stories wrapped and put to bed. With no one to talk to, Emmett propped his feet up on his desk, and used his Blackberry to scroll through different blogs Garrett had turned him on to. They were his daily catharsis, little glimpses of oddities and other hangups that proved there were people out there with lives just as fragmented as his own. People spilling their guts online, telling their deepest, darkest secrets, looking for the type of release that didn't come from working out, drinking, or any other more cathartic venues.
He was on a regional rip off of post secret when he found the entry. It was a poignant photo of a wilted long stemmed rose, lying discarded on the cracked, wet sidewalk. The elegant ivory petals had wilted, discolored by bruises. The bloom had probably been beautiful once, the stem stripped free of thorns and leaves to insert in a bouquet or a vase. It was abandoned and unwanted now, faded glory and memories of what might have been. At the bottom of the photo, embedded in a looping red script, were two short sentences.
I'm through prepping rookies so they can go on to the show. Enjoy your Mr. Perfect, he's my last.
Emmett stared at the image, dumbfounded. Someone, most likely a woman by the writing, had summed up so much in just a few short lines, using a quote from Bull Durham, no less. It described exactly what Emmett felt when he set his phone on vibrate earlier that morning. He was tired of being the strong one, of carrying the load and making it better for everyone else. He was tired of fixing things for other people. He wanted to tell them all to stop, to leave him alone and let him find some peace, but he didn't have a clue how. After his nan's death five years ago, he'd become the adult in a world of children, and he was tired of it.
"Fuck it," Emmett muttered under his breath. He flicked the trackball with his thumb, rolling the cursor back up to hover over the username - Lily7673. With another tap, the BlackBerry loaded the private message screen, an unpopulated text box wide open and waiting for him to spill his guts.
In thirty-three years, Emmett had never spilled his guts to anyone besides his grandparents, and after five years of holding it all in, he was ready to burst. Maybe this post was a sign. Maybe it was time for him to let go and hope that someone out there might understand.
I've never been to the show, he typed, struggling to recall the context of the quote. But I can tell you that I believe in opening my presents on Christmas morning, I've never read anything by Susan Sontag, and that vodka is always superior to scotch. Don't let the rookies get you down.
"Good luck, whoever you are," Emmett said, pressing the trackball to send the message. "I know exactly how you feel."
-0-0-0-
As promised, Emmett stood just inside the pub door at six. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim room, listening to the music and clinking glasses. It was surprisingly crowded for a weeknight, with clusters of young professionals unwinding after a long day. Here and there, knots of women huddled together, whispering and giggling like packs of school girls. They all had the same look - polished, perky, grown-up cheerleaders searching for their Mr. Right, or at least Mr. Right Now.
In the past, these were the types of women Emmett would have gravitated toward, for they had always been happy to bend over backwards to accommodate whatever he might need. Only recently had he come to realize that these types of women bored him. Emmett wanted an equal, someone who would challenge him and not be afraid to throw a few pitches at his knees. He didn't expect perfection (that was his mom's greatest shortcoming) but he did expect friendship in addition to love or lust or whatever the hell else it felt like. That wouldn't come from someone faking it to make him happy or get what they wanted.
Not finding Garrett, Emmett moved toward an open space at the bar to order a drink. He was cut off a lanky man with short dark hair who reeked of cologne. The man's gaze was locked on a woman at the end of the bar, and he brushed past Emmett, bumping into him without acknowledgement or apology.
Emmett watched as the short man (who he dubbed Clueless Joe) plowed through the crowd. Clueless stopped just short of the blonde woman he'd been watching before, sitting alone at the end of the bar. Her shoulders were rounded in, body closed off as her fingers flew across the surface of an iPhone. The man's lips moved, most likely spewing forth some pathetic line like "I'm good with my fingers too," but the blonde didn't look up. Refusing to be shaken off, the man stepped closer, wrapping his fingers around the blonde's bicep to claim her attention. It did the trick, her phone clattering to the bar as she jerked her head up sharply. When she did, the golden hair fell back from her face, like a stage curtain being drawn for the opening act. There was a split second of shock before a mask of haughty composition slipped into place, and it almost made Emmett feel sorry for Clueless.
Almost.
In profile, the woman was classically beautiful - high cheekbones and healthy skin like something out of a soap commercial. Her features were tempered by a snub nose, the tip slightly upturned, lending a youthful, spirited air. It only made her that much more striking.
It wasn't the expected things, like big blue eyes and full red lips that lured men in, but the unexpected, the slightest hint of magic, or a splash of freckles across the narrow bridge of a beautiful women's nose. A hint of mystery, masking rocks before the shoreline, that did it every damn time.
"Okay, Helen," Emmett muttered, dubbing the woman Helen of Troy. "Let's see how Clueless fares under that bitch face."
Clueless started to speak again, and Emmett had to press his hand to his mouth to stifle the laughter. Helen gave him a withering stare, one that could have dropped the temperature in the room by five degrees, but Clueless would not back off. He stepped closer, his chest pressing up against her arm, his eyes focusing on the low cut neckline of her shirt. Helen's nose wrinkled, no doubt getting bitch-slapped by the bad cologne that lingered like a cloud around Emmett. She slowly unwound herself from her barstool, jaw locked, as she stood to stare down at Clueless. At her full height, Helen was easily two inches taller than her would-be suitor, an Amazon in both size and stature. She glowered down at him with absolute disdain, her posture clearly communicating that he should take a long walk off a short pier.
In an unexpected flash, Emmett called to mind his nan and the way she'd always stood up to his father, or the way she'd take people down a peg or two when they were mistreating others. That memory launched Emmett into motion, his body moving before his brain could catch up. He crossed the room quickly, stopping just short of Helen, who was still starting down at Clueless.
She was much taller up close, easily 6'1 in heels that hurt his ankles just to look at. It was rare that a woman cleared Emmett's chin, let alone stand anywhere close to eye level with him. The last time a woman had looked him directly in the eye, he'd been fifteen years old, which is what the beautiful blonde with the furious expression made him feel like now.
"Hey babe, sorry I'm late," he said, angling his body so that Clueless could only catch the back of his head. Emmett's eyebrows shot up, trying to silently plead for her to 'just play along.' "Got hung up with some stuff at the office that couldn't wait. Did you order yet?"
Emmett was aware of Clueless, standing to his right, taking everything in and waiting for a sign of weakness. The guy wasn't going to get a clue unless it was forced down his throat. Emmett leaned in slowly, brushing a kiss across Helen's cheek. After years of kissing petite women, her height threw him off balance, and he gauged the distance wrong, planting the kiss at the corner of her mouth instead of further up, closer to her temple where he intended.
The woman jerked sharply, her dark blue eyes full of fire.
"It's okay," he whispered, "just play along."
As he spoke, Emmett was assaulted by the scent of lemon verbena. A series of memories flickered through his mind - laughter, sunlight and green grass, a dark blue Buick, and he quickly slammed shut that compartment door. This was a rescue mission, in and out, where he would be the good guy doing the type of thing his nan had raised to do.
Hastily turning away, Emmett extended his hand to Clueless. "Thanks for keeping my girl company. We both appreciate it."
At his full height, Emmett knew he was intimidating to 99.9% of the male population. He'd also been schooled by his sisters to 'create an image, leave an impression.' While there was nothing over the top about jeans and a black v-neck sweater, it was the way he carried himself and his build that made their mark. Clueless looked him up and down, taking in the chest that rivaled some pro baseball players and a well tailored, grey flannel blazer, it gave the onlooker a very clear message: big, strong, and more than capable of fucking up your face or your business. No man would ever want to compete with him.
"Figures," Clueless mumbled, turning away. "An ice queen and a dumb jock."
Neither Emmett nor the blonde moved for a minute, watching as the man roamed around the bar, ultimately descending on a small group of unsuspecting victims.
"Sorry about that," Emmett apologized hastily. Without anything to hold on to he ran his hands through his hair, a gesture that had always managed to betray his discomfort. "It didn't look like Clueless was going to back off, and I could tell you didn't want a scene. I was raised that women should be treated better than that."
"I didn't want a scene," the blonde said coolly, "some guys can't take a hint."
She turned away from him, scooping up her phone to resume her typing.
Emmett expected her to say something more, to offer to buy him a drink or even say thanks, but she was too focused on her phone, her thumbs flying across the screen.
"Can I help you?" She asked, never looking up.
"A thank you would be nice, if not polite," he said, using the same look he used on his nan when he got caught trying to sneak cookies before dinner. He wished he could lean in closer and take another breath, desperate to know if the woman really did use lemon verbena soap or if it was just his imagination. Then he would snatch the phone away and tell her she was being rude. Old habits die hard.
"Sorry," the blonde said, slipping her phone into her bag. "I'm meeting friends and they just arrived. If you'll excuse me." She didn't make eye contact, just pulled her coat and free from the bar stool and draped a bright red scarf over her arm. It fluttered behind her as she walked briskly across the room.
"Well if that wasn't…charming," he mumbled, leaning up against the bar. He'd done a good deed, and the woman had been a total bitch. Guess her nan hadn't been such a stickler for manners.
A quick wave to the bartender secured him a drink, two fingers of vodka over ice, and he pulled out his phone to check for a message from Garrett. "I hope Lauren did pinch your ass, you sorry fucker," he mumbled. Why should he be the only one suffering through this hell?
Seven new emails, including an alert that he had a private message from Lily7673. Emmett scrolled up quickly to open the email.
You forgot the line about soft core porn and long slow wet kisses, which means you are either chicken or a gentleman. Which is it? And who are you?
Lily
"Well I'll be damned," he murmured. The smile that spread across his face was involuntary, and Emmett didn't even realize it was there until he'd replied and hit send.
Just consider me a player to be named later. I was raised to be a gentleman, even if people don't always appreciate it. And because I'm a gentleman, I'll ask you something more polite – how do you feel about William Blake? We can talk about the designated hitter later.
"William Fucking Blake," Emmett said, smiling to himself. He hit send, and looked up just in time to catch the blonde approach Garrett, the tip of her index finger wedged between her lips as she twisted her hand back and forth. When she was close enough, the woman pulled her finger free and stuck it in Garrett's ear, swirling it with such force that it had to be painful. Garrett jerked free and pushed her away with an affectionate shove.
"Rosalie Hale, that was dis-gus-ting!" he protested, rubbing the side of his head against his shoulder. "If I didn't love you like a sister, you would be upside down in a flushing toilet right now."
The blonde's delighted laugh rang across the room, deeper than what Emmett would have expected.
"In your dreams, G. Last time you tried to take me down, I gave you a bloody nose. Do you really want to go there again?"
Emmett picked up his vodka, and tossed it back in one gulp. The woman he'd just dubbed Helen was Garrett's roommate, and most likely the infamous best friend he was supposed to be introduced to tonight.
"What a way to make a first impression, McCarty," he said, slipping his phone in his pocket and preparing for another painful round of disdain and rejection. At least he was going in knowing what to expect.
And he would go in like a gentleman and make his nan proud.
We'll see you next week.
In the meantime, if you want to see the original Bull Durham quote in all its glorious context: http:/www (dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=sBfdl6hNZ9k.