15
Corey stretched his back and shoulders as he sauntered into the locker room. He’d thrown for over an hour, and he was feeling it. A good ice down was in his future, not to mention the magic hands of one of the many trainers of the Metros staff.
It was four thirty, and most of the players were still out on the field. Even on off days, in-season practices ran long. The only people with short days were the pitchers.
He made a quick right into the trainers’ room. “Who has me today?” he asked and received a nod from the new guy. “Give me five to strip,” he informed him and headed to his locker.
An empty locker room was something he could appreciate during the season because it was rare. Only the trainers were about today, and they were easy to pick out: black pants, blue polos. He narrowed his eyes. Tillerson must have some issue because one was waiting for him, but Corey hadn’t heard anything. Hopefully it wasn’t too bad; he was half the team’s bats in a game.
He pulled his shirt over his head, and the kid who had him today appeared, ready to pack him in ice. Corey flopped into his chair, shut his eyes, and let the kid to do his thing. The training staff was actually good this year. Not one of them annoyed him, and the work they did on his shoulder was helping. A Cy Young award was looking promising, and Corey would be damned if anything got in his way.
“I’m taking a hot shower, so I’ll need a new pack when I get out. No ice bath today,” he told the kid who tossed him a towel.
The twenty-minute shower gave him time to think. First, there was Hot Shots. He probably needed to rehire the guys. As mad as Corey was about it, he’d been wrong. Sean was doing his job by telling him not to date a reporter, which Corey really didn’t want to do anyway. He never linked himself to any type of reporter or broadcaster.
That was a true statement, but he had to amend it, because he still was thinking about Taran. That was completely his fault too. His idea to get to know her on Diablo wasn’t horrible. It had started innocently enough. He asked her to play, and they chatted. Teasing her was fun and the more he learned about her, the easier that became. That teasing had turned into flirting, which was better.
Today, they’d gotten a little serious. He hadn’t meant to share his feelings, and he’d surprised himself when he did because there wasn’t a soul in the world he’d ever admitted it to.
It wasn’t until Taran had left the game that he realized what he had actually shared with her. But it had been easy because, as Taran was talking, he could relate to how she felt. He understood that pivot in life she’d described. He hadn’t known she’d been engaged, and he’d had no idea she lost her fiancé in Syria—where she too had some kind of trauma.
Knowing she still carried a torch for that guy should have been off-putting, but when she talked about just not feeling it anymore, and how she still believed it existed for other people, it was like she’d taken the words out of his mouth. He was finding himself drawn to her in a way he’d never experienced before, but he also didn’t know what to do about it.
Why wasn’t he jumping on it? Because she was a reporter? As much as he told himself that could be an issue, she’d never once asked him anything personal.
Actually, she talked and questioned him more openly when she didn’t know it was him, almost like who he was held her back. Plus, her interactions with the Evanses and how they reacted to her told him she wasn’t a trashy gossip reporter. So he had no idea why he wasn’t acting on what he was feeling.
He did have one big problem. In the hours they had spent playing and talking together, she had no idea it was him. And he knew if he told her, she’d shoot him one of those I hate you looks. On top of that, he’d admitted some really personal shit he didn’t want the world to know. Although he thought he could maybe trust her, she was a reporter. That meant she couldn’t find out he was the one she’d been talking to on Diablo.
Corey shut the water off but made no move to leave the stall now encased in a haze of steam. He cracked his neck left, then right before leaning back against the misty wall behind him. The shower had been hot, and he was still sweating in the steam, but he didn’t mind. He did, however, have to stop wasting time. He had plans tonight.
He’d deal with Sean and Hot Shots as soon as he finished with his massage, and he’d have to back burner Taran for now. He’d still hook up with her on Diablo when he could. Although once he went back on the road, it might be tricky. He wasn’t getting a solo room this time because Daily, his regular roommate, was making this road trip. Daily had bailed on the last two because they were short, and he didn’t have to pitch either of them. If he brought the PS4, his teammate would never let it go. He was a closet video gamer, not a public one. Maybe he could somehow pull weight and get his own room for at least part of the eleven days. He’d done it in the past, especially when he was in a rut, but back then, his agent had done it for him. He had no idea how to do it himself. That thought circled him away from Taran and back to Hot Shots. He laughed at himself; he knew he’d circle back to Taran again, because his mind kept doing that to him.
Corey grabbed the thick white towel he’d hung over the stall, and rubbed his head dry, quickly moving down until he wrapped it around his waist and headed back to his locker.
The young guy was standing there with a new pack and Icy Hot, so Corey did nothing but flop into his chair and let him get to work. Ten years ago, in Houston, he hadn’t needed so much work from a trainer to get him pitching. At this point, after more than half a lifetime of the repetitive motion, he needed all the help he could get with his shoulder to be ready to get on the mound. His shoulder wasn’t so bad that he was done as a rotation pitcher, but he knew he was getting closer every day. He’d end up like his father, the great Orlando Matthews, as a closer for a while before he retired. Although, he wasn’t quite old enough to worry about retirement yet, but watching Marc retire too young, had Corey thinking about it. He had the Evanses, but nothing else and sometimes he wondered what his life would look like when baseball wasn’t center stage.
It was scary to think he might become a full-time video gamer. Because beside hanging out with the Evanses, he truly did nothing but play ball. He was a borderline loser.
“Matthews,” Tim Tillerson called him, and he opened his eyes and turned to look three lockers to the right. Corey raised his eyebrows at the kid. He hated that all the veterans were assigned a rookie to show the ropes. It made him feel like he was in high school again. But it was the way the team worked, and unfortunately, Tim was assigned to Corey this year.
“What’s the deal with bringing someone on a road trip with you?” the kid asked.
Corey wanted to sigh. The last thing a young player needed was someone wanting to go on the road with him. But it wasn’t Corey’s job to tell him that’d be a whopper of a fuck-up. That was something the rookie needed to figure out himself.
“Who’s your agent?” he asked him instead.
“Same as you. Sean Taylor.”
Corey frowned. No one knew he had fired them, even though it’d been a month.
“Call him. He’ll take care of it,” he told the kid and then added, “you hurting?”
“Nah, why?” Tillerson asked, his head cocked to the side. The dumbass looked like he couldn’t imagine why Corey would ask.
“You had a blue shirt waiting for you. I just assumed.” Corey tipped his chin to the woman standing next to Tim, her back to Corey.
Tillerson smiled. “Oh, yeah. I thought that too. I had brief flashes of failed drug tests.”