When they got back, they curled up on the couch and turned on the TV. Immediately, they both cracked up. “It had to be baseball,” Evvie said.
“Oh, it’s not just baseball,” Dean told her. “It’s opening day.”
She gestured toward the game with the remote control. “You want to watch this?”
“Are you kidding? I want to know how much you’ve picked up.”
So they watched for a while. Dean told her which guys he knew, which pitcher he could tell could have used one or two more spring training starts, and which hitters had changed their stances. And sometimes, they stopped to make out or have a snack. That was the perfect way to watch a game, he told her.
They ate at the table as it got dark outside. Evvie explained that she was only a couple of weeks away from starting work with Nona. She’d added some transcription clients and was doing a few hours of paperwork a week for Betsey, with whom she’d become friendly while she was buying her place. It wasn’t quite what she wanted yet, but it was work, and she was paying her mortgage with her own money.
They did the dishes, standing next to each other by the sink, and then they went back into the big room by the big windows and sank into the big chairs, and they could hear the water slapping the boats. She let Webster out one more time, into the little fenced-in yard her dad had built for him, and as she stood in the open door to call him inside, she felt Dean slide his arms around her waist. He whispered in her ear that he wanted to see her room, and she laughed, and the dog came inside and settled himself. She took Dean down the hall, where he noticed right off that she had a new bed. It was not the one she’d slept in with her husband; it was not the one she’d slept in with him. It was one she’d only slept in alone—and, of course, with Webster, when he jumped up, which he was emphatically not supposed to do. But tell that to a puppy.
They kissed, and when he let her go, he saw that her eyes were a little watery, that there were tears gathering on her lower lids. At first, he held her shoulders, asking what it was, asking if she wasn’t sure. But she chuckled and said it was not that with a dry certainty that made it clear it was not, at all, that.
He tugged off his shirt, and she pulled the white sweater over her head. She had skipped her rituals. She knew she was a little bit sweaty and flawed, but he seemed unconcerned. He was sweaty and flawed, after all, and it didn’t stop her from feeling like her joints were dissolving when he kissed her, like every part of her that he touched was pulling her toward him.
He muttered—he growled—that he had missed her, and when she said she had missed him, too, it felt like she said it in a voice that no one else would have been able to hear from even six inches away, like she’d whispered it into herself and he’d felt it come out through her fingers on his back. She kept breathing; she kept listening to him breathing.
* * *
—
Later, so close to each other that they were sharing a pillow, Evvie and Dean lay face-to-face in her bed. “What do we do now?” she said. “Not right now. You know what I mean.”
“Evvie, I’m doing pretty well in New York.”
Her stomach dropped.
“I like my place. I like coaching. I like the clinics, and I like living around the guys that I’ve known my whole life. I love the city, I love being able to do a ton of things that aren’t playing, and even though I’ve missed you—and I missed you a lot—I’ve been pretty happy.”
All she said was “Ah,” and she was so glad to be in the mostly dark room, where the way she was sure she looked could remain a secret.
“And I think you’re doing well, too. This house is fucking great. You’re on the water. You’re where you love to be. And that’s a great dog.”
She smiled a little. This, she could not deny.
“It seems like you made up with Andy.”
“Well,” she said, “it’s not like it was. We don’t see each other every week. We don’t talk every