Not the polite attention from before. The specific silence of people who’ve heard something they didn’t expect.
“Are you suggesting you’d walk?”
“I’m suggesting…” I say carefully, “… that my value to this organization is measurable. Nine strikeouts in a divisional championship game. Seven innings of one-run ball. A season ERA that puts me in the top three in the league.” I meet the reporter’s eyes. “Anyone who wants to make the case that Ava Bishop is a professional liability is going to have a difficult time with those numbers. I trust the people in this building are too smart to try.”
Flashbulbs.
Mack, at the back of the room, is staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man trying very hard not to audibly react.
The questions continue for another ten minutes, more about the game, about the playoff push, about the bullpen’s workload. I answer all of it. By the time it wraps, the tone in the room has shifted from sharp curiosity to something more settled.
The story is out.
It’s on record.
The circus will start online within the hour and will continue for however long it continues.
I have no interest in managing it.
I shake the necessary hands, say the necessary things to James, who looks slightly pale but professional, and walk toward the exit.
Coach Bishop falls into step beside me in the corridor, and we walk in silence for twenty feet.
“She told you to be honest,” he says.
It’s not a question. I glance at him.
“Not careful,” I say. “There’s a difference. Her words.”
Something in his expression shifts. It’s barely visible, the particular micro-adjustment of a man who has been given apiece of information he already suspected and didn’t enjoy having confirmed.
“She’s not wrong,” he says finally.
He peels off toward his office without further comment.
I stand in the corridor for a moment and take stock of that.
Not a blessing, not even close to an endorsement, but a man who has spent the entire season watching me from a careful, deliberate distance has just told me, in nine words, in an empty hallway where no one else was listening, that the woman I’m in love with is not wrong.
I’ll take it.
I’m in the parking lot, keys in hand, notifications flooding in with a frequency my phone hasn’t seen since theSports Illustratedcover two seasons ago, when I stop walking and call Ava.
She picks up on the first ring. “Hi.” Her voice is warm. There’s background noise, the low hum of the studio, the faint chime of what might be the front doorbell. She’s working.
“Hi.”
A pause. Then, “You blew up the internet.”
“Good.”
She laughs, and the sound hits me the same way it always does, with warmth and a little rough around the edges, nothing performed about it. “Zoe is currently standing at my station, reading me quotes from three different sports blogs in real time. I’ve asked her to stop twice.”
“Is she stopping?”
“She is not stopping.” There’s a muffled exchange in the background, Ava’s voice briefly covering the phone. “I said give me a minute, Zoe.” Then, back to me, “Are you okay?”
The question is simple and specific. Not how‘did it go’or‘what happened,’both of which she can find out in thirty seconds of scrolling. She wants to know how I am. Ava always asks theactualquestion.
