Martinez squints. “You discussed—”
“Among other things.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Senses, possibly, that he’s not getting anything useful from this particular conversation and moves on.
Mack finds me at my locker ten minutes later. He sits down, works on his laces, and doesn’t say anything for a while.
“You’re not going to stop seeing her,” he says finally, and it’s not a question.
“No.”
“What did you say to him?”
“Nothing useful.”
He nods, processing this. “He’s going to figure it out.”
“He’s already most of the way there.”
“And when he fully gets there?”
“I’ll deal with it.” I pull my shirt over my head. “In the meantime, I need to have a conversation with Ava that I should have had two hours ago and didn’t because I was in a session.”
“Is she going to take it well?”
“She’s going to take it realistically, which is different from well, but I’ll work with it.”
“Reece.” Mack glances at me sideways. “Bishop’s not the only complication. Management, Lena, the blogs, you’ve got a full field of problems right now.”
“I’ve pitched with the bases loaded before.”
“This isn’t baseball.”
“Every problem is baseball if you think about it long enough.”
“That…” he says, with the specific exasperation of someone who has been friends with me for three years, “… is the most Reece Steele answer to a human problem I’ve ever heard.”
From my car, I call Ava.
Three rings before she picks up, which is one ring longer than usual. I file this without comment.
“Hi,” she says carefully.
“Hi, yourself.” I pull out of the players’ lot and head toward the city. “Can I come over?”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“We agreed.”
“I know.”
“Then let me come over.”
“Reece…” A pause. “You talked to my father.”
Not a question. She knows him well enough to read the shape of what I’m not saying.
“He had some thoughts about my visits to Ink District,” I say. “Expressed them professionally and without any specific accusations.”
