Tucker
Roasters 60–31
“Fuck,Chandlerpeedonme.”
Warm liquid trickled down my left thigh, pooling on the yoga mat beneath me. I sat back on my haunches, careful not to crush the ball of apricot-colored fluff cowering behind my bruised knees.
The All-Star break couldn’t have come at a better time. My body had taken one hell of a beating during our last road series and needed time to recover. Six days were barely a “drop in the bucket,” as my teammate, Matty Miller, would say—the Roasters’ resident Southern boy had an arsenal of hilarious colloquialisms—but it was better than nothing. I looked more like a bruised banana than a ball player these days.
I reached around my back, scooping the pint-sized terrier up and off the mat.
Holy cuteness, Batman. It’s the Piddler.
It was impossible to be mad at anything that adorable. Thank fuck I didn’t have any pets or children of my own—I would spoil them rotten. Even now, covered in puppy piss, I was willing to sacrifice my entire net worth for the dog in my palms.
“What did I say about peeing on me, little dude?” I asked him, nuzzling our noses together.
“You know,” Roman interjected from the mat next to mine. “Some people pay good money for that kind of thing.”
I recoiled. “Dude, gross.”
The puppy in Roman’s lap—a hound mix named Hamburger—grumbled when he stopped petting her to whip me across the chest with a Roasters rally towel. “We don’t kink shame here, Tuck.”
I snatched the towel out of his hands, swiped it through the puddle on my mat, and hurled it back at his head.
“Okay, do I need to separate the two of you?” Matty asked, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the spotted pit bull snoring next to his feet.
Matty had a puppy of his own waiting for him back at his studio apartment, an adorable basset hound named Mo, whose derpy face had won Matty over within seconds. The two of them had been practically inseparable ever since. Coach Ward had nearly blown a fuse when he’d found out that our freckle-faced shortstop had smuggled Mo onto the team bus during our road trip to Salt Lake City.
“Y’all fight like me and my brothers.”
Roman’s smirk matched my own. Brothers? Not quite, but we had been roommates for going on six months now, which was one of my longest cohabitation stints to date, not to mention longer than any romantic relationship either of us had been in.
Unlike most of my childhood friends, my parents had been well into their mid-forties by the time they’d had me—the result of one too many Chardonnays during their annual anniversary cruise to Bermuda, or so the story went—and neither of them had been willing to press their luck with a second “geriatric pregnancy,” so that was that.
Only child club, party of one.
The fact was, aside from trips to summer camp and the occasional overnight tournament during my high school career, I had never split a bedroom with somebody else until after I’d been drafted. The novelty had worn off before I’d finished unpacking my vinyl collection.
Sharing a bathroom sucked ass.
Six teams, seven years, and one original 1967 pressing ofSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Bandsigned by three of the four Beatles later—fucking Ringo—and I had finally landed a spot as the starting second baseman for the Rose City Roasters, the American League West’s newest team.
And I was fucking crushing it.
We all were. We had a real shot at making the playoffs, in our freshman season no less—practically unheard of.
“Do you realize that right about now, Pink and Bennett are sitting in a dugout, sweating their balls off, and we’re playing with puppies?”
Laughter shook my chest. “Sucks to suck.”
“Speaking ofsucking, I’ve got plans with the blonde from ticketing after this.” Roman wagged his brows. “And her roommate.”
I snorted.
“Of course you do,” Matty mumbled under his breath.
The whole team knew that Roman’s sexual appetite was insatiable and varied. He hardly ever ate the same meal twice, so to speak. Men, women, couples, orgies—my roommate didn’t discriminate when it came to his play partners. That was something we had in common, only I was more of a one woman—or man—at a time kind of guy.
