For somebody who had spent the better part of his life living out of a carry-on suitcase, it was a wonder I owned so much crap.
I had always prided myself on being the guy who color-coded his toiletries bag and folded his briefs before road trips. Former partners had praised me for being “minimalist” and “easy to live with.” One had even called me the human equivalent of a neatly labeled storage bin.
Yet here I was, knee-deep in joggers, protein shakers, mismatched training gear, and enough baseball caps to outfit a minor league team.
“Mi pana,how many hoodies does one man need?” Diaz asked, holding up a gray Rose City Roasters pullover like it personally offended him. “This is, what, the eighth one?”
“Sixth,” I said, taping the bottom of another cardboard box. “And don’t give me that, Mr. Cable Knit Sweaters.”
“You know that those are for my future husband,” he argued defensively. “Chris Evans is mine, whether he knows it yet or not.”
A smile ghosted across my lips. “Lucky guy.”
Diaz chucked the fabric into one of the many oversized HomeGoods tote bags Clarke had lent me for my move.
We had been at this for hours, though you wouldn’t know based on the amount of crap still littered across our living room floor. It looked less like two grown men preparing for a moveand more like the aftermath of a natural disaster. The last two years of my life had been condensed into seven cardboard boxes, each of them labeled using the single blue Sharpie we kept in our “random shit” drawer.
Outside, weekend traffic hummed faintly. Inside, the sound was more muted, cushioned by the last of the furniture and the thick socks I wore on the hardwood floor. My implants picked up the low thud of music from the Bluetooth speaker in the basement and the scratch of packing tape as I dragged it across cardboard, but most of the high, sharp sounds blurred into white noise.
Traveling and being “on” around family for two weeks had fried my circuits; every noise felt like a coin dropped in a metal bucket.
“Wait, this is thesamehoodie.”
Diaz held the fabric up to his chest, the hem practically hitting mid-thigh on him, the sleeves drooping past his fingertips.
“No, that one’s heathered.”
Diaz stared at me, then shook his head. “You need help.”
“You’re just mad because you shop in the youth section,” I teased.
He scoffed and tossed the garment onto a growing pile. “Please, I have normal proportions. You’re just built like a Nordic deity and a squat rack’s love child.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Next to his five-foot-nine frame, I looked like something out of a lumberjack catalog. He was twenty-five, lean and whip-fast, the ideal build for scaling the left field wall and stealing a base before the opposing team knew what had hit them.
I, on the other hand, had thighs that could qualify as concealed weapons after a decade of squatting behind home plate. And my ass trailed close behind in notoriety . . . literally. The equipment manager once said my catcher’s gear had “stretch fatigue,” which I was pretty sure was not a compliment.
The two of us made an unlikely pair on the field, but as roommates, we fucking crushed it.
Diaz had the whole cozy-curated-film-nerd thing going on—string lights, throw blankets, alphabetized Blu-rays, and a projector he treated with more reverence than his batting gloves. His house had quickly become the official headquarters for the team’s Movie & Margarita nights, not because it was big or fancy, but because Diaz transformed it into a full sensory experience.
Film-themed cocktails, homemade popcorn dusted with spices most of the guys couldn’t pronounce, and running commentary that somehow made even the worst movies fun.
And me? I was the quiet balance. The cleaner. The one who didn’t complain when he paused a film to deliver a ten-minute TED Talk about how Mr. Darcy’s hand flex inPride and Prejudicewasthe “most sexual, nonsexual scene” in movie history.
Even if he was wrong—everybody knew it was the toothbrushing scene fromBring it On.
The two of us fit. In that weird, opposites-attract, older-brother-younger-brother, strained-muscles-and-caffeine kind of way. Needless to say, it was going to take a while to get used to living without him in the room next door.
“Serious question.” Diaz looked up from an open wardrobe box. “Why are you packing the blender but not the air fryer?”
“The blender was mine,” I told him. “You bought the air fryer.”
“Yeah, but you use it more.”
I shrugged. “Consider it a parting gift.”
