He spotted Sybil on the street corner in front of the diner with her back toward him. She was doing some sort of stretching exercise, rolling her spine down, touching her toes, rolling back up and reaching toward the sky. He lingered for a beat, not wanting to be the interloper. She straightened out and raised her eyes to street level. How fascinating, how mesmerizing, Zeke thought, to watch her spine stiffen in real time.
Sybil turned and spotted him and raised both hands, shimmying them as a sort of wave.
The crosswalk light was still red but it was midnight, and the streets were deserted, so Zeke stepped off the curb toward her. He heard a car peel around the corner and felt the headlights on him with no warning.
“Zeke!” Sybil shouted.
He couldn’t much move his injured arm, but his legs worked fine, and in three leaps, he was planted next to her, the car’s engine revving as it cruised past and turned north.
“Oh my god,” she said, her hand over her heart. “Jesus Christ on a stick. I thought you were about to die. Then I’d never sleep again.” She pursed her lips, blew out her breath. “Seriously, you should feel my heart right now.”
Without thinking, Zeke placed his left palm over hers, then she slipped her hand down to her side, and indeed, he could feel the vibrations of her racing heart. They stood there for how long, Zeke wasn’t sure. Long enough that he could have dropped his hand, but she didn’t pull away, and so his palm stayed. Sybil’s gaze wandered up toward his, and for a moment, neither one of them blinked, and Zeke had the oddest feeling: that by intuiting the pounding of her heart, somehow she had resurrected his. Then he averted his eyes, embarrassed that something in him turned this romantic. No no, that couldn’t be right. He must be delirious. That must be what sleeplessness did to your brain. He was so eager for a connection with someone that he was inventing bonds out of nowhere.
“You saw me doing my roll-outs?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Sorry,” she said, as if she owed him an apology for the show. “The sleeplessness. My shoulder. Those help. At my age, it’s all bad.”
“You can’t be much older than I am,” he said.
She laughed like he was kidding.
“My eye spasms,” he said. “Like my eyelid is throwing a temper tantrum because it’s been open for too long.”
“Maybe your eyelid can have a discussion with my left shoulder blade. Agree that they both need to give us a break.” She smiled, and Zeke couldn’t believe for a second that she considered herself old. Or even if she was, that she was apologizing for it. She was beautiful exactly as she was.
“We should go in,” he said, and his voice cracked like he was going through puberty.
Sybil nodded but didn’t move.
“It’s nice out here,” she said. “It’s not often you hear the city so quiet.”
“Did you live here? Before moving out to the suburbs?”
She shook her head, something like regret washing over her.
“As a kid, I did. I grew up by the park on the West Side. I always thought I’d end up back here as a grown-up. After medical school, I was offered a spot to stay at Harvard for my residency. Mark wasn’t, but his dad made some calls. Anyway, long story short, we stayed in Boston, which, I mean, is great, obviously. Who doesn’t love Boston?” She sighed. “But Boston isn’t New York, I guess. Eventually, he got a job here, and we had the twins by then, so had to be practical. Bought our house. A yard, a swing set, that whole thing.”
“Well, you’re the first stop outside the city.” He remembered these details she shared, their online conversations fully three-dimensional to him. “That’s not too far.”
“If you throw a pitch that’s half an inch outside the strike zone, it’s still a ball,” she replied.
His laugh sneaked up on him. “You told me a few days ago that you didn’t know anything about sports.”
“If I admit to doing a crash course in Zeke Rodriguez, will you agree not to judge me for it?” She cringed. “I can’t help myself. I sort of always need to be the smartest person in the room.”
“Do you find that it always goes that way for you?”
“Mostly,” she said, and didn’t elaborate. “Though my kids give me a run for my money, and I don’t mean that as a brag. It’s more annoying than anything, to be honest. Eloise, my daughter, won more science awards in high school than I ever could. She’s premed now too. Charlie tested as a genius, but we’re still waiting for him to reach his potential. As parents do.”
“And Mark? Rounding out the family of geniuses?”
An aura of disappointment passed over her. “No, not him.”
She started toward the diner’s door, then seemed to realize he hadn’t joined her. She spun back around, the glow of the streetlamp bouncing off her blonde hair, illuminating her like she was an actual angel.What was wrong with him?He’d met heronce, and now he was inventing a whole thing between them.
Zeke obviously knew she was married, knew she was way out of his league, especially when it came to intelligence, and he couldn’t imagine why she’d even consider it.Consider what?He chastised himself again. He wasn’t about to proposition her on 110th and Broadway. But Zeke was used to flying on instinct, on adrenaline, and of course, yes, on strategy. You couldn’t just hurl a fastball at every single batter. Some you had to deceive; some you had to outmuscle; and some, well, you’d intentionally bean them on the head just to push them back off the plate a bit. His good hand reached over and touched the arm that was still in a soft cast, a reminder that even when you thought you were the one in control, you could find yourself in plenty of trouble.
