The Lucky Charm (The Portland Pioneers) (11 page)

But as he’d just said to Izzy earlier this afternoon, sometimes it wasn’t about the perfect angle of his glove, or a fast reaction time. Sometimes, the game of baseball came down to luck, plain and simple.

Today, it seemed, was going to be one of those days. The batter jumped all over Gilmore’s second pitch, and during the next handful of seconds, it felt to Jack like time didn’t exactly stop, but it certainly crawled. He saw the ball, hit choppy and nearly to where he’d asked for it. The only problem was it was hit
short
and like he’d stupidly announced to Izzy before the game started, it hit the dirt literally two feet in front of him—too far for him to reach it in time, and on exactly the wrong surface to guarantee he could play it well enough to throw the batter out.

It was one of Jack’s nightmares. No matter how intensely you practiced, how many grounders you took, how many analysts went over your game play and coached all your bad habits out of you, the element of surprise couldn’t be eliminated. It was moments like this one, Jack thought, that made baseball as popular as it was.

The ball hit a dirt clod straight on, maybe one of half a dozen the grounds crew hadn’t managed to smooth out during the course of the game, and bounced in an ungainly spiral toward him.

Of all the ways the ball could have hit the dirt, it hit
that
way, and suddenly, though he’d been sure not even a second before that he’d never get to it in time, like a gift from an angel, the ball fell into his glove. He turned and tossed an easy throw to first base and suddenly, the threat and the game were over.

The Pioneers had won.

The words he’d spoken with so much certainty seemed to haunt him in that moment.

Sometimes you’re lucky and you’re in the right position to play the ball.

The entire process had taken maybe five seconds, but Jack felt like time still hadn’t moved, that maybe he was stuck in this alternate universe forever.

Noah broke the spell as he jogged past him, smacking him on the butt with his glove. “Great catch,” he tossed over his shoulder as he and the rest of the team made their way into the dugout.

The thing was, it hadn’t been a great catch. A catch implied that Jack had had something to do with it, but he hadn’t. The ball had found his glove through almost no skill of his own.

It hadn’t been a great catch; it had been a
lucky
catch.

Maybe Jack would have just chalked up that game to pure chance, if it hadn’t happened in the last game of their opening series, just two days later.

The bases had been loaded, thanks to a horrible and uneven performance from the Pioneers’ third starting pitcher, and the fifth batter up that inning hit an absolute
shot
through what should have been the second base gap.

But there hadn’t been a gap. In one of the few times of his career, Jack hadn’t been aligned appropriately, and he’d just happened to be in that particular gap. He’d lunged, pure instinctual movement, and snagged the ball in the air. At least two runs, but probably more like three, were saved, and the Pioneers managed to get out of the inning unscathed.

The weirdest part of it all, weirder even than him being in the wrong position defensively and
still
managing to hook the ball, was that only the evening before, he’d run into Izzy in the clubhouse and they’d somehow gotten into talking about defensive arrangements on the field. She was studying them, and trying to understand why Hector, the manager, sometimes called for a defensive shift.

He’d explained, leaning over the pile of papers on her lap, and using her pen to explain the basic foundation of a shift. She’d made a crack at him then, teasing him about being out of position, and he’d been able to answer her honestly—
then
. He was never out of position. He knew them all, backward and forward and in his sleep. He studied them relentlessly. The charts felt like the air he breathed.

Until that afternoon, when he’d been caught out of position and still managed to save a handful of runs.

And then it happened again, in the second series of the year, when he should have been caught stealing, but the opposing second basemen literally
dropped
the ball. Then again, when he reached first on an infield single.

And again.

And
again.

After the in-park home run, Foxy had turned to him in the dugout and said he was the luckiest son of a bitch he’d ever seen play the game.

That was when Jack felt the chill of
something
turn his spine into pure ice.

In the clubhouse after the game, with reporters thronging around his locker, questions falling right and left about the home run, one in particular had caught his attention.

“Jack, what’s different this year? New bat? New gloves? New helmet?”

That was why he’d always believed superstition was total bullshit. It drove men to do ridiculous things, like not take a shower for an entire season, or wear the same pair of ratty boxers, and that somehow this would help them win games. It didn’t; it only guaranteed they’d smell pretty damn bad.

But now, Jack couldn’t really discount the entire phenomenon. Not when it was happening to him.

And the biggest thing that was different about this year was over by Foxy’s locker, legs a mile long in another one of those devilish skirts, flipping a long strand of dark hair over her shoulder as she resolutely didn’t look in his direction.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
he bar was definitely more his scene than Foxy’s, and so Jack ignored his best friend’s grimace as he gingerly slid into the booth. The already cracked vinyl screeched in protest as he settled into the seat opposite him.

“Not this dive again,” Noah said under his breath as he leaned forward, his forearms resting on the stained wood table top. “I don’t know why we couldn’t go somewhere decent.”

“Because I asked you and this is my neighborhood bar,” Jack ground out. “You know I’ve been coming here for years.”

“You’d think they would have figured out how to make money off that fact by now.” Noah paused, his face twisting at the brown walls, brown booths, brown floor. “So what’s up? Why’d you call me?”

“How would you describe my game so far this season?”

Noah frowned; it
was
an odd question. Jack had never asked for an ego boost before. He’d never
needed
one before.

“You know you’re playing great. Practically fucking inspired. That inside-park home run…man, that was something
special
.”

Noah was right. He was tearing it up, actually, batting north of four hundred and making plays in the field that had been mere pipe dreams in previous years. But it wasn’t just
him.
Everything kept falling his way, over and over again.

“Too special,” Jack argued. “It feels fucking unnatural. I don’t like it.”

Foxy leaned back and sipped his beer. “And?”

“And well, everyone keeps asking me what’s different. There’s only one thing that’s different, and I like that even less.”

It only took Foxy a moment to figure out where he was going. “Izzy. Izzy’s what’s different.”

“It’s worse than that, even. Izzy and I, we’ll talk about something, some part of the game, and suddenly it happens. Except usually better.”

Foxy shrugged. “None of this is a problem. You like a girl. Girl brings you luck. Because of luck, you play great baseball. How is that worse?”

“It’s all mixed up now. Yeah, I like Izzy. I liked her before all this. But how can I ever separate the two now?” Jack hated the desperate whine in his voice, but he couldn’t nix it. This whole situation had him so wound up, it was a miracle he wasn’t playing like crap.

Instead, he’d never had a better streak in his life. Batting, fielding, running the bases. It didn’t matter what aspect of his game one examined, Jack had turned to pure fucking gold.

“Who says you have to? Do I have to tell you again how great this actually is?” Foxy retorted in disbelief. “And after the game, why do you think she stayed to talk to me? She’s
afraid
to talk to you. She knows she’ll like it too much.”

“You’re imagining things. Maybe she just wants to talk to you, instead.”

“She likes you, I know she does. You’ve softened her up and she’s this close to giving in and going out with you. Are you going to blow that because you’re playing great baseball?”

Jack took a deep breath. “That does sound bad when you say it like that.”

“It sounds worse than bad. It sounds lame. It sounds like you traded your balls in for earrings. Get it together, man.” Noah shook his head in utter disbelief.

“You don’t think I should say anything to her, then.”

“If you tell her that it’s her, then it
is
her. Suddenly that’s all you or her can believe. On the other hand, you don’t tell her, and what happens? Nothing. You’ll go up, then you’ll go back down again, and neither of them had anything to do with Izzy Dalton. What I know for sure is you’re practically wringing out that glass like a dish rag. You’re hot, you’re frustrated, you want Izzy bad. You tell her, it’s just going to give her another reason not to sleep with you.”

Jack lifted his hand from the glass, the cool condensation leaving his palm damp. He reached down and wiped it on his jeans. “You’re right, I know you’re right. I just want…” There was so much he wanted, it was impossible to verbalize it sometimes. “I want to do right by her. I don’t want one to get confused with the other. But you’re right. This will pass.”

Noah nodded sharply, as if the conversation and the issue were totally settled, except there was still that molecule of doubt deep in Jack’s conscience. Foxy drank the rest of his beer in one swallow.

“I’m starving. Let’s go get a pizza. Every minute I sit in this hellhole, I think I’m getting uglier.”

“Did you hear back from Mr. President of the Shit Heights compound or whatever the hell he was called?”

Toby threw the question to Izzy out of nowhere, as they were sitting in the broadcast booth after an afternoon game, going over notes for the following week’s matchups.

“Corey Rood?” Izzy asked, flustered at his sudden interest in a situation that they hadn’t discussed since leaving Florida. It had been two weeks—admittedly insanely busy days, but fourteen days, nonetheless. Izzy had kind of hoped that Toby had forgotten all about Corey Rood and his snotty email, but apparently not.

“Yeah. That guy. Did you keep him dangling after you and your highly desirable airtime?”

Izzy had written a perfunctory reply to the President of the West Barrington Heights Neighborhood Association, assuming that since it was a story she was dying to hear more about, Toby wouldn’t be interested. Then in the hectic days after the opening of the regular season, she hadn’t remembered to follow up.

Like all things associated with Jack Bennett, she should have expected the story wouldn’t leave her alone. 

“I tried, sir. I think he really expected us to jump all over the story, and wasn’t thrilled that we didn’t.”

“Shit,” Toby swore, and Izzy couldn’t help but wonder if he was actually mentally unbalanced, because what he seemed to care about seemed to do a 180-degree turn every other day.

“Go out there tonight,” he continued. “Go see him, and check out the situation. I want to know every angle.”

“What should I tell Mr. Rood?”

“Tell him to be prepared for us to run the story.”

Izzy told herself that she should let his word be enough, but the conniving gleam in Toby’s eyes made her suspicious. “Are we?”

“Ratings are in the shitter, Dalton. We’ll run it if we have to.”