If I did…there was almost certainly no stopping what would happen next. But…I didn’t want to stop what happened next. I just wanted to stop getting hurt again. Would Nick do that?
Far more likely than Malcolm not hurting you.
“Hey, Nick,” I wrote. I just decided to be somewhat honest. “I’m sorry I’ve been coy and distant. Dealing with a lot. But I’d like to see you. Just not out in public?”
As soon as I sent the text, I knew I’d get a positive response one way or the other. So, while waiting for him to respond, I picked up the phone and called my mother.
“Hello, Izzy,” she said in her usual pleasant tone. “How are you?”
I bit my lip. My jaw was starting to ache from how much I was clenching my teeth.
“Doing all right,” I said, which was as much as I was willing to put on my mother. “I was actually wondering if you could watch Ryan tonight. I’m going out for the evening with some friends.”
“Oh, of course!” my mother said. “We wouldn’t ever pass up a chance to see our little Ryan!”
At least I have my parents, I thought.
“Great, can I drop him off at six?”
My mother agreed, and shortly after, I hung up. The instant I did, I saw that I had a new message.
“All good, and yes, I’d like to see you too. You can come to my place at seven tonight if that works?”
What a world it was that I was going to the home of a professional baseball player that I’d been connected to in the tabloids for some privacy and some security against an ex that no one outside his small circle of asshole friends knew.
But it was a world that I had to make the most of because anything less was going to result in disastrous consequences.
* * *
“Izzy? Are you OK?”
I’d managed to drop Ryan off at my mother’s house, say hello to her and my father, and make pleasant conversation long enough that it didn’t feel like I was just dumping him off by the curbside. It was already half-past six, and I knew I wasn’t going to get to Nick’s at seven like I’d hoped.
But I hadn’t sold myself off as relaxing well enough. I’d gotten all the way to my car before my mother had asked that question—and now, I understood why. It was the first time I’d gotten out of earshot since I’d dropped Ryan off.
“Ryan said he saw Daddy today,” I said. “I think he’s just referring to a game or song he played. But…”
Mom didn’t ask anything more. She just nodded. Malcolm had done many things to me, but he’d never come close to my parents, although I worried that was a function less of some weird ethical and moral code and more because he’d never been around them in a state of rage.
I got into my car, revved the engine, and drove out a little faster than normal, albeit under much more control than when I had left my office or the daycare center. I only had about twenty minutes worth of driving to get to Nick’s, and then I would feel much safer.
Nick’s house was about halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco, a little bit northeast of Oakland. I wondered how he commuted into the city given how limited parking was, but then again, as a star athlete, the typical rules probably didn’t really apply to Nick.
Like, for example, the idea that one could only find a small space to live in in the Bay Area.
In fact, when I pulled up to Nick’s property, I didn’t park in his driveway as I had to call him to get the gate code. He chuckled a bit, apologizing for forgetting that detail—as if it were just some small cosmetic thing that was easily overlooked—and let me in. I immediately felt, despite making pretty decent income at my job, that I was in a world that I did not belong.
But as soon as I parked my car and got out, I saw Nick emerging from the front of his house. He was dressed much more casually than before—he had on jeans, but he also had on a Fresno State hoodie and a baseball hat. It was kind of a sexy look, honestly; it masked his face just enough that it was like he was hiding in the shadows, and there was something so damn provoking about that.
“Come on inside,” he said. “Security’s usually good about making sure no one’s near here, but you can never be too careful.”
He let me walk by him. I opened the massive front door and walked into what could, if I was conservatively speaking, only be called a massive home. There were two staircases on either side of the atrium, leading to an upstairs that was adorned with multiple paintings along the way. A massive chandelier hung in the middle of the room.
But before I could take another step forward, Nick came up behind me, wrapped me close, and kissed me on the cheek. I had never felt safer in my life than in the arms of a man as fit and strong as Nick Ferrari.
“What’s going on?” he said, his tone light but curious. “I know spring training made it impossible to hang, but—”
“Nick, that photo…”
“I know,” he said, pulling his arms back and escorting me into the kitchen, where he already had some Ferrari red wine waiting for me. “It’s fucking terrible that they published that. The Giants and I are already working on it—”
“It’s not that,” I said.
I waited for Nick to place the
