I still couldn’t smile, but there was something profoundly powerful about that realization.
“So, Malcolm’s in jail?” I said, not wanting to take any chances with what I had heard.
“Yes, dear,” my mother said. “The cops caught him before you even got here. I…”
“Someone needs to kill the bastard,” my father said.
My mother, usually one to disagree with my father in their banter, didn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure if I liked the idea of murder. But I sure wouldn’t mind the removal of a threat from my life like that for good.
There was so much to think about and so little energy to do it. Already, I felt like I needed to go back to sleep, like someone had woken me up at three in the morning without notice. I had a gross feeling that my life would just permanently be like this now: half sleeping through pain, half jolting awake in some form of PTSD.
“And Ryan’s safe?” I asked one more time.
My mother nodded.
“He is.”
That was good enough for me. I closed my eyes, said I’d be back in a bit, and went back to passing out.
Hopefully, when I woke up, I wouldn’t have dreamed all of this.
Chapter 17: Nick
This is entirely my fucking fault.
Watching Izzy get taken into the ambulance on a gurney, the marks of her ex all over her…God, it was both heartbreaking and the most infuriating thing I’d ever seen in my life.
I had not taken care to consider if the paparazzi would snap a photo of the two of us out in public, holding hands like so. Perhaps the fact that I had to account for that said something tragic and terrible about our culture, but I didn’t really like to be one of those thinkers; I just wanted to know what the facts were and how to account for them. And very obviously, I had failed to account for that possibility.
I wanted to fucking drive to Los Angeles and burn down TMZ’s office all the same, though. What did the assholes gain by doing this? Some clicks and some ad revenue? Didn’t they have more salacious things with cheating Hollywood stars? What the fuck would they possibly want with me?
It was so fucking stupid.
And as for her ex…
Rage felt like too kind of a word to describe what I wanted to do to him. Unbridled fury felt like too calm of a term. Death was not enough for what he deserved; some sort of horrible, twisted, ugly torture was needed so he could know what he had put Izzy through before I let him die.
The revenge fantasies poured through my head. Oh, how much fucking delight I’d take in watching that fucking pussy weasel squirm. People thought I could get intense on the baseball diamond, but that was just athletic intense; they didn’t want to see what murderous intense would look like.
The phone rang. I looked down. It was Scott.
“Yeah,” I said, even though I knew full well what was going on.
“Hey, buddy,” Scott said in a light tone, far too light. “It’s OK if you hit traffic or something, we just want to know—”
“I just saw my girlfriend get beat up by her ex, Scott. I can’t do this right now. Tell everyone I’m sorry.”
With that, I hung up, even as Scott begged me to stay on the line. It didn’t fucking matter if they were offering me a billion dollars. Money didn’t matter at this point; money could not buy a time machine that would undo what had just fucking happened.
I sighed, then screamed “goddamnit!” and punched the steering wheel of my Tesla. No, it did not do anything. Yes, it felt a little bit good.
I let my anger with her ex run its course as long as it could before I just sort of mentally exhausted myself. Then it came time to ask the question that had always been asked in sports: what now? Perhaps it felt a bit flippant to use a sports phrase for this situation, but it was all I knew, really.
Wherever her ex was, I could not say, and I had to imagine—or hope, at least—that the police were hot on his tail, ready to pound his ass into the curb and throw him back where he belonged. Izzy was likely at the hospital, resting and recuperating with family. I knew from the times my teammates had gotten surgeries that even for minor things like that, they only let family visit for the first little bit after an operation.
And that was for something not life-threatening, for something professional, not personal. I probably wouldn’t get to see Izzy for a full fucking week. That was perhaps understandable from the hospital’s perspective, but it was unacceptable for me.
I had to do what I had sworn never to do.
I would have to leverage my name to get what I wanted.
I absolutely hated when my teammates would call up a restaurant or a store and say, “Well, I’m a starting pitcher for the Giants; don’t you think it’ll be worth the publicity?” It was cheap and artificially elevated their status. And yet, if it meant getting to see Izzy…
I needed to know that she was all right. Fuck, I didn’t even need to talk to her if I just knew that she was fine. That seemed like a fair compromise—I’d let her family visit her for now, but then I would still call just to get an update on her status. If she was stable and her vital signs good, or at least as good as possible, then I could wait some.
Fuck. Worth it, though. Now’s the time to use that.
I looked up the hospital’s general phone number and dialed it from my Tesla. Scott tried calling
