Page 25 of Base Block

Then she drove me to the Woodsmen practice facility, which she swore wasn’t out of her way—but it had to have been, because it was in the middle of nowhere with only a little diner nearby. “Thanks for coming out with me,” she said as I unclicked my seat belt. There was a long line of cars in front of the orange building and a large crowd of people, too. Fans liked to hang out here to get a glimpse of the players.

“Thanks for inviting me,” I said. “I hope to see you again.”

“Yeah, definitely,” she promised. A car behind her honked, so I said bye and she got on her way. I waited with the throng and we all watched as players started to emerge. Most of them waved to the fans and some came over to the fence to sign autographs and talk. There was a big commotion when two guys walked out together.

I recognized one of them, and I yelled for him: “Callum! Callum Frazier!” Strangely, he was carrying a brightly colored gift bag that said “Happy Birthday” and was covered in dinosaurs, but he wasn’t turning twenty-six until March.

Everyone else was yelling for the other guy, who was a team veteran. They both walked to the fence together and that player was mobbed by hands reaching out to shake and holding papers and shirts to sign. Callum stepped back and looked at the crowd, and then he saw me.

“What are you doing over there?” he called. “Step up on that rock and I’ll lift you over.”

I was wearing my jean shorts so there was no chance of flashing anyone. That kind of publicity could have helped eventually but not right now, not when he wasn’t yet on the roster. When you were established, you had more leeway—but I had to think that he would never want attention like that.

“Will this hurt your shoulder?” I asked, but he scoffed.

“Come here,” he told me, so I did let him pick me up and swing me high into the air over the fence. “You ready to go?”

I nodded. “You should drive. I had a skinny White Russian and no lunch before I drank it.” Apparently, I had already lost the tolerance for alcohol that I’d developed over the last few years because I was feeling that Kahlua right now.

“A skinny White Russian? Hell.” He waved to some of the other guys and we went to his car, which was at the back of the lot. It seemed like the nicer ones, which we’d seen the returning players drive, parked closer to the gate. “I was going to suggest that we go out, but if you’re not up for it—”

“No, I want to,” I said. For the past few days, he’d been feeling a lot of nerves. He mostly expressed them by frowning and looking scary, but I knew what was really going on. It was the roster. He would find out if he had made the team in less than twenty-four hours.

In fact, he was frowning right now. “It’s probably good news,” I reminded him. “If it wasn’t, they would have had you in the office to talk about getting a plane ticket.”

“They’re meeting with guys tonight and tomorrow before they send out the list of names. I could get a call at any time, and I won’t know the final decision until I see the roster in black and white. It will probably be orange and white.”

That made me nervous, which didn’t go well with the curdled milk in my stomach. We got into the hot car and he started it so we could roll down the windows, then he waited a minute for me to make my bun so that my hair didn’t blow into my face. “Can you hold this?” He handed me the birthday bag.

“What is it?”

Callum reached inside to show me. “It’s stone toad. It’s not a frog, it’s a toad.”

“Oh. Ok.”

“Jory Morin gave it to me. He’s the guy signing autographs,” he said, pointing toward the fence. “He wanted me to understand which animal it was, so he repeated it a few times.”

We both looked at it. “It’s too bad that we’re in the motel. We don’t have a place to put it outside,” I commented. “Why did he give it to you?”

“He doesn’t seem to believe that it will have live outside. He suggested that it would look good in a bathroom, and I think he gave it to me because he likes the color of this car. He also told me a few times that his wife’s favorite color is green.”

“Oh, ok,” I said again. We studied the toad for another moment. Maybe it would have looked ok in the bathroom, but I wasn’t sure there was enough space. “I’ll put him away for now.”

With the toad stowed, we got on the road. “What happened at the interview? Did you take the job?” he asked.

“No. I thought about it more and I decided not to,” I said.

“Were you thinking about the kidnapping? Because when you said that, I got worried. Very.”

“It was that, and some other things. I didn’t love the guy who interviewed me,” I told him. “Our meeting reminded me of when I went to Damian’s house for the first time.”

“Going over hours and expectations, money talk?”

That and more. “I didn’t like what he said. Where do you want to go for dinner?”

One of the other guys had gotten him excited about Greek food, so we went to the restaurant he’d suggested. But it was kind of a strange meal, because Callum was so distracted and jumpy that he had a hard time eating.

“Where would we go? If this doesn’t work, where would be a good place to live?” he asked suddenly.