Sure Bet (Out of Left Field #1)

33. Liam

Chapter 33

Liam

“ A re you moving in?” my best friend said by way of greeting. “What’s with the garbage bag?”

“I am moving in, buddy.” I held up a bag of my clothes. “You offered, remember?”

Brenden pushed the door open and watched me hobble inside. “Uh. I did. Months ago, and I believe you told me you would sooner sleep in a sack of snakes than in my wife’s guest room.”

“What a surprising turn of events!” And proof of my desperation if I was willing to throw myself on the sharpened blade of Karen’s goodwill. “Floor is fine if the guest room is still occupied. I’m not picky. Snakes are misunderstood creatures. Your wife is charitable. Please thank her for me.”

He sighed.

I winced and hissed, rolling my weight to the outside of my foot to avoid putting direct pressure on my left ankle. I twisted it in my cowardly escape.

Brenden shook his head. “Need me to carry you? What the fuck happened? Why are you limping and drenched? You look like a drowned bridge troll.”

“Fun story. I packed up my shit and ran out on the woman I love like a coward. I dropped my wallet somewhere between the condo and my car. Which is fabulous when I got stuck parking on Occidental because there was nothing on our block last night.”

My head fell back, and I laughed, slightly unhinged. Or entirely. Hard to tell at this point.

“Joke is on whoever finds that wallet because I’m broke as fuck. They’re doing me a favor by stealing my identity.”

He gestured to my ankle. “That?”

“Oh. My car ran out of gas in the Central District after I spent an hour literally driving in circles and debating whether I should go home and man up. Too busy to watch my gas tank! Thoughts too loud to hear the warning! I had to walk the rest of the way here because I had no wallet. It rained.”

“Shit,” he murmured. “You twisted it on the walk?”

“Yes. Running from an off-leash dachshund that bit my ankle. I’m also bleeding.”

“You are un-fucking-real.”

I pretended to tip my hat to him. “I may as well be a fictional character. You can’t make this stuff up. Welcome to the shit show I call my life.”

He sighed. “You look insane.”

“I feel insane.”

He eyed me, but not with sympathy. “Karen will kill you if you get blood on her floor.”

“Again, her charity is appreciated.”

“Two miles with a twisted ankle? Sure you don’t want me to carry you?”

I abandoned my dignity when I slunk out with a garbage bag of underwear. Accepting a piggyback ride from Brenden wouldn’t dent my abysmal self-esteem on a day when I’d made sufficient work of smashing it into oblivion.

“No. Thanks, though. Crawling is good enough for me.”

Brenden supervised from behind with a wary eye, but contrary to my self-deprecating jokes, I managed to make it on my own two feet to the den. The volume on the TV was loud enough to know he was watching Sports Center—probably avoiding the dragon upstairs.

“Dude, you missed the replay!” A voice boomed from the den. “Hope it was worth it, because I’ll spoil it now. Hernandez fucking dominated that shot!”

The agony of my injured ankle disappeared the moment I turned the corner. A man sat on the couch with his feet kicked up on the coffee table—shit, a risk taker to pull that stunt in Karen’s house.

“Hockey is another level of intensity. Goddamn. I mean, not that I want to get nailed by a triple-digit pitch, but baseball players at least keep their teeth.” The guy spun around, and his dark eyes blinked in surprise. “You’re not pizza.”

Holy shit. I most definitely was not pizza, but neither was he.

Brenden grunted something I didn’t catch, too star-struck to register his words. I did catch introductions, though, damn near ready to ask this guy for an autograph.

Play it cool, dude. A bus driver refused to allow you on board because he thought you were mentally ill and in a manic spiral.

“This is my buddy, Liam. Liam, this is?—”

Pain forgotten, I sprinted into the den, wiping my dirty palm on my even dirtier jeans and offering my hand.

“The man on my fucking cereal box this morning! I’d recognize you anywhere.” I gripped his hand, grinning like a fool. “Enzo Valenti, the pitcher I wanted to be. Nice to meet you, man.” I glanced at my best friend, holding Enzo’s hand hostage. “Dude, you didn’t tell me you have friends in high places.”

“I play professional baseball, dipshit. I have friends who play professional baseball.”

Yeah, that lined up. Typically, I didn’t care about the fame, but this guy…

Enzo Valenti was one of baseball’s premier pitchers, the kind who came around once a generation but hung on posters for much longer.

Brenden sighed and rubbed his temple. “Liam, this is Eli Valenti.”

I dropped his hand. “Who?”

“Enzo’s twin brother, identical, as you may have noticed.” Eli grinned at Brenden. “This is the joker you want me to meet with, huh?”

I blinked a few times, rubbing my bleary eyes. Dehydrated, distraught, and a disaster of a human at the moment, I tried to determine whether Brenden was fucking with me. That would be the cherry on top of the melted shit sundae of life—but my buddy didn’t have a dark sense of humor like that.

“Enzo has an identical twin brother?”

“Par for the fucking course.” Eli sighed. “And here I thought it was one of the league’s worst-kept secrets. Apparently, they’re doing better with it than I thought. Yeah, Enzo has an identical twin brother.”

“No shit.” I rubbed my jaw and considered that. I followed the game, not the glam, so the players’ personal lives didn’t interest me, but I had a soft spot for twins—being one and all. “I’m a twin, too!”

Eli drummed his fingers over his thigh. “Yeah? Identical?”

“I should fucking hope not.” I scoffed. “She has the ugliest feet.”

“Sit down.” My best friend gestured to the couch. “I’ll find a Band-Aid… or a hundred. Jesus fucking Christ, Liam.”

Eli hummed. “Fraternal twins, lucky you.”

“The most fraternal, yes.” I wondered what it would be like to have the same face as someone else, particularly someone famous. “What’s it like getting mistaken for Enzo? Is that in your favor? Women must love him.”

“Does your twin sister? Is she cute? If the answer to both of those is yes, send her my way.”

Brenden’s snicker echoed from the hallway as he headed for the guest bathroom to retrieve supplies.

“I mean, if you like feral gremlin energy, you might be into her.” My dumbass best friend married a soul-crushing dragon. Who was I to judge what this guy was into? I collapsed on the couch beside Eli with a relieved groan. “So, you’re Karen’s cousin? The agent? Are you as terrifying?”

Brenden returned with a towel and some bandages, tossing them at me. “When she murders you, I’m not stopping her.”

Because she crushed his fucking soul.

“I am Eli, the agent. Unless you would rather refer to me as ‘Not Enzo.’ That works, too.” He reached for his beer and took a long drink. “Karen and I are second step-cousins since removed. Her mother divorced my step-uncle, then married my blood uncle, and they divorced. Now she’s married to some guy named Tom.”

I squinted. “What… the fuck?” A bottle tapped my shoulder, and Brenden handed me a cold beer. He shrugged like none of that was weird as hell and quite possibly an incorrect familial association.

“I met Brenden through Karen, and we hit it off. Karen’s mom dumped my uncle. Then my other uncle, but Bren and I stayed friends. I’m in town negotiating a trade and thought I’d stay with the ex-fam.” Eli rested his elbows on his knees. “Brenden said I should consider mentoring you because you’re interested in being an agent, but you look like a fucking mess, man.”

“Eli!” my best friend snapped. “Sorry. He’s got no fucking filter.”

I waved it off. “I am a mess.” My head fell back, lolling against the couch.

Brenden smacked my shoulder as he rounded the couch and took a seat in the La-Z-Boy. “But you’re not on the bathroom floor.”

“So you, what, want to push this girl into the arms of her ex-boyfriend because you think she deserves better?” Eli whistled through his teeth. “Selfish.”

Brenden swiped my bottle from the coffee table before I used it as a weapon. I flipped him off, and Eli after. Recounting the last few weeks of my life—and tonight specifically—appeared to be pointless. These guys clearly weren’t listening if they didn’t get it.

“She deserves better. How the fuck is it selfish to free her up to get it?” I jerked my thumb in Eli’s direction and glared at Brenden, like, this guy, huh?

My traitorous best friend shrugged. “It’s a little selfish.”

“A lot.” Eli grinned and shoved another bite of pizza into his big fucking mouth. The guy was loud, opinionated, and confrontational—a total Shana, which was probably why I liked him despite his cocksure nature.

That kind of energy sucked when on the receiving end of its honesty, though. But my sister was generally right about shit, so maybe it was worth the discomfort.

“How do you figure?” I polished off my slice and wiped my greasy hands on a napkin. “Hypothetically. If I were to have done something selfish. Which—full fucking disclosure—I didn’t.”

I patted my stomach, stuffed from half a pie. When Eli’s pizza showed up twenty minutes ago, I dug in without asking. I frowned. I may have proved his point.

He tossed his paper plate onto the table like a frisbee. “Well, to start, you ignored everything she was telling you just so you could listen to your insecurity.”

Brenden nodded, running his hand along his jaw as he considered Eli’s statement. “Accurate.”

“You fucking turncoat,” I muttered under my breath. I signaled for Eli to continue.

He tented his fingers, looking pleased as fuck to share with the class. “I think we should emphasize that first point because it’s probably your biggest offense, my friend.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted Eli to make bold declarations of friendship, but I pinched my lips tight and kept my mouth shut. He did not beat around the bush, and while his unapologetic straightforwardness slightly intimidated me, his honesty wasn’t to be mistaken for hostility.

Brenden continued nodding—the fucker hadn’t stopped the entire time Eli spoke. Christ.

“Next, you left after she asked you to stay.” He screwed up his face. “Bro.”

“Bro,” Brenden echoed, muting the TV just to let the displeasure linger.

I conceded defeat, dropping my head. “Bro.” Fucking idiot.

My best friend sighed. “What else you got, Eli?”

Guess we were still going.

“It’s not selfish to believe she deserves better, but it is selfish to give up rather than trying to be better for her.” Eli grinned and dusted his hands. “There’s a bit of agent management for you. Listen to process over content. Theme over specifics. Latch onto the emotion of the person speaking. That’s where you hit to get them to agree with you.”

“Impressive,” I mumbled. It really was.

Brenden picked at the label on his beer bottle. “She told you she wanted you to be that guy for her, Liam. She wants you, warts and all.”

“I do not have warts!” I loudly interjected.

“Dumbass. I mean flaws.”

Right. I had a persistent outbreak of those. Incurable, apparently.

“The only thing she seems to want is for you to change your perspective—about yourself. She’s not bitching about who you are, what you do, or how you should be different. You are.” Brenden threw his hand up, his eyes fixed on the TV screen, and unhappy about whatever just happened.

Eli toasted me. “You’re being the bitch.” He pointed at the game. “Thirty seconds at best before he’s in the sin bin.”

I cleared my throat, focusing on my hands resting in my lap. I didn’t watch hockey. My ankle fucking hurt, I might need a Rabies shot, and my skin felt clammy and gross from sitting in wet clothes, but none of the physical aches or discomforts compared to the emotion tight in my chest.

“I didn’t want her to see how hard things were for me… are for me, I mean. My life was supposed to be better, bigger, more. She deserves someone to give it to her.”

“Then be the man to do it.” Brenden scrubbed a hand over his face. “We were all supposed to be bigger, Liam. I wasn’t supposed to be in the fucking minors as I head into the last years of my playing career.”

Eli saluted me. “I’m ‘Not Enzo.’ Definitely wasn’t supposed to be like that.” He took a long swig of his beer and smacked his lips. “Nothing like being second string.”

Brendan leaned forward to clink his drink with Eli’s. “Second string.”

“Shit. I mean, if we’re doing this.” I tapped mine, too. “A second-string life.”

We pulled back, sitting in companionable silence. It was an odd feeling to share space with others and not pretend shit was okay when it wasn’t. No fake smiles and hollow laughter, trying to talk myself into an improved mood as if that would make me feel like a better person.

Yet, with a second-string crew, I could breathe, really breathe, without the suffocating grip of pretense squeezing the life out of me. Just a group of imperfect assholes.

Brenden’s finger tapped against the bottle, his wedding ring clinking the glass as the game went to a commercial break. “Live every day like this for the next sixty years and tell me how you feel about the kind of life you had when you die miserable and unfulfilled.” I gaped, and he continued. “ Or put in effort and know you’re worth the investment. She already thinks you are. You’re the fucking problem here, and right now, you’re confirming that she deserves better. Not because of what you’re doing with your life, but because of what you’re doing to her.”

I stared with my mouth open, blinking. “Brutal, dude.”

“Sorry.” He shrugged. “I started counseling. Radical honesty is a thing.”

“I’ll fucking say,” I whispered. I took a deep breath. “You made your point.”

And fuck. Now I would have to make mine.

My circumstances remained the same, but not my perspective. My martyrdom or self-flagellation didn’t protect Brooke, just as running from my insecurities didn’t protect me. Hiding my pain wasn’t noble.

“He should have said something.” I tugged on my lip, mulling it over. “Murphy was a fucking coward, not a hero. He should have sprinted across that field and taken her. Four hundred and fifty-fucking-seven pages just for him to be a coward? Arrick was the wrong choice, but Murphy made the real mistake when he did nothing to stop her from leaving.”

Brenden squinted. “What?”

“It’s not important,” I murmured, but it was. It was really fucking important. Princess Penelope’s royal and dignified position mattered less than the chains of Murphy’s own making. The ones he put on himself. “I’ll write my own sequel. Four hundred and fifty-fucking-seven. ”

“Four hundred and fifty-fucking-seven?” Eli glanced at Brenden. “You guys have too much inside shit, man.”

“The stats.” Brenden ignored Eli. “You said she blurted out your stats to everyone who asked about you, right? You thought she was embarrassed and trying to paint a picture of you as some star player, but you missed the fact that she knew your stats at all and that she remembered them. She wasn’t embarrassed. She was proud of you. She wants you to be proud of yourself.”

Eli clapped his hands once and fell back in an exaggerated swoon. The guy wasn’t shy, was he?

Brenden rolled his eyes, but I laughed. Eli was growing on me.

“The only stat that matters is the fact I struck the fuck out tonight.” I rubbed my chin, hating myself for my stupidity and then hating myself for my self-hatred. God, vicious fucking cycle. I glanced at Brenden. “I need a couple of days to get some shit together. Would you be willing to help me?”

Brenden considered that and nodded. “Sure. After you tell me that you find Karen delightful.”

Turns out, my best friend had a dark sense of humor after all.

And though she would never witness the sheer determination required to choke out the words, Brooke was worth the sacrifice. I swallowed. “I find… Karen… delightful.”

I nearly cracked my fucking teeth as those assholes laughed—the gall. I had no dental insurance.

“Goddamn.” Brenden shook his head. “Now that’s some true love shit.”