Chapter 69

I pulled on dry clothes (with minimal playing around) before we went into the house. Liz headed upstairs to change but I wasn’t sure why she bothered when she returned. She had put on a sleeveless tank top that obviously was designed to be worn over something else (but wasn’t) and a pair of loose gym shorts that reminded me of pictures I’d seen of basketball teams from the 1970s.

She had her seldom-used laptop tucked under her arm as she took my hand and led me into her private office. I had rarely been in there, preferring to permit Liz to have a place in her own home that was all her own. We sat down on a comfortable sofa and Liz dragged a computer table over in front of us.

She typed in the Web address to the site that some idiot had devoted to me. I cringed at the very thought of it and, for the first time, realized that the angry words I’d spoken to Sarah a few weeks earlier had been false. I didn’t want the sort of scrutiny that Liz had (or that a famous athlete came under). I enjoyed the little private moments like sunbathing with my girlfriend without a horde of people trying to take a picture.

I was happy being Liz’s boyfriend and living in her shadow. I smiled and kissed her cheek.

“I brushed so we can totally French,” she said, grinning at me. I deciding that was an option I was willing to explore.

Liz pushed me away when my hands found their way inside the arms of her shirt.

“None of that,” she said. “You’re trying to distract me again.”

“Me?” I asked.

“You!” Liz said. “You think if you play with my boobies and maybe lick my box I’ll forget about the walk down memory lane. Well, it ain’t happening that way.”

“Fine,” I muttered in mock disgust. “I’ll keep my hands to myself.”

“Let’s not get crazy!” Liz said. “I’m not saying that you can’t play with me while we look. I’m just saying that we have to start looking before you can play.”

“So I can play with your nipples?” I inquired.

“If you want,” Liz laughed.

“And maybe even, you know, finger you a little?” I asked.

“A little,” Liz agreed.

“Cool!” I said. “I’m going to get to third base with Liz Larimer!”

“You’re going to hit a grand slam with me if you play your cards right,” Liz told me.

“Whoa!” I said. “Wait until I tell all my friends!”

“All your friends already know,” Liz said. “Now, if you want that hummer I promised then we need to get started on our project.”

She pulled the computer forward and started to sift through the messages. Some of them I’d seen while we were in Cabo but most of them I hadn’t. I’d never been one to read my own press clippings, as it were.

“OK, here’s the picture that started it all,” Liz said. It was the picture of her on my lap in Cabo.

“I like that picture,” I decided. It was spontaneous but Liz looked really happy in it.

“Let’s take another,” Liz said, picking up her ever-present phone.

“Your tit would be hanging out,” I noted. She also had on no makeup and her hair was slicked back and tied with what once had been her bikini top.

“You could put your arm around me,” Liz said. “I mean, at least pretend that you like me!”

“Can I put my hand inside your shirt to make sure nobody sees your booby but me?” I asked.

“God, you are such a pig,” Liz said as she took my hand and slid it inside the arm of her shirt until it rested atop her bare breast. “I’d rather have a picture of you playing with me than one flashing my tit flesh to the world.”

“Tit flesh?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Mammary gland?” Liz tried.

“I like jug,” I said.

“I know you like jugs,” Liz replied. “Now can I take the picture?”

“Just don’t upload it until you’re sure you’re happy with it,” I suggested.

“No?” Liz asked. “Really? I shouldn’t just post it regardless of how it looks? Who would have thought?”

“OK,” I said. “You’re not wearing makeup or anything. I like you best this way but I’m not sure how some of your hardcore fans are going to take it.”

“They’ll be fine,” Liz assured me. “I did a series of Makeup Free Mondays a couple of years ago.”

“You can do a Free the Nipple thing now,” I offered.

“I’m going to free your teeth from your mouth in a minute,” Liz said laughing. “Just lean in close.”

I put my cheek next to hers and she snapped a picture. Unlike my phone, hers had a front-facing camera. And unlike me, she knew how to use the camera on her phone. She zoomed in on our faces and nary a nipple appeared at all.

“Cool,” she said as she looked at it.

“Hangin’ out with my guy in Nashville,” Liz typed before she uploaded photo. “Just took a swim and thought we’d stop in to say hi. Love to you all, Liz and Travis.”

She turned to me and sent the browser back to where we’d left. She had done the posting as a reply to her previous post so it was at the top of the page.

“Whoever set this up put the filters on high,” she said.

I gave her a questioning look because I had no idea what she was talking about.

“If you try to type a curse word, it blocks it,” Liz explained. “The site is completely G-rated. I’ll show you in a minute why that is important.”

“OK,” I said.

“Here is Deb and the prom picture,” she said. “I hate to say it, but she looks really nice. I hope you fucked the ass off of her that night.”

“You’re terrible,” I said.

“Yeah, but you love me,” Liz replied. “Now, here is why it’s important that the site be filtered so thoroughly.”

I saw a picture of me holding Lucas and Brandon.

“I guess this was last Christmas,” Liz said.

“Yeah but ... how do you know that?” I asked, looking at the screen again.

“I downloaded the file,” Liz said. “The site crops it to a certain dimension. The original has a Christmas tree in the corner. They registered as The Nephews. Look at what they wrote.”

“Ah,” I said as I read their words.

“And then they posted this,” Liz said, smiling. It was a picture of the boys at my house in San Diego, eating ice cream with Liz.

“Aunt Liz rocks, too,” it said beneath the photo.

“Those boys are so cute,” she told me.

“Sarah probably did this,” I pointed out.

“I think it was them,” Liz countered. “Unless Sarah doesn’t know how to spell ‘aunt.’ When it first went up they called me a bug ... A-N-T. I think she went in later and edited the post to fix the spelling.”

“Or she is a dumbass,” I said. “Don’t dismiss that.”

Liz laughed and I felt her breast shake beneath the hand that still rested on the warm flesh.

“The next few posts are from people that I don’t think know you,” Liz said. “They’re mostly about ... me.”

“It’s always about you, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Me, me, me!” Liz replied. “Then we get to the baseball pictures. Some are from high school. I think someone scanned a yearbook or something. They’re not very good. Your senior picture is on there, too. Then we get to what I like to refer to as the ‘Groupie Section.’”

She moved the screen down until a picture of me standing beside a well-endowed woman in a tank top appeared. I was young but the way photo was framed I couldn’t tell when the picture was taken. The uniform was white and I couldn’t see the logo or the piping. I wasn’t wearing a hat so I couldn’t tell from that. I couldn’t even place the stadium because it essentially showed us from the shoulders up because of the way the site displayed the pictures.

“And just who is this?” Liz asked.

I looked at the photo again. The woman was probably in her early to middle 30s (but I’ve already mentioned my inability to gauge ages). I was younger, early 20s. I had no context to help my memory.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Why, Mr. Blakely, you never struck me as the type that would sleep with a girl and not even know her name!” Liz said, nudging me with her elbow. “As bad as I was, I would know their names if you showed a picture.”

She frowned slightly.

“Most of them,” she corrected. “I could definitely tell you their first names.”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “I didn’t sleep with this woman.”

“It looks like you could have,” Liz told me. “She’s holding you so tight that you probably can’t breathe!”

“It’s the way things are in the minors,” I said. “The minor leagues are all about the fan experience. It’s like your life.”

“I am not minor league,” Liz said, smiling at how flustered I’d gotten. She decided to see if she could decrease my comfort level. “I’m bush league.”

She pulled the front of her loose shorts down to reveal the thin strip of pubic hair she kept.

I covered my eyes and shook my head while she poked my ribs with her finger.

“So you don’t know her?” she asked, still intent on her mission of discussing (in great detail, it seemed) every photo on the page.

“She could have thrown out the first pitch,” I said with a shrug. “She could have sang the anthem or won a contest. In the low minors, it’s always like that. They do all sorts of gimmicks to get people to come to the games. Kids play catch with us and run the bases before the games. The fans are on the field a lot and we were expected to interact with them. I was one of the very, very few that spoke fluent English so I was front and center for a lot of promotions ... particularly in San Bernardino. It’s worse in the Rookie Leagues. Those teams are filled with 17 year olds they find from all over the place and most of them are barely fluent in their native tongue. They are raised on baseball fields with little to no formal education. The kids that sign right out of a U.S. high school get a quick introduction to public relations.

“They might be a 26th-round draft choice and find themselves having to be the face of a product they know views them as completely expendable. So, depending on the face you show me, I might or might not remember them. This is one of the ones I don’t remember. I can’t even see enough of the photo to tell you where it was taken. I don’t know her and I don’t remember the photo.”

“Hmm,” Liz said. She abandoned the post and moved lower. “I’m betting you know this one, though.”

“Jodie Stalnaker,” I said. I wasn’t wearing a baseball uniform but the woman was sitting in my car with me in a parking lot.

“I’ve known Travis for almost a decade now,” she read from the post. “From San Bernardino to San Diego, he’s always known how to make me laugh. He rocks (in more ways than I can post here).”

“She followed you to San Diego?” Liz asked with raised eyebrows.

“No,” I said. “If anything, I followed her. I ... knew her ... in High-A. She is one of those that make you feel like a notch on a bedpost. I guess she found a guy to screw every summer since she was 17. I met her my second year in pro ball. She came home from school and ... I was her fling. I got promoted after a couple of months and that was it. She’s a nurse at the hospital where I worked.”

“Did you ... get to know her ... again?” Liz asked with a smirk.

“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “She always was on the lookout for someone on their way up. With the 66ers, that was me. At the hospital, it wasn’t. She wasn’t interested in even talking to me much. She’d wave if nobody else was around. If she was with the doctors or the other nurses, she’d act like I didn’t exist.”

“I hate people like that,” Liz said, frowning again. She left Jodie behind and flipped down.

“Hey, stop!” I said. I had seen a profile picture beside a post. “It’s Rosalita!”

“Who is Rosalita?” Liz asked.

“Huh?” I asked. I was reading her post. “Shit, she’s in Dallas! I had no idea. I wonder what she’s doing there.”

“Who is Rosalita?” Liz tried again.

“Oh, she’s my roommate’s wife,” I answered. “When I was in Little Rock, she lived with us. He’s the one I told you about ... with the big dick. She’s this tiny little thing. She helped me refine my Spanish.”