Next morning, we indulge in “the wallow,” and it’s while lying sticky and spent that I almost say something about this maybe being my final year in baseball. It rises up and I want to let it out, but I stay quiet.
Tommy, so intuitive toward me that he usually knows what I’m thinking, says, “What?”
I have to throw something out quickly. “Just thinking ahead to you beating me up again.”
“On the field, I trust?”
I poke him in the side. “Yes, on the field. You gonna own me again?”
“Like I do now?”
“No, the other knock-it-over-the-fence way.”
“Hey,” he says, rolling onto his side and petting my chest, “you lay a juicy fastball up there, it’s history.”
“So you’ll lay off the curve?”
“Didn’t say that.”
I kiss his cheek. “There was a time I could get it past you,” I note. “Strike your bu
