He shakes his head. “I keep meaning to, but every season I just get too busy, games and practice and strength training and then Lian—” He stops himself before he finishes her name. Tami didn’t know it, but that must be her. Lianne? Liana? What happens to his face just then is like the outfield grass when a thick cloud passes overhead, blocking the sun. A brief darkness, his eye jumping from sapphire to navy. Then it’s gone. He takes another bite, swallows. “By the time I’m done at the stadium, it’s always closed for the day.”

“And how long have you been with the team?” She gives him a playful glare, praying that his gloom won’t return.

“I know. Too long to keep using that excuse.”

“You sound very occupied. I mean, focused. On your training.” Her foot slips out of her shoe and a toe finds his calf, that ball of muscle. He’s filling their wineglasses and a splash jumps out of his cup, making a purplish stain on the white linen. “I like that.”

Over the rest of the meal he asks about her. She worries he’s trying to separate himself back to some safe distance with generic getting-to-know-you questions, but as he persists, she senses it’s not a buzzkill but something else, some midwestern earnestness that’s been bred into his kind. If you like a woman, you ask her about her hometown, her mother’s people. If her mother’s people are wicked—and Charlene’s family was—back up and try again; ask about her father. It’s so different from Ronnie—the only time he asked about her family was to hold it against her. Typically she’d gloss over Danny, Terrance, and the boys, but if Jason’s in the middle of a breakup, he should hear it. Life goes on. He nods thoughtfully when she talks about divorce; that sexy man she saw earlier pushed aside by a kindhearted one.

She reaches recent history, her time in Arizona. “I work up at Taliesin, actually.” It’s not deliberate, her decision to use the present tense, but it does sound better. “Gift shop, mostly, but I’ll guide tours if they need me. Know all that stuff, just in case.”

While they’re waiting for the check, he says some nice stuff about how good a listener she is—which seems silly because she’s the one who talked through most of their bottle of wine—and that he likes her dress. She finds his knee under the tablecloth and says thank you, that he’s a good listener, too. That she’s excited for him, for the possibility of starting fresh.

“What do you mean by that?” he bristles. Only once tonight has his wife, or ex-wife, come up—and then it was his doing, a darting near miss.

“I—I—I,” Tami stutters, sure she has ruined everything. The cloud is back, his eyes a dark sea. “I just think the spring is great for new beginnings. A new season, a fresh leaf.” She keeps stammering about the opportunities of the coming year, trying to hurry backward from whatever dangerous line she just about crossed.