Free Binding Arbitration by Elizabeth Marx

unable to speak.”
    “Guys always lose interest, once I start talking.”
    “I like to listen to your voice, even if I don’t know what you mean half the time. I’ll catch on sooner or later.” He picked up my hand from the bar, his thumb tracing the lines in my palm. “You have the prettiest hands. You talk with them.”
    It was all I could do to keep my seat. I’d just been plugged in. All my senses were set ablaze. As ridiculous as it sounded, I knew exactly what it would feel like to touch him again. I would ignite. It would burn so badly and so deep that I wouldn’t be able to breathe or think or feel anything else.
    And that’s exactly what had happened. I had been toasted to a crisp heap of broken heart. Superstar jocks don’t take cutters to the Rose Well House at the center of campus at midnight, to pledge their undying devotion beneath its sparkling dome. That privilege was reserved for girls of status.
    And now seven years later, he’d insisted that I see him again. What does a girl have to do to get a little anonymous DNA?
     

7
    AWAY GAMES
    Bench me or trade me. Chico Ruiz
    Aidan 5 a.m.
    “Disposition, Band-Aid?” David asked as he took my bag.
    I slid into the coal interior of the limo, where I found a Tribune and a Dunkin Donuts black coffee. “We’ll talk. Just let me jump-start my brain.” I saluted him with the Styrofoam cup.
    “Nice shiner.” He snickered. “Up late?”
    David and I had played baseball at IU together. He’d been a great first baseman, but not such a hot student. When his GPA bottomed-out, he was cut from the team, it wasn’t long until he flunked out, and then he bummed around Bloomington until everyone else graduated. When he came to Chicago, I invested in his limo business, not because I thought it would be profitable, but because he was lost and needed some direction. But he made a go of it and finished school, and now he’s busy signing contracts with every major sports organization in Chicago.
    “Not for the right reasons. I couldn’t sleep. I need to have a difficult conversation with my parents.”
    “The truth will set you free.” He laughed.
    “Six years overdue.”
    “I thought you might be flying out to see Vanessa.”
    “She’s first up, and she won’t be happy when we’re done.”
    “You finally releasing her from that hare-brained life-time contract she suckered you into?”
    “I thought I could marry her, but I can’t.” I ran my hand through my hair. If I can’t confide in my best friend, who can I count on? “Someone reminded me how it feels to really want someone.”
    I gazed out my window. We had just merged onto the Kennedy Expressway; traffic was sparse heading for the airport. “You never gave me your scouting report on Vanessa.”
    “Hard to tell which one of you has been more spoiled, but I’ve known you a long time. When you dig deep there are some every-day good guy values.” He hesitated and he cleared his throat. “Vanessa, on the other hand… If you dig deep with her, all you’d find is decaying peroxide bottles.”
    “Don’t hold back now.”
    “Palowski, she’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. She has a greedy heart that only a bookie could love.”
    I threw my head back against the headrest. “You could have told me sooner and saved me the trouble of buying a fancy ring.”
    “Sooner or later you’d start to think with the right head.”
    I’d say my vision had been clouded, where Vanessa was concerned, but it might have been delusional blindness.
    “I saw Libby.”
    “I know it’s a sore subject, and you’re not going to want to hear this, but Libby’s the only girl that ever changed you.” He nodded in the rearview mirror. “At the time I resented the hell out of it.
    “I thought she distracted you from the team—and from winning.” David paused, smoothly changing lanes. “You always were perfect at everything, but something about her made you shine.”
    “She kept the kid. He’s