#justadaybehind

“Just kind of curious, I guess. This is my first time dealing with this. And I don’t really know what to expect from a professional baseball players hanging out here.”

“I don’t think it’s likely to have a huge impact on your life. They probably won’t be around much when you are. Some evenings, but that’s about it. But if you’re hoping for an autograph, I’m sure that can be arranged.”

“I’m not much of a sports person,” she admits. “I prefer non-competitive, solo exercise.”

“You? Non-competitive?” Lincoln grins. “I don’t believe that.”

“If I’d been good at sports, I would have been competitive, but since I wasn’t, I do stuff where no on wins or loses. And baseball’s never really clicked for me anyway.”

“So, you weren’t fishing for details because you’re secretly very excited about this.”

“Just want to figure out how disrupted my life is going to be.”

“Barely at all,” says Lincoln. “I’m sure you’ll hardly notice them.”

He’s always such an optimist. “I’m sure.”

*

When Clarke’s adviser told her she should think about volunteering at a nursing home, she hadn’t really been particularly enthusiastic. She’s never been comfortable with older people–since, again, she didn’t see much of her own grandparents, or anyone else over the age of eighty–but she wants to go to med school, and volunteer positions look good on applications. Plus, she could just go for a few hours a week after class and get some good experience with a demographic she didn’t know well.

And, to her surprise, she’d actually liked it. After a few months, she added more hours, and she’s actually got a paid position lined up for the summer. She can see this being a career for her, elder care, and while her mother thinks that’s not ambitious enough, Clarke can live with being less ambitious than her mother wants her to be, if she likes her work.

But she’ll admit that she’s also used to being, well, the volunteer. She’s not the only one, but like Lincoln said, she’s competitive. She’s the bestvolunteer, everyone agrees, and she doesn’t really want some random jocks to show up and get to be cooler than she is just because they happen to be a little bit famous.

They’re not even in the major leagues yet, seriously. They can’t be that exciting. But it’s all the residents want to talk about.

“They moved in last night,” Mrs. Alexander tells her, while she’s giving out afternoon snacks. “Such nice boys.”

“One of them stayed up to watch Jeopardy! with us,” adds Mr. Thompson. “He was good at it!”

Clarke smiles, even though she watches Jeopardy! with them, and she’s good. “Better than me?” she can’t help asking.

He smirks; she does like Mr. Thompson. “I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to find out.”

“Do the players usually spend a lot of time with you?”

“Not very much. They’re so busy, you know? And they can’t just bring their homework to do while they sit with us like you can.”

“It’s easier to concentrate here,” she says with a smile. “Even better than the library.”

Usually, that’s true, but today she’s antsy, waiting for the baseball players to show up, not knowing if or when they will. It’s not a big deal, but she doesn’t like feeling unprepared, and until she meets the guys, she won’t feel like she can be prepared. And she has no idea when that meeting might happen; if it’s not tonight, she won’t be back until next week.

She’s prepared to feel annoyed about this for a while, but there’s an unfamiliar young man at one of the tables when she wheels Mrs. Hernandez into the dining room for dinner, and that has to be one of the baseball guys.

Clarke watches him out of the corner of her eye as she gets Mrs. Hernandez set up, studying him as best she can. He’s cute, if she’s honest, curly black hair and tan skin, wearing a pair of glasses with thick black frames and talking to Mr. Peters and Ms. Norris, telling them some story he’s illustrating with gestures from his large hands.

“Is that one of the new baseball players?” she asks Mrs. Hernandez.

“Oh, yes! I met him last night. I don’t remember his name, but he was very polite.”

“You like having them around?”

“They’re nice boys,” she says. “They’re good to spend time with us.”

“It’s not a burden to spend time with you,” Clarke reminds her. “But it is nice of them. I’m sure they’re busy with–training.” She did some cursory googling of what baseball schedules are like, but it was mostly about when games were, not what players do when games aren’t happening.

Other than living in a nursing home, obviously.

By the time she finishes getting everyone set up, all the chairs at the baseball player’s table are taken, and everyone is clamoring to ask him questions. Clarke doesn’t want to be bothered by his surge of popularity–it always happens, with new blood, everyone excited to get their story–but he’s just a baseball player. He’s not even in the major leagues yet.

She’s not going to be bitter.

Her shift is five hours, from three to eight, covering afternoon snacks and then dinner, with a couple hours after of just spending time with the residents. She usually sets up in one of the common spaces with some textbooks, reading and chatting with whoever wants to chat. From seven to eight, she joins in the nightly tradition of watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! and then she heads back to campus. It’s a nice routine, and she sees no reason to alter it for the new baseball player resident. If he wants to talk to her, he can.

And, apparently, he does. She’s been in her chair with her book for all of five minutes when he sits down next to her. Up close, she can see his skin is dotted with freckles and there’s a small scar over his lip.

And he’s very handsome.

“Hey,” he says, giving her half a smile. “I saw you helping out in the dining room, so I assume you’re not someone’s relative.”

“Volunteer, yeah.” She offers her hand. “Clarke Griffin.”

“Bellamy Blake. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too. How do you get signed up for something like this?”

He looks a little amused at the question, although Clarke doesn’t know why. It’s a pretty normal thing to ask. And she’s curious. “They wanted volunteers, it sounded like a pretty good deal to me. I don’t pay for an apartment, and I get a free social life.”

It’s Clarke’s turn to smile. “Free social life?”

“What?”

“I guess I figured being in the minor leagues would give you a social life already. And this isn’t exactly–” She pauses, trying to figure out the best way to phrase it. “I like hanging out here, but it’s not for everyone.”

“So why is it for you?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s quiet and everyone’s easy to talk to. I just like it. But I didn’t think I would. I started coming here because my adviser said it would look good on med school applications, actually liking it was a total surprise.”

“I had a job at a nursing home when I was in high school, I worked in the dining room. I liked getting to know the residents, so when coach told us about this, I was the first volunteer.”

“That makes more sense.”

“Good enough reason for me to want to come here?” he asks, with a smirk that she wishes was a little less charming. “You like it, someone else should be able to too.”

“I just wasn’t expecting it, I guess. My friends can’t believe I hang out here as much as I do.”

“Well, you’re not the only one.” He pauses, but apparently his conscience takes over. “Murphy’s probably not going to be around as much.”

“Murphy?”

“The other rookie. He’s kind of a dick.” He looks around, adorably spooked, like he just realized he maybe should have said the word dick in a nursing home.

“The good news,” Clarke says, low and teasing, “is that a lot of the residents don’t hear very well, so they don’t know that you’re swearing.”

His laughs, a sheepish little chuckle. “Lucky me.”

“You get used to it. Not that some of the residents don’t swear up a storm,” she adds. “But they always act like we shouldn’t know those words.”

“I have some news for them about professional athletes and swearing.”

Clarke smiles, and he smiles back. He can’t be that much older than she is, probably recently out of college, assuming he actually graduated, and that makes her feel better. Somehow, she’d been imagining the resident baseball player as someone like Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, an older, grumpy guy who wouldn’t really want to be here or talk to her. Which makes no sense with how old rookies actually are, but whatever. That’s her point of reference.

She wasn’t expecting someone like Bellamy.

The Wheel of Fortune music starts, and he perks up. “Sorry, I’m just–”

“Don’t apologize, I usually watch too.”

“Cool.” He gestures for her to go past him. “After you.”

*

Despite Lincoln’s assurances, Bellamy does have an impact on Clarke’s life. Admittedly, the other resident, Murphy, doesn’t show up much, almost never when Clarke is around, but Bellamy really does seem to see Eden Meadows as his home base, the place where he returns to as a default.

Not that he can always be around. With the season in full swing, Bellamy’s got games almost every day, which means he can’t spend all his time hanging out at a nursing home. He’s on the road a lot, or at games later in the day, or training. But according to the residents, Bellamy comes from breakfast as much as he can, and Clarke knows he comes for dinner as much as he can. The games aren’t broadcast on regular TV, but Lincoln has a cord to connect his laptop, so they watch the online stream, and Clarke joins them whenever she’s around.

After a couple weeks, she starts streaming in her dorm too, leaving the game on in the background while she does other things, listening for the announcer calling out that number six is up so she can watch him.

Clarke is not an expert on baseball. She understands the most basic of the basics, that one team tries to hit the ball and run around the bases while the other team tries to keep them from getting around the bases, that three strikes are an out and four balls are a walk, and that catching the ball is good. She knows that Bellamy is a catcher, which is the same thing Geena Davis was in A League of Their Own, and she definitely knows that most of her reference points for baseball are A League of Their Own. It’s weird only because Bellamy doesn’t talk about the game very much, or his career. He talks about college–which he did finish last year–and how much he likes history, about his little sister, who’s starting at NYU in the fall, because he can afford to send her to a better school than he went to. He talks about his teammates and his friends, but not much about the sport itself.

Not that Clarke has admitted to caring about the sport itself yet. She hasn’t told Bellamy that she watches the games at the nursing home, let alone on her own, and whenever anyone comes to her room while the games are on, she slams the laptop shut before anyone can see.

Or, rather, ideally she does. One morning, the weekend before finals, Clarke has the game on her laptop while she reviews flashcards in bed, away from the distractions of the internet, and Raven comes in without knocking, stops dead.

“Are you watching sports?”

“It’s just baseball.”

Raven frowns at the screen. “What the fuck team is that?”

A flush creeps up her neck. “Minor leagues.”

“You’re watching minor league baseball?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing against–” She frowns. “Does that say Rumble Ponies?”

The conversation will undoubtedly get worse before it gets better. And that’s assuming it ever gets better, which is a big assumption. She’s been caught and now she has to explain herself.

“Yeah, that’s our local team.”

“The Rumble Ponies.” Raven flops down in her chair. “Seriously, why are you watching this? I didn’t think you liked baseball.”

“It’s a long story,” she says, and immediately changes her mind. “Actually, it’s really short, I just don’t want to tell it.”

“Tough shit. What’s up?”

“The nursing home has this program set up with the–” She stumbles over the name. “The team. A couple of their rookies come and live in the home and hang out with the residents for a year. All the residents love it,” she adds. “They think it’s so cool that they’ve got real ball players living with them. And they watch all the games, so I watch all the games when I’m there. And then I started watching them here.”

“So, the rookies are hot?” Raven asks.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, but if they weren’t, you wouldn’t be embarrassed about telling me. It’s not actually a big deal.”

Clarke sighs, flops back on the bed. “Just one of them. One of them isn’t around much, but the other one–I think he really likes hanging out with the residents. As long as he’s in town and doesn’t have a game, it feels like he’s always around, doing puzzles or watching TV or just talking to people.”

“Wow. So you’ve got it really bad.”

Clarke shrugs. “He’s hot, he’s smart, he likes to yell at the TV during Jeopardy! I was hoping professional baseball player was something that didn’t do it for me, but it’s not a deal-breaker, apparently.”

Raven leans in close, squinting at the screen. The live stream is always a little pixelated, never great quality, but good enough to mostly tell what’s going on. “Which one is he? Your guy.”

“Number six on the Ponies,” says Clarke. “Bellamy Blake. They’re in the field, he’s the catcher.”

“Huh. He’s got a nice back.”

She smiles. “His face is pretty great too.”

“It must be, if you’re watching baseball.”

“I’m not really paying attention, if it makes you feel better.”

“I’ll feel better when I actually see the guy.”

It takes until he’s up at bat; it’s not a great closeup, and all Clarke can see is the pieces that are missing from this distance, on this scale. His freckles are missing, his hair is under a cap, he’s wearing his contacts instead of his glasses.

Still, it’s enough for Raven. “Yeah, I’d probably watch baseball for him.”

Clarke smiles. “Yeah. It’s so worth it.”

*

“None of the residents are going to remember all the details, so I’m just letting you know that I’m going home for a couple of weeks so you don’t have to figure out what happened from someone else,” she tells Bellamy, once finals are over and she’s about to be kicked out of the dorms.

He raises his eyebrows. “Just for a couple of weeks?”

“Yeah. I’ve actually got a job here for the rest of the summer, but my mom wanted to see me first.”

“How dare she,” he teases.

“I know, I know. I’m not complaining, it’s just kind of a pain. I wish they didn’t kick me out of the dorms, I’d just live there all summer if they let me and everything would be so much easier.”

“Where are you living when you get back? Here?”

“Nope, they just let famous athletes do that. I’m subletting from my professor who’s out of town for the summer. As long as I feed her cat, I’m good. And she’s letting me leave my stuff there so I don’t have to drag it back to DC.”

“So you’re still going to be on the east coast?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“You should give me your number so I can text you about Jeopardy!”

It’s not like it’s a huge deal, really. Asking for someone’s number is a really minimal commitment, now. She doesn’t even know if Bellamy is single, or into women, and he really might just want to text her about game shows.

Which, okay, sounds like total BS as soon as she thinks it, but it could be true.

Then again, Bellamy’s not an idiot. He’s a twenty-three-year-old guy who probably flirts and has been flirted with a lot, and he has to know how he’s coming across.

The overthinking is getting her nowhere; she gives Bellamy her number, they watch their nightly game shows, and when she leaves, she tells him she’ll see him in a few weeks. Like a normal person.

The texts start the next morning, when Bellamy’s on the bus to an away game. He asks her when her flight is, which she tells him, and then he has Murphy’s bus singing to complain about, and Clarke gets patted down at airline security because her shirt is bunching and it looks like a bomb or something. Obviously she doesn’t text him while she’s on the plane, but she does let him know that she landed safely, and he lets her know that he’s got his game in about an hour.

“Who are you texting?” Abby asks.

“A friend.”

“A boyfriend?” she asks. “Or a girlfriend?”

“Or a friend,” says Clarke, smiling. “Another volunteer at the nursing home.”

“Oh, that’s nice. What’s their name?”

“Bellamy.”

Abby pauses. “And what are their preferred pronouns?”

She’s trying so hard with all the queer stuff; Clarke has to smile. “He’s a cis-guy, he uses regular masculine pronouns. He’s just got a weird, androgynous name. Not that I can relate to that or anything.”

“Clarke is a lovely name and you should be grateful that your father and I were already fighting against gender norms.”

“So grateful,” she agrees.

“So, is Bellamy a potential boyfriend?”

“Everyone’s a potential boyfriend, I guess,” she says, and tries to ignore her mother’s smile as she returns to her phone.

She watches Jeopardy! on her parents’ TV and Bellamy’s game on her iPad, texts him updates on how both are going. The Jeopardy! updates are more coherent, but she figures he’ll enjoy her completely uninformed baseball commentary too.

Sure enough, when he gets back, he texts, Yeah, this is exactly what I was hoping for when I got your number, and Clarke grins.

Maybe regular flirting is overrated. This is working great for her.

*

The two of them keep in touch regularly through Clarke’s visit at home. She almost feels bad for not knowing more about baseball, considering all the cool insider pictures and stories she’s getting, but Bellamy doesn’t seem to mind that she’s completely ignorant of his chosen profession. If anything, he seems to find it kind of refreshing. She’s the opposite of a groupie; maybe that’s nice for him.

When she gets back, he’s just left for another week of away games, and she spends the next few days in a state of itchy anticipation, wondering how things are going to be when she gets back, if things will be different or if all of the flirting was just in her head, if he’s just been killing time.

The residents, at least, are happy to see her. “It’s been so quiet without you,” Mrs. Hernandez tells her. “Especially when the boys are away at games. And I know Bellamy missed having you around, too.”

Her smile is sly, and Clarke has to smile. Trust the residents to be worried about their love lives.

But she doesn’t want to talk about that. “Have you been keeping up the with the games? It seems like they’re having a pretty good season.”

The job itself is pretty good, especially when people aren’t trying to set her up with Bellamy. She’s working a full forty hours a week as four ten-hour days, which is going to be tiring, but the three-day weekend is nice. And she doesn’t find it as difficult to be a real staff member as she expected to, even when there are gross issues. It really does feel like it could be a career, something she could keep doing. That’s gratifying too.

And every day she works, Bellamy is one day closer to being back, which is pretty great. She’s going to see him soon.

Except that he’s getting back on her day off, because of course he is. That’s the only way it could work out. It’s not even that bad, objectively speaking; it’s the end of her weekend, and she’ll see him the day after he gets back. It’s not like she has to wait that long.

But she’ll be at work, and he’ll be living at her workplace, which is pretty generally awkward vibe for romance. Not that she necessarily thinks she’s going to get laid immediately, but she thinks there are good odds of her getting laid at some point, and if it could happen immediately, she’d be down.

Mostly, though, she just wants to see him. As soon as possible. But it doesn’t feel like she can say that, like she can just ask. It feels like too big a step for her to take just yet.

Flirting sucks.

Luckily, Bellamy takes the issue out of her hands; about an hour out of town, he texts, I just realized I can never ask you to come over to my place.

Me: I’m at your place all the time

Bellamy: You’re in building where I currently liveWorking and caring for the elderlyYou can’t really just come chill with me

Me: Yeah that’s trueThe residents are already gossiping about usIn case you hadn’t heard

Bellamy: Yeah, I got thatThe whole time you were gone, they were asking me how much I missed you

Me: What did you say?

Bellamy: You know I missed you

Me: You could always come over here insteadNo audience except my prof’s cat

Bellamy: Which isn’t awkward at all

Me: Depends on why you want to come see meIf all the cat’s going to do is watch us watch Jeopardy…

Bellamy: I figured we could watch Jeopardy and go from there

Clarke flops onto her back, grinning up at the ceiling. It’s not really like hooking up with a celebrity, not even close. Even if Bellamy does end up in the majors, she doesn’t really care about him as a status symbol. But it is finding out that the boy she likes likes her too, and wants to come see her as soon as possible.That’s always going to be exciting.

Me: I’ll order pizza or somethingSee you soon :)

*

“This must be very exciting for you,” Mrs. Alexander tells Clarke. “Seeing your beau in action.”

It’s August and the complimentary tickets to the Rumble Ponies game finally came, and Clarke really is excited, although she’s trying to keep it in check. She’s not here as Bellamy’s girlfriend, she’s here as a chaperone for the residents of Eden Meadows, which is actually a real responsibility. It feels weird, doing attendance for actual adults, but the residents can’t walk for that long and can’t really be left to their own devices. Her job is to make sure they have a good time.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever called him my beau before,” she tells Mrs. Alexander. “That one’s kind of old-fashioned.”

“I think it’s a nice word,” she says. “It sounds so much more romantic than boyfriend. And a little more serious. The two of you do seem serious.”

“You know this is none of your business, right?” Clarke asks, but she can’t keep the amusement out of her voice. “Whether or not Bellamy is my beau is no one’s business but ours.”

“Of course it’s not,” she says. “But he is.”

“But he is,” Clarke admits. It’s definitely a little awkward, but she cleared it with Lincoln–which was even more awkward–and it’s going well. She’ll mostly be happy when he moves out of the nursing home and into his own place, but she’s also glad he’ll probably still come visit. He wasn’t just being nice to the residents to get on her good side; he really likes them. He’s a really good guy.

“And it’s very exciting, isn’t it?”

She lets herself smile as they find their seats. “Yeah, it really is.”