~ Chapter Eight ~

Kevin jabbed his finger at the elevator button again.  He knew it wouldn't make the elevator come any faster, but it gave him something to do while he waited.  The doors finally opened.

"Brian?"  Kevin was surprised to see his cousin already in the elevator.

Brian pursed his lips at Kevin skeptically and folded his arms across his chest.

"Oh, don't even start with me."  Kevin pressed the first floor. 

"I'm not." 

Kevin waited for a moment, confused when that was all Brian said.  He had been expecting a lecture.  "What?  No long complicated story that has some kind of moral behind it?  No blatant ‘Kevin, you were wrong'? No request for an apology?  Not even any questions?" 

The elevator stopped on the seventh floor. 

"Kevin, I give up."  Brian started out of the elevator, pausing and holding the door back with one arm.  "I've got other stuff to deal with.  My head hurts.  I'm tired.  I can't sit and fix your life anymore."  He added, letting go of the door.

"Why?"  Kevin mouthed mockingly at the closed door.  "Too busy fixing Nick's life now?"

~*~

Nick leaned his forehead against the glass of his hotel room window.  When he had said he wanted a trade, why hadn't he said the National League, so he wouldn't ever have to come back to Yankee Stadium?

He turned back into the suite the Mariners provided for him, as stipulated in the contract his father's agent had procured.  Why had he wanted a trade in the first place? 

It had all started last September, when Nick, in a fit of mild rebellion - as much as he ever bothered to exert - had refused to participate in a father-son interview with his father on television.  Yankee Owner George Rubenstein had thrown a fit and Nick had been pleased with the attention it created.  Negative attention was still attention.  During the offseason, the same idea had been raised again,  Nick had again vetoed the idea, and Rubenstein almost had a brain aneurysm.  He told Nick to either do the interview or leave the organization, and Nick, still pissed off, had chose to leave.

Now he wished he hadn't.  If he had just gone along with their plans, both his parents and the Yankees, like he had been doing for the last fifteen years, he'd still be a Yankee, he'd still have some friends, he'd certainly have more fans than he had now, and best of all, he wouldn't be in the same clubhouse as Kevin Richardson.

Nick had been a "Yankee" for almost as long as he could remember.  His dad had started his major league career before Nick had been born, and Nick had grown up in New York and Tampa, the spring training home of the Yankees, grown up in and around Yankee Stadium, grown up with baseball.  Speaking strictly in terms of the game, Nick was good, and he knew it.  Speaking in terms of the rest of his life, Nick was falling apart - and he knew that too.

~*~

"You're not old enough to drink."  Kevin said in somewhat sloshed indignation, leaning heavily on the small table in the bar.

"I am too."  AJ shook his head in disgust.   AJ wasn't drinking, it was the principle of the situation.  If he had FELT like drinking, he could have.  He wasn't going to let Kevin tell him what to do.  You had to watch those catchers, once they got to tell you what to do on the field, there was no stopping them.  They'd try to run the rest of your life as well.  AJ was onto their little game.

"Wow, really?"   Kevin smiled, happy for AJ.  "That's great."

"This is where I begin to wonder if being seen in public with you is going to cause me embarrassment."  AJ glanced over his shoulder at the other occupants of the bar, who thankfully, weren't paying any attention - yet.  "I think you need to pay up and clear out, okay?"

"No."  Kevin shook his head and pulled his wallet from his pocket.  "We'll stay a little longer."

"Then why are you paying?" 

"See?"  Kevin leaned over and pointed to the picture in his wallet, momentarily distracted.

"Yes."  AJ studied the picture for a moment.  "She's cute."  He added finally, for lack of anything else to say.  He was assuming the little blond girl was Kevin's daughter, although they looked nothing alike.  She had frizzy ringlets and big blue eyes, behind little wirerimmed glasses.

‘Yep."  Kevin stared down at his empty glass.  "One more."

"No."  AJ pulled the glass to the other side of the table.  "No more.  How old is she?"

"Becky?"  Kevin hiccuped.  "Six," He stated, holding up one finger.  He moved his finger down until it was pointing at the picture again.  "You know, she doesn't really look like me."

"Oh great."  AJ propped his forehead on his hand.  Kevin was now completely smashed.  He raised his head again.  "Actually, I did notice that.  She must look like her mother, right?"

"Yep."  Kevin nodded emphatically.  "Her mother is the most beautiful woman in the entire world."  He stared down at the table, his inebriated mind fascinated with something, probably the grain in the wood.

"How long have you been married?"  AJ wondered briefly how much interesting information he could extract from Kevin's brain before he passed out on the floor.  Kevin had either been doing some serious drinking, or he couldn't hold his liquor at all.

"Too long."  Kevin said slowly. 

AJ chuckled.  "Oh yeah?"

"No."  Kevin propped his elbows and leaned across the table.  "I've been married almost seven years."  He whispered loudly.

"I see."  AJ leaned back in his chair, vowing never to go into a bar after a loss again.  It wasn't worth it.

"We met when I was playing in Kansas City."  Kevin gave up on sitting up and slumped down to the table, propping his chin on his folded arms. 

Then again, maybe AJ would have a drink.  Or two or three.  It sounded like he was about to hear Kevin's life story. 

~*~

Nick had been expecting the boos when he came up to bat, when he went out to right field, when he moved in the dugout -  that was standard for Yankee Stadium.  Once you weren't on their side, you were hated, no matter what you had done for them before.  Nick just wished he had played a little better.  Ideally, he wanted to come back to New York and rub it in everyone's face that he could survive without them.

Maybe he couldn't.  Nick unzipped the top of his bag.  He was on his own now and that was an incredibly depressing thought.  All he wanted to do was go to bed, stick his head under his pillow and preferably never wake up.  He fished through the disorganization in his bag, finally emerging with an orange bottle.  He shook the bottle once, then stopped, eyeing it thoughtfully.  It was almost three quarters full.