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“Yes, I live here. The second and third floor.”

“You live on the second and third floor of this house.”

“Yeah, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to get to my apartment?”

“Your apartment.”

“In this building.”

“Shane, I really don’t have time for this, so if you could . . .”

That’s when it clicks. The apartment on the ground level has been vacant for a little while. Ursula, a sweet Dominican lady, had moved to assisted living a few months ago and her kids had refurbished it before putting it up for sale.

“You’re moving in.”

“We signed the paperwork this morning. They said the upstairs neighbor was quiet, travels a lot for work, that we’ll barely hear her.”

“Yes, well, I’m her.”

“Shane, can you help me with this?” a female voice calls from the other side of the truck. “I want to make sure we get a before shot of all the boxes in the truck and then some progress shots of everything moving where it belongs . . . oh, hi.”

“Hi,” I say, trying to wrap my head around this.

“Frankie.”

“No, no, you need to move somewhere else. Eight million people live in this huge city and you managed to find yourselves here ? How did this even happen?”

Then it occurs to me, a sinking feeling in my stomach that’s confirmed the longer I stare at him in silence. He was never able to hide anything from me for long, not when we were married (I figured out he was cheating within a couple of weeks) and he definitely can’t fool me now.

This is not a coincidence.

This is very, very, very much on purpose.

The perfect wrench to throw into their perfect influencer lives. The perfect thing to hook people with on their videos: “we live downstairs from his ex-wife . . .” on every video, getting those likes and views and followers, and the sponsorships and paid promotions that follow.

“Frankie.”

“No, absolutely not. You need to back out of the deal.”

“We’re not doing that.”

“Then you need to rent it and move somewhere else. You can’t do this.”

“You’re being unreasonable.”

“ I’m being unreasonable?”

I can feel myself boiling over, all the pressure and the tension and the roller-coaster emotions of the last few days coalescing into what will for sure be a viral meltdown of epic proportions, the kind that makes it from TikTok to Instagram and, a couple of days later, to Facebook then to Page 6 and then, finally, to Hannah Vinch’s radar.

Where it could cost me everything I’ve ever worked for.

And sure enough, Jessie has her phone out, ready to record.

Fuck. That.

I close my mouth, shaking my head, and sprint up the stairs, hopefully out of sight before she can press that red button and get a shot of my retreating ass.

As soon as the door is closed behind me, I whip out my phone and dial Bianca, kicking off my heels and falling back against the door.

“Hey, what’s up?” she answers, right away.

Thank God for my best friend.

Moving into my apartment, I toss my bag onto the couch and let my hair down, sighing as the weight releases at the back of my head. “I need you to check Jessie’s feed right now.”

“What? Why?”

Making my way into my bedroom, I switch her to speaker phone and slide out of my work clothes, adding the pieces to the pile for dry cleaning and pulling on a pair of cotton shorts and that t-shirt I borrowed from Charlie, the cotton still holding on to that clean scent of his, mixing just a little with my own perfume and shampoo.

Yeah, I don’t want to think too hard about the implications of why breathing it in makes my shoulders relax and simultaneously sends a zing of lightning over my skin.

“Just look and tell me what you see.”

“Moving to New York, but we knew that . . .” she trails off. “There’s a ‘Stay with us while we find our new home’ post. There’s . . . okay, it looks like they found a house. Uh, I’m sorry . . . is that your street?”

“Not just my street. Downstairs. Literally below my feet right now, moving in.”

“You’re kidding me?”

“I very much am not kidding you. They’re moving in.”

“Shit. There’s nothing you can do?”

“What can I do? Call the co-op board and say what? They don’t care. And besides that, there is no way this is a coincidence. They would have had to apply for the space months ago. This was planned, from start to finish. Hell, I half think they staged running into me at the airport.”

“That’s some real psychopath behavior,” she says. “Sounds like Shane. What are you gonna do?”

“I . . . I don’t . . .” I trail off. “I don’t know.”

“Well, there are two choices right now: stay or go?”

That’s Bianca, always getting right to the heart of a problem and, even if she doesn’t have a solution for you, helping you get there on your own.

And leaving? That sounds kind of nice right now.

“I could go to Florida, work from there for a while.”

I have a condo down there, that oddly reminds me of the one Charlie has in Arizona, a lot of tile and white paint and bland furniture that’s just a place to crash after long days at the ballpark. Though it does have the added bonus of being at the beach.

There’s a lot of appeal to the idea.

“You could,” Bianca says, but even though her tone is absolutely neutral, I know exactly what my best friend since childhood is thinking because it’s exactly what I’m thinking too.

“Wouldn’t that be running away?”

“Maybe a little bit,” she allows, “but you work from down there after the holidays anyway. You’d just be moving it up a little.”

That’s true, but that’s when everyone from the organization starts to shift down to our spring training home, when the early bird players start showing up, when our efforts this time of year start to become real. But it’s not time for that yet. There’s still work to be done up north.

“But no, I can’t. Stew’s here and recovering. I don’t know when or if he’s going to be able to make the trip down. And then, when they post Nakamura, I want to be here to roll out the red carpet, I don’t want to be scrambling back to Brooklyn and . . .’

“And you don’t want to run away.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, then you won’t, but you’ll still come out for Thanksgiving, right? Xavier and I would love to have you. The family is going all out.”

Thanksgiving in LA , with my best friend. Sounds perfect.

“I’m there.”

“And if that guy you keep jet setting across the country with on his private jet doesn’t have anywhere to go, let him know he’s welcome too.”

“B!”

“What?”

“Stop it.”

“No, I don’t think I will.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Bye, best friend.”

“Bye, best friend.”

Almost as soon as I hang up, my phone rings again.

“Did some inappropriate innuendo about private jets just occur to you?”

“What?”

That’s . . . not Bianca’s voice.

I slap a hand against my forehead. “Sorry, I was just . . .” I trail off, trying to recover, but there’s nothing I can say to Charlie right now that will convince him that I wasn’t just talking about him.

“You got a thing for my private jet?” he asks, but I can hear the real humor in his voice. Now that I know how he sounds when he’s actually being suggestive, it’s easy to tell the difference. I ignore the question.

“What’s up?” I ask, climbing onto my bed and leaning back against the pillows, trying and failing to resist the urge to recline completely against them.

Laying down while talking to him feels like a bad idea, like tempting fate or toeing a line or, I don’t know, a special form of masochism.

“I need a real estate agent. Two, actually, one here and one in LA .”

That was not what I was expecting, but the words real estate just sit there in my brain, dancing around, teasing me with the idea that he could have moved in downstairs instead of Shane and his little family.

Hell, maybe I need a real estate agent. Maybe I should just move? That would solve the problem for sure.

“Frankie?” he asks, when I’m silent too long.

“Yeah, sorry. The team has a few we work with. I can have Gregory hook you up with one tomorrow. Things getting a little crowded at Javy’s?”

He chuckles roughly. “I might be barricaded in the guest room while I try very, very hard not to hear anything happening in the rest of the house.”

“Don’t they have kids?”

“Their kids sleep like rocks, just like Javy.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m in the same boat. Worse, actually.”

“How is that possible?”

“My ex-husband and his wife and kid are moving in downstairs.”

“The ex you gave your car to at the airport?”

“How many ex-husbands do you think I have?”

“Fair. That’s . . . it has to be on purpose, right?”

“I think so. No way to prove it, though. I’m just dreading becoming the star of their ‘we live downstairs from his ex-wife and look how amazing we are for it’ social media bait.”

“I could . . .”

“You will not.”

“You didn’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t need a guy to fight my battles for me.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“Then there’s no reason for you to go all macho and go over there and . . .”

“I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to call my lawyer and see if there’s anything you can do to make sure that doesn’t happen. A restraining order or, I don’t know, at least a ‘you’re on notice, don’t fuck around and find out’ letter.”

“Is that an official legal action?”

“Hell if I know, I’m just a dumb jock.”

I laugh and then let out a heavy sigh, but he doesn’t let the conversation lag.

“How did it go with Mrs Vinch?”

“You knew about that?”

“I went to visit Stew today, and he told me.”

“I should do that.”

“He’d love to see you, but, first, what happened? Did she give you the go ahead on Nakamura?”

“She did.”

“Sullivan, that’s awesome. Why aren’t you out celebrating?”

“Jet lag finally got me,” I admit. It’s been a long week and I’m exhausted. “I’m just gonna crash tonight.”

“Look at us, party animals. It’s barely nine and I’m already in sweatpants.”

“I’m about to be, but I’m still a little bit wired. I need to chill out before I’ll be able to sleep.”

“Okay,” he says. “tell me about the meeting.”

“She’s terrifying,” I say, with a laugh, “and gorgeous. I feel like if you’re a billionaire and part of a major league ownership group you shouldn’t be allowed to also be hot?”

“Says the woman breaking a similar rule.”

“What rule is that?”

“Knowing as much about baseball as I do and also being hot.”

“I don’t think that’s a rule.”

“It should be,” he says, and then immediately pivots. “So, a full green light on Nakamura.”

“As good as one. I’m sure there’s a level that they won’t go to, so our pitch is going to have to do a little more heavy lifting, but I mean .

. . there’s something to be said for coming to play where Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, where you can be the guy that leads an organization to its first championship since the middle of the twentieth century, to own this city in a way no other player ever has before, to give the most loyal fanbase this side of Chicago 2016 a championship, to make next year into this year . ”