My Husband Kissed Another Woman on the Ballpark Kiss Cam, and the Friend I Called a Liar Was the One Running the Scoreboard novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Ring, Please

Beth takes her mother's ring back in front of the crowd, names who told her the truth, and in the service tunnel a groundskeeper tells her what that friend said about her.

The concourse at Fox Field is a long concrete ring under the grandstand, and on Dollar Dog Night it smells like onions and spilled beer.

Everyone walking toward me was looking at a phone.

I didn't have a plan.

I had a direction, and it was toward section 112.

I was halfway around when Todd came around the curve at a run.

He'd lost his cap.

He was still in the gray polo with the Delmar logo stitched on the chest.

His face was the face of a man who had just smelled something burning in the kitchen.

"Beth." He stopped in front of me, breathing hard. "Bean. It's not what it looks like."

I almost laughed, because it looked exactly like what it was.

The woman in the Foxes jersey jogged up behind him, holding her left hand out in front of her.

She was younger than me and pretty in a way that didn't take any effort.

I didn't look at her face.

I looked at her hand.

"What are you even doing here?" Todd said.

"Free tickets," I said. "From the school."

His mouth opened and closed.

"How's the signal in Kansas City?" I said.

A man at the pretzel stand had stopped chewing.

Todd saw him, and then he saw three more people, and I watched him decide who to be.

"Folks," he said, a little louder, with his palms out, "my wife's been under a lot of stress."

"Todd," I said.

"She's not herself."

"The ring, now, please."

It was only four words, and I said them to him, but I was looking at her hand.

Todd turned to her.

"Stace," he said.

"This?" She looked at her finger as if she'd forgotten it was there. "Oh my gosh, is that your wife?"

She looked at me with bright, friendly eyes.

"Hi! I'm so sorry about all this. Todd told me you two were basically roommates."

"Stacey," Todd said.

"It's his grandmother's ring," she told me, and slid it off like a hair tie. "He said it's been in his family forever. It was too big anyway."

She held it out on her flat palm.

I picked it up.

It was warm, and that was the worst part.

I closed my fist around it so hard that my fingers cramped.

Behind me, somebody was coming up the ramp one step at a time.

My father reached the top with his hip hitching and a hot dog in each hand, because he'd carried mine as well.

"Todd," he said.

"Dad." Todd's voice cracked. "Dad, listen."

"I'd shake your hand," Dad said, "but I've got mustard."

He didn't say anything else, and he didn't need to.

Todd looked from Dad to me to the people with their phones, and his face changed again.

The scared look went out of it, and something meaner came in.

"This was Dani," he said. "Wasn't it?"

"Todd."

"She's been after me since June. She put you up to this, and you're letting her."

"She didn't put me up to anything."

I heard my own voice, steady and quiet, and I didn't know where it came from.

"She told me the truth in June," I said. "And I called her a liar."

Todd stared at me.

"I'm going to go tell her she wasn't."

"Beth." He caught my sleeve. "If you walk away from me right now, you're going to regret it."

I looked at his hand until he let go.

"I'm not walking away," I said. "I'm walking to the press box."

Dad shifted both hot dogs to one hand and jerked his chin up the concourse.

"Go on, Bethie. I'll hold your seat."

The signs for the press box all pointed to a steel door marked FIELD LEVEL, STAFF ONLY.

It was propped open with a mop bucket.

It was the only way up that didn't go past section 112, so I went through it.

The service tunnel was cool and dim and smelled like cut grass.

At the far end, a man in a green Foxes crew shirt stood beside a cart piled with drag mats.

He had a rake in one hand and a cooler at his feet.

He had a sunburned neck and the stillness of someone who spent most of his day waiting for grass to do something.

He took one look at me.

Without a word, he pulled a folded white towel off the cart and held it out.

"I don't need..." I said, and then I looked down.

My hand was still locked in a fist, and I was shaking so hard the ring was rattling against my knuckles.

I took the towel.

He opened the cooler and poured lemonade into a paper cup.

"I'm not supposed to give out the crew's lemonade," he said. "It's the good kind."

I drank it standing there with a stranger's towel around my fist.

It tasted like real lemons.

"I need the press box," I said. "My friend runs the video board. Dani Judd."

He went still in a different way.

"Dani Judd," he said. "Then you're Beth."

I stared at him.

"She told me about you once. In June."

He set the rake against the cart.

"She said she'd lost the best friend she ever had by being right."

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