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stiff, not yet broken-in embroidery against his skin. By the end of the night, it would be stained with clay and sweat, which would only make him like it more.
    Not long after he tried on his fitted ball cap, Cole walked in. Evan should have known that his friend would manage to get out of practice early on his first day.
    “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” Cole drawled, scanning him in his new uniform. “Or maybe you’re just making my eyes sore with all of that gleaming white material.”
    Snorting, Evan sat down in the red director’s style chair in front of his space to lace up his cleats. “Good to see you, too, mate.”
    Cole slapped him on the back as he walked over to his changing area. “Gonna be a great game tonight. You excited?”
    “You know I am.”
    “Gonna throw up beforehand?”
    “When have I ever done that?”
    Cole considered that as he pulled his sweaty dry-fit practice shirt over his head. “Well, I guess I haven’t been in the same locker room with you since high school, so it’s hard to say. But there was that time before you went on the date with Emma Klepak your sophomore year.”
    “You had me doing shots for an hour before I was supposed to meet her at the movie theater.”
    “Oh, yeah.” Cole grinned at the memory. “Bet you haven’t had banana liqueur since then.”
    “Not even the actual fruit.”
    “Good times.”
    Evan stood up after tying his laces and did a few testing steps to make sure he’d gotten the tension right. He frowned. Something felt off.
    Sitting back down, he lifted his right cleat and looked at the bottom of it. Since the Atlanta field was natural turf, he’d opted to wear his metal cleats rather than his molded plastic ones. They allowed him to get better traction on the hard clay, which was essential for an infielder. One of the cleats sat at an odd angle, as though it had been bent.
    “That doesn’t look right,” Cole said. “It must have caught on something when they were loading your stuff. Better fix it, or you’ll tear up a knee before the end of the first game. Yosef Brinkman is the equipment manager, if you need him.”
    It turned out that Evan did have to hunt down Yosef, but it was an easy enough fix with the right tools. He considered the damaged cleat as he returned to the locker room a short while later. What if he hadn’t noticed the slight hitch in his step? Could he have caught his ankle rounding a base, like Matt Jensen had?
    Had the cleat been damaged by accident, or on purpose?
    He didn’t have time to dwell on it. The other players had filed back into the locker room by the time he got back, and Cole helped with introductions. Evan met the first baseman, Theo Oxley, the center fielder, Ace Hoover, and the left fielder, Burke Richards. He knew the second baseman, Larry Uhre, from high school, and he’d already met the short stop, Anton Copernicki, the right fielder, Billy Devereux, and the catcher, Javier Rios, at Cole’s wedding. He shook the hands of a number of pitchers and bench players, some of whom he’d played with before.
    The intros went well for the most part. Jensen was far from welcoming, which Evan anticipated. Hell, if their situations were reversed, he’d probably feel the same way. Still, the guy was being a real douche.
    “I can’t help but wonder what management’s thinking,” he said loud enough to carry through the locker room. “You’re not only overpaid, you’re overrated.”
    Cole jumped all over that, but Evan told him to shake it off. If that was the worst he had to deal with on the first day with his new team, he’d consider it a blessing.
    *     *     *
    They kicked San Fran’s ass.
    Evan was still riding the high of his three-RBI night as he pulled the Harley into the parking lot of his apartment complex. Cole had offered to take him out for a beer to celebrate, but he’d wanted to get home to make sure the movers had made it and Miller and Beck were settling in. It