Love By Number Read online

  Love By Number

  Copyright 2017 DJ Jamison

  Cover design by Lucas Soltow

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return Amazon.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: This book contains sexually explicit content suitable for mature readers.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Thank You for reading

  About the Author

  Other Books

  Author’s Note

  While Love by Number references sports teams, the story is entirely fictional. All game situations and players are a product of the author’s imagination. Sabermetrics is a real mathematical practice: It’s the analysis of statistics to measure in-game performance, a term coined by Bill James, an American baseball writer, historian and statistician. I should thank my husband, Lucas Soltow, the baseball enthusiast in the family — and the member of the family with the best grasp on math — for his input while writing Love By Number. My son Camren also deserves a mention because it’s from my experience living with him that I can craft convincing characters on the autism spectrum. My betas Nevaeh, Tanja and Susan were also invaluable. Thank you so much for all that you do to help me improve my work!

  Chapter One

  The crowd at The K was chanting. Again.

  “Mar-co! Po-lo!”

  “Mar-co! Po-lo!”

  Aidan sighed, and his fingers tensed around his stubby pencil. Marcus Polanowski had just stepped up to bat in the ninth inning at Kauffman Stadium. The Kansas City Royals baseball team lagged by five runs. This was prime “clutch player” territory, and Aidan needed to concentrate.

  The scorecard in his hand would soon contain Marco’s — no, Polanowski’s — stats. He wouldn’t engage in cutesy nicknames.

  Aidan didn’t understand people. Why, for example, would one go to a baseball game only to ignore the game and engage in group chants as if one were in some brainwashed cult? But then, Aidan didn’t get people. That’s why he loved math. Figures didn’t lie. They didn’t change moods so quickly he got a headache just trying to interpret their emotions. They were reliable.

  The noise around him swelled as the pitcher wound up and Polanowski adjusted his stance at home plate.

  “Mar-co! Po-lo! Mar-co! Po-lo!”

  Aidan did his best to ignore the noise. He wasn’t here for fun.

  This was serious business.

  The Astros pitcher, Ryan Courtland, threw a breaking ball. Polanowski swung and ...

  Connected!

  The ball flew high and fast, into the visiting team’s bullpen. Polanowski hadn’t homered in three games. But then, those games had been clear wins for the Royals, and Marcus Polanowski would always perform best in the clutch.

  Recording baseball stats and running computer simulations to predict outcomes was Aidan’s passion. During a regular season, teams played 162 games — not nearly enough to accurately predict which team would come out on top as the World Series winner. It kept the sport less predictable and gave underdogs a reasonable shot at winning, while making it more difficult to call the season.

  Aidan ran thousands of simulations to come up with his predictions. And after years of tracking advanced statistics for the same set of players, he could generally predict how they’d perform when pitted against other teams, within reason. Nothing was 100 percent predictable, to Aidan’s great frustration. Life would be so much easier if it was.

  He smiled with satisfaction as the crowd roared around him. Most of the fans jumped to their feet. Some of them high-fived each other as if they were best friends. All around Aidan a sea of blue and white grinned and whistled and urged Polanowski on as he rounded the bases.

  His homer brought in two other runners, and suddenly the Royals were in striking distance. Just two runs down.

  The reality washed over him. They could go to the World Series. It could really happen. He could be there, in person, to watch his predictions play out on the field.

  He wasn’t inventing the wheel. There were enough people practicing sabermetrics — analyzing baseball statistics to measure in-game performance — that he couldn’t expect to publish any papers. But sabermetrics was his passion — his only passion.

  Aidan had fully fallen into the mundane. After losing his scholarship to a prestigious school and blowing an esteemed fellowship — all because he couldn’t handle classroom settings and narrow behavior expectations — his career was lackluster. He used his skill with numbers to do market research for an advertising firm. It wasn’t inspiring, but it paid the bills. Likewise, his love life was in the tank. He was a disaster at relationships, no great surprise because he was a disaster at people in general.

  But he was good at this. Each season he refined his models, built on the data from the season before and achieved better results. If he could perfect this aspect of his life, then maybe he could start to work on the others.

  Go for a promotion, so he could afford to support his mother without sharing the same house. Make a friend or two — even if they were only online math geeks who spoke his language. Have sex again. Or more than sex.

  He looked at the grinning faces around him. They smiled and laughed, giddy with the runs Marcus brought in. They were happy and satisfied in a way Aidan couldn’t comprehend.

  Was he too smart to be happy, the quintessential shepherd overseeing the ignorant but content flock of sheep? Or was he too ignorant, incapable of understanding people and their emotions enough to connect and find the happiness they all wore so comfortably?

  He honestly didn't know. Either way, he envied them.

  ***

  Jesse tried to focus on the glut of traffic in the parking lot that served both Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums for Kansas City’s football and baseball teams. It wasn’t easy with Gramps yammering in his ear about the final play that won the Royals their spot in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

  It was a historic event. Everyone was excited, and no one less so than his loud grandfather, who only grew louder as he lost his hearing over the years. Bull in a china shop had been used to describe the big-boned, bushy-haired man more than once. But Jesse loved him like a father.

  “An I-70 World Series! Can you believe it? That hasn’t happened since the eighties. This is so amazing. It’s the bomb, as the kids say!”

  “The kids don’t say that anymore, Gramps.”

  “Fuck it! Do people still say that? It’ll be fucking great!”

  Jesse laughed while he fiddled with the radio station. “That fucking works.”

  He needed music. His veins were thrumming with the adrenaline that shot through the whole crowd when the Royals won with that awesome double-play — well, the whole crowd minus the one guy two rows do
wn and one over who seemed more intent on scribbling down stats than watching the game — but Jesse was ready to detox.

  Gramps had other ideas. He flipped the dial back to the sportscast while still babbling excitedly. “Marco really stepped up tonight. That kid has a bright future.”

  Jesse spotted an opening and slammed the car into reverse. He didn’t hesitate to gas it out of his spot; he’d learned you had to be assertive in these situations or you’d end up waiting hours.

  “We’re gonna trounce those Cards! I sure wish we could go up there.”

  Jesse frowned and reached for the radio. “They’ll play some here—”

  Crunch.

  The car jolted, and Gramps shouted a garbled exclamation. Jesse shifted into park and turned to his grandfather, who’d pressed a hand over his heart.

  “Are you okay? Jesus, you’re not having a heart attack, are you?”

  “No, goddamn it! Stop treating me like an old man!”

  Relief swamped Jesse. If Gramps was swearing, he was just fine.

  “Might want to worry about the fella you hit,” Gramps pointed out.

  Jesse looked into the rear-view mirror. A guy stood looking at the intersection of their cars, where Jesse’s bumper had not so lovingly rammed his little Saab. Headlights bounced over them, illuminating the driver of the car he’d crunched.

  Jesse recognized him as the guy who’d been intent on his notes. The guy who never cheered, much less smiled. Jesse had tried to talk to him once, about a year ago, because Gramps was a season ticket holder and they were just a few rows apart.

  Jesse briefly entertained thoughts of picking up at the game, even though Gramps was there. But the guy had barely looked up from his notes, his tone perfunctory, as Jesse tried to draw him out. He’d finally given him up as a lost cause and went to buy Gramps his hot dog, heat burning his cheeks because he’d thought the guy was cute with his floppy hair and glasses, and he’d been completely shut down.

  And now, the uptight stranger looked upset.

  Great.

  ***

  Aidan clutched at his hair, heart hammering in his chest. The front driver’s side of his black Saab was crumpled. The wheel well took a direct hit, the force of the collision pressing it into the tire. He could tell from just looking that the axle must be bent, if not broken, by the way the tire tilted at the wrong angle.

  It’s not drivable, he thought, and his heart hammered harder. He felt his hands trembling, and not as an aftershock of the accident. Well, not from experiencing the accident, at least. He was shaking because his plans had just been thrown in the blender.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  He looked up, gazing blankly at the figure approaching him. A man, but his features were lost in the shadows. Not that Aidan could focus on something like facial features right now. That wasn’t easy on a good day, much less in a moment like this.

  “It’s not that big a deal,” he muttered to himself, as he’d learned from his therapist years ago. “It’s not. It’s not. But ...” He groaned and clutched at his hair some more. “How am I going to get to the World Series now? I have to get there!”

  He’d wrapped up so many hopes in getting to that series, in watching the Royals perform in high-stakes games. It was the perfect time to prove out his math. It might not be rocket science, but Aidan still wanted to watch his math come to life on the baseball field, in the most important series of the season. In person.

  A hand touched his shoulder, and he flinched away.

  “I’m sorry. Are you hurt?” a voice asked. A nice, mellow voice. He liked the raspy quality of it and the cadence of the man’s words. His tone calmed Aidan.

  He managed to drag his gaze from the damage to the man’s face. “I'm ...”

  Sexy Artist Guy.

  He faltered when he recognized the dark hair tinted with maroon highlights, dark eyes and sculpted lips — all coming together in a perfect symmetry. A perfect representation of geometry in nature, really. And the freckles splashed over his nose, highlighted now by the security lights overhead? They somehow added to his sex appeal instead of detracting from it.

  Aidan had seen an open sketchbook on this man’s lap more than once when passing by on a bathroom break. He mostly drew portraits, from the look of it, but Aidan had only caught a glimpse. It made sense he was an artist since his entire appearance was like a work of art to Aidan’s eyes. He couldn’t imagine being so creative with his hair or his wardrobe or his skin, where Sexy Artist Guy had embraced both tattooing (his right bicep) and piercing (both ears and right eyebrow).

  “I’m so sorry,” Sexy Artist Guy said again. “I saw an opening and went for it. I didn’t see you coming, but my grandfather was distracting me—”

  “Blame it on the old man, why don’t ya?” a hoarse voice boomed loudly enough to make Aidan jump.

  “Gramps, not now, huh? The guy is freaking out.”

  “I’m not freaking out,” Aidan said sharply. The fascination with the stranger’s face faded as he remembered why he was in this situation. He gestured to the damage. “There’s no way I can drive that.”

  “We can give you a lift,” the old man said, at the same time the handsome stranger said, “We’ll call you a tow truck.”

  “But look at my car!” he said, not sure they understood the direness of the situation.

  Artist Guy frowned, then glanced behind Aidan. Following his look, he realized they were blocking traffic. A line of cars snaked through the parking lot, headlights shining on Aidan’s personal disaster.

  “I should move my car.” He glanced back at the bent wheel well, frowning. He hoped he could move the car.

  “Jesse,” the old man spoke, “you help him push. I’ll get in and put it in neutral.”

  They all took their positions, and with some work managed to push the car into an empty space next to the Lincoln Towncar that had so cruelly crunched the Saab. Aidan cringed at the scraping metal sound as his car rolled out of the lane of traffic.

  Once off to the side, Jesse pulled out his wallet. He handed his license to Aidan, who stared at it. He took in all the details: 6-foot-1, 175 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, born one year after Aidan, making him twenty-six.

  Jesse cleared his throat, and Aidan glanced up.

  “Aren’t you going to take a picture?”

  Damn. He’d been staring. The old saying popped into his mind: Take a picture, it’ll last longer.

  He flushed. “Sorry.”

  He started to hand the license back, but Jesse looked at him as if he had a screw loose. Then it clicked. Take a picture. For insurance. Right.

  He dug out his phone and clicked the pic of the license, and then of the insurance card that Jesse handed over. He was still rattled by the accident, thrumming with bottled-up anxiety.

  “You okay? You’re pretty twitchy,” Jesse said. “I’m sure the insurance will cover the damage.”

  “Yeah, but it’s my car.”

  “Yeah?”

  Aidan waved to his car, unsure how to make Jesse understand.

  “It was reliable.”

  “Um, won’t it still be reliable when it’s fixed?”

  “The World Series is in two days.”

  “So ...”

  “Jesse, stop being thick,” the old man interrupted. “Obviously, he was going to drive up to St. Louis, and a Saab is a foreign car. He won’t be able to get the parts locally. Maybe not even the mechanic. They don’t make those cars anymore. He can’t get it fixed in time.”

  “Oh.”

  “I have to go to that game. I go to all the away games within driving distance. I always do. And this is the World Series. I'm going to have to take a bus, and, oh God, I can’t stand to ride the bus—”

  “Jesse will drive you.”

  Aidan looked at the older man. He had a bushy head of white hair and enough wrinkles to give a Shar-Pei a run for its money, but his tone was confident, the kind of confident that brooked no nonsense. He’d heard that tone
from his own mother too many times to count.

  “He will?”

  “I will?” Jesse echoed. “Gramps, I’m sure Aidan doesn’t want—”

  “That would be great!”

  Normally, Aidan wouldn’t want to ride long distance with a stranger, but when contrasted with a bus full of strangers, he jumped at the opportunity. Besides, Jesse and his grandfather had been at every home game. If Jesse were some kind of predator or bully, he'd have shown it by now. Right?

  He’d only had one other interaction with Jesse. He’d walked up to Aidan once, when he was trying to quickly record the stats from the latest play and compare them against what he’d predicted for that player’s performance. Aidan had been too distracted to make conversation, especially small talk with a stranger. But he couldn’t help noticing his great smile. Jesse was one of those people who smiled with his whole being, not just his mouth. His eyes brightened, his cheeks dimpled and his body even seemed to vibrate with happy energy.

  Aidan liked that because it was easy to see Jesse’s happiness. It wasn’t subtle, which would be lost on him, or confusing — like when people’s mouths smiled but their eyes stayed cold. He didn’t understand that. Was he supposed to respond to their mouth or their eyes? And then there were some people who just smiled all the time, even when they said mean things. What did that mean? Smiles could be confusing, but Jesse’s wasn’t.

  “I have tickets to the games,” Gramps was saying now. “I was going to ask you to go, as a favor to me.”

  “What? But you said in the car—”

  “Hush,” Gramps said, a gleam in his eye. “I’m not up for that kind of travel. I want you to go in my place, so you can tell me all about it. You take this nice young man. It’s the least we can do. Watch the games for me, and tell me all about it when you come home.”

  Aidan pulled out his phone to call the tow truck, watching the two men in a staring stand-off. He made arrangements for the tow and disconnected in time to see Jesse sigh and nod.

  “Okay, Gramps. For you.”