Ace's Wilder

Hell and heaven

Meanwhile, at the start of the 2006 season, Jase Wilder found himself in hell.

Or well, Salt Lake City, Utah, but he was pretty sure they were the same fucking thing. Or at least Salt Lake was hell-adjacent. It had to be. Which was funny, since the entire town seemed to be obsessed with religion.

Jase still couldn't get used to bars asking for a "membership fee" and then only serving weak-ass beers below a certain ABV. Apparently it had something to do with the high altitude but Jase had his doubts, given the frequency of which he'd been asked "are you LDS?!" but come to think of it, never at a bar, because, well:

LDS. Latter-Day Saints, as in Mormon.

Granted, Jase realized he shouldn't be one to scoff at organized religion since he'd grown up going to church in Sawyer County, but to him, Mormons seemed kinda cult-ish. This sentiment could have also been attributed to his general distaste for life in general at the moment. He wasn't supposed to be in Utah. He was supposed to be in Baltimore, or at the very least, California, but he knew he'd fucked all that up, too, and so bitter and pissed off he was.

It took him until after the All-Star Break to make it to Anaheim, and thank Jesus, no sarcasm implied (or was it?), it couldn't have happened soon enough. In Southern California, none of the field staff looked at him like he was headed for eternal damnation if he arrived at the locker room with a hangover and smelled of stale booze. Which, to be honest, was more often than not, but somehow, he'd learned to play well in any condition (hat tip to living legend, Yankees pitcher David Wells for showing the League how it's done). He supposed his body was physically strong and otherwise healthy enough to make it work.

At that point, though, it didn't really matter, hangover or not, Jase Wilder was exactly what the Angels' pitching staff needed. In late August as the Angels pulled into the pennant race after being eleven games out as late as June, one of the beat reporters even went so far as to call him the 'Ace Whisperer.'

Lucky, it wasn't to his face. They'd asked Mike Scioscia about the turnaround of their pitching staff since the All-Star Break and mentioned Jase with the nickname he'd eventually come to despise and also be unable to shake. Jase, who should have been elated at the comment, threw his post-game beer at the CCTV in the clubhouse that was showing the presser, and then promptly left the ballpark.

He ended up at some club in Hollywood—who cared that it was a 45-minute drive, he wasn't the driver—and that's where they met. In hindsight, it was a disaster from the get-go, though he'd eventually come to terms with the fact that he was the only one of the two of them to understand that much.

Samira Cole wasn't yet the latest Hollywood it-girl—that happened about a year later when the project she was out celebrating went to theaters. But in any case, she was out celebrating the wrap on next summer's big-budget blockbuster action movie. She sent three snotty wannabes to invite Jase over to their table before she finally realized, she told him later, that if she wanted something done right, she'd have to do it herself.

By that point in the night, she was pretty drunk, and well, Jase was nearly always drunk that year, so when she finally came over to him, standing at the bar with the rest of the Angels infield, he knew right away he'd be going home with her. He didn't really care who she was. All he could see was how insanely hot she was, and in a very non-Ace Love way.

Samira had long, wavy blond hair and skin like a porcelain doll. Her eyes were steel blue, almost gray. She was loud, and brash, and pretended like she didn't give a fuck about anything, but it was painfully obvious that she gave a fuck about literally almost everything. Jase eventually came to find it endearing. Although that night, he didn't know any of this yet. All he could see was how insanely hot she was.