My eyes continued to track her as she picked a machine and started to walk. She wore tight athletic pants and a tank top, and she looked incredibly hot showing off her body. Her hair was piled on top of her head, her curls going in every direction. She put in her air pods and started watching something on her phone. She hadn't even looked my way, hadn't even noticed I was here.
She looked healthy and like she was getting plenty of sleep. She didn’t look haggard or depressed like I did. I guess I should have been happy for her, but I was also a little hurt. Had our relationship meant so little to her?
"Rush," Wilder said, interrupting my thoughts. "You have to stop staring."
I turned to him. "Did you know she would be here?"
He and Slate exchanged a look.
I stood and threw my towel on the bench. "You guys are jerks." I shook my head. "I thought you really wanted to help me."
"And we do," Slate hurried to say. "We wanted you to get out of your apartment, but we also knew you needed to get the first sighting over with. And we wanted to be here with you since we figured it was going to be difficult."
Damn right it was difficult, especially since she looked fine.
"Well, the first sighting is over, and I'm outta here." I headed toward the exit with the two of them following close behind me.
Walking out into the brisk January air, I took a big breath. "She looks completely fine. She doesn't even look sad." I complained.
"She's just trying to move on," Wilder said in her defense.
Annoyance bubbled up inside me. "She definitely looks like she has."
Wilder sighed. "I probably shouldn't tell you this..." he paused.
"Don't, Wilder," Slate interrupted. "It won't help anything."
"She doesn't deserve him being mad at her, though," Wilder argued.
Slate shrugged. "Maybe him being mad at her will help him stay away from her."
"Tell me, Wilder," I demanded, needing to know what he was going to say.
Wilder looked between Slate and me, and eventually said, "Olivia's told me that on the nights she sleeps in the dorm, Scarlet's crying is loud enough to wake her up. I think she's cried every night since New Year's Eve."
Hearing him say that stopped me in my tracks. Picturing Scarlet crying every night felt like a knife in my chest. It was all my fault. If I had just stayed away from her, none of this would have happened. She wouldn't be hurting because of me, crying herself to sleep every night. Gosh, I was such a jerk. Coach was right. I had been selfish.
I looked back at the gym, wishing I could go to her, but I remained outside on the sidewalk. I wouldn't hurt her anymore. I'd let her continue to move on. It was the least I could do.
I shoved my hands in my pockets, put my head down, and walked out to Slate's car so he could take me home. I made sure to have him stop at a hardware store first so he could fix my door.
Today had ended up being a turning point for me. I needed to fix my sights on football again and work to make it back on the team. I was grateful that Slate and Wilder had helped me see that.
But the real thing I needed to do that I'd finally realized today was that I had to let Scarlet go. It wouldn’t be easy, but I cared enough about her that I'd do it because in the end it would be what was best for her.
* * *
Three weeks had flown by. I'd thrown myself into catching up on all the classwork I'd missed at the beginning of the semester, as well as keeping up with all the new assignments, and also hitting the gym as hard as I would be if I had been working out with the team.
My life had mostly gone back to normal, with school and hanging out with the guys as much as I used to. A big difference was I wasn't giving any girl the time of day. I tried to be polite about it, but sometimes they wouldn't get the hint, and being blunt was the only way to get them to leave me alone. I was still hung up on Scarlet and worried that I always would be. No other girl could hold my interest. Scarlet was whom I wanted, and if I couldn't have her, I didn’t want anyone. Maybe one day that would change, but in the last five weeks she was still the girl I dreamed about.
We hung out in similar circles, so I saw her often enough but did well at keeping my distance. Sometimes it would be too difficult to be so close to her and not go to her, that I'd choose to leave rather than risk the chance of hurting either of us further. I wasn't sure how she felt about me, but I guessed she still had some feelings by the way our eyes always caught one another's, holding each other's stare as if we were trying to speak a silent language, telling each other that we wished things were different and that we missed one another. Or maybe that was just on my end.
I'd assumed that with time my thoughts wouldn't turn to her as much, but then she filled my mind just as often as she did when we had been together. I'd think about how much she would have liked the show I was watching, or how she'd love the new pizza place I'd found, or how she would tease me now that I'd gotten into taking baths. She was everywhere, all-consuming in my thoughts.
Today I was meeting with Coach Matthews to talk about possibly rejoining the team. We hadn't spoken since the night of the New Year's Eve party, and I was glad he'd been willing to meet with me. I had hoped I'd proved in the last several weeks that I was ready to be with the team again.
I knocked on his door and waited until his gruff voice said to come in before entering his office. He sat behind his desk wearing his navy cap with the Waterford University logo in yellow and his navy Waterford polo, his usual attire. He wrote something down on a sticky note, not stopping to look up at me, but motioned for me to sit down in one of the seats in front of his desk.
