Friday before playoffs.
Tile floors slick with Gatorade and ego. Tanner kicking the locker room door like he owns the place.
He had a note in his hand—folded twice, blue-lined paper, the crease worn from someone worrying it.Herhandwriting, even then, was soft around the edges.
He read it out loud with a grin he didn’t earn.
Good luck in the big game. I’ll be in the stands cheering for you. Stay gold, C. -B.
The laughter came fast. Too fast. A pack of boys who didn’t know what to do with sincerity except kill it. Tanner tacked the note dead center on the board like it was a joke. And I…
God help me, I laughed too. Not because it was funny. Because I was seventeen and stupid and thought approval was oxygen.
She didn’t come to the game.
Or the next.
And I learned the cost of choosing an audience over a girl who meant every quiet thing she wrote.
“Wright,” Marcus says softly.
I blink hard, the barn rushing back around me—hay dust, oil, the steady drag of breath.
“You here?”
I clear my throat. “Yeah.”
Too fast to be believable.
We finish in silence that isn’t empty. He claps my back at the door. “Rest this afternoon,” he says. “And by rest, I mean do nothing spectacular.”
“No heroics,” I say.
“Not with your shoulder,” he says, then grins like a man who knows a loophole when he writes one.
The house is empty when I go in. Mom’s left a note on the counter—Market run. Lila says hydrate. Don’t glower too much.I pour more coffee against my better judgment, and last night unfurls again like rope from a neat coil. Her hands. Her voice on the words we read out loud. The way she said “not yet” didn’t feel like a denial. It felt like scaffolding. It felt like an adult thing—built, checked, trusted.
Sitting still is a crime, so I take my show on the road. The coffee shop bell jingles, and the place fills with espresso and milk and the kind of jazz that cleans the corners of rooms. Kelly looks over the espresso machine like a cat at a terrarium. “He lives,” she says. “You want your usual or something seasonal and humiliating?”
“Just coffee. Strong enough to make my regrets apologize.”
“Got a new roast calledPoor Choices at Dusk.”
“Perfect.”
She sets the order in motion, a shoulder/hip rhythm people get when they do a thing they understand. I breathe through my nose and practice not checking the door every four seconds. I make it to seven. The bell rings. The universe has a sense of humor.
Bailey walks in like she paid the light bill and the day’s grateful. High bun, sweater sliding off one shoulder. There’s an ink smudge on her thumb. I want to kiss it off. Jesus. Get a grip.
She sees me. There’s the microsecond of flinching—the muscle memory we both have—then the half smile that meansI’m choosing thisanddon’t make me regret it. “Morning,” she says, stepping into my entire nervous system.
“Morning,” I manage. “You forgot to bring the marshmallow man. I was going to fight him.”
“He’s in HR training,” she says. “Workplace boundaries and such.”
“You ruin everything.”
“Only mascots and men who deserve it.” Her mouth curves like a threat softened by fondness. “What are you doing today besides pretending your shoulder is fine?”
