1
TANNER
The apartment door clicked shut behind Seth, and about thirty seconds passed before the silence became unbearable.
I grabbed my controller off the coffee table and shoved the noise-canceling headphones over my ears. The gaming laptop was already open, logged in, and waiting for me to disappear into something that had nothing to do with Saturday afternoons in Alabama.
“Hey Tanner, you sure you don’t want to come to the game?” Seth had asked at breakfast, standing in the kitchen doorway in his Gray Wolves warm-up gear. His duffel bag sat by the door, cleats tied to the outside strap the way every football player did. Like some kind of uniform code I’d never understood.
I’d kept my eyes on my screen. “I’ve got lab work.”
“On a Saturday?”
“Deadlines don’t care what day it is.”
He’d hesitated in a way I was still getting used to. We’d been roommates since the end of summer, long enough to figure outwhose shelf was whose in the fridge, but not long enough for me to predict what he’d do next.
“All right,” he’d said finally. “See you tonight.”
That had been enough. Seth didn’t push. Didn’t try to convince me or drag me into something I’d made clear I couldn’t handle. He just nodded and left.
Now the apartment felt too big and too quiet despite the headphones pumping game audio directly into my skull. I loaded into a match, fingers moving through familiar patterns on the controller. Muscle memory took over. Aim. Shoot. Reload. Move. The commentary in my ears was British, enthusiastic, and completely unrelated to anything happening three miles away at Magnolia State’s stadium.
I made it through two matches before my phone vibrated on the table beside me.
Hunter
You watching?
I didn’t answer. Stupid questions didn’t deserve answers.
Another buzz.
Tell me you’re at least listening on the radio.
Of all people, Hunter should’ve been the one who understood why watching football was the last thing I’d do with my weekends. And listening…? That was even worse because you had to imagine everything the commentators described. Hunter and I had been friends since we were little. Our dads had been teammates. His dad had been there for mine almost to the very end.
Heknewwhat football had taken from me.
I turned the volume up and started another match.
The thing about noise-canceling headphones was that they worked. Really worked. The world outside disappeared into whatever you piped directly into your brain, and right now, that world was a post-apocalyptic wasteland where my biggest concern was whether I had enough ammunition to clear the next checkpoint.
No stadiums. No crowds. No commentary about plays and tackles and hits that made announcers’ voices go sharp with excitement.
No wondering if one of those hits would be the one that lit a fuse that couldn’t be extinguished.
I lost track of time somewhere around match six. Lost myself in the rhythm of it, the way the rest of the world narrowed to the screen in front of me and the sound in my ears. This was good. This was manageable. This was a Saturday afternoon that had nothing to do with the sport that killed my father. I needed to get to the lab and run another set of tests, but it’d been too damned long since I’d been able to immerse myself in the game. I didn’t even feel bad about slacking.
My phone lit up again, and this time I grabbed it without thinking.
Hunter
Landry just took another nasty hit. Walked it off, but he looked shaky.
My stomach dropped through the floor.
I stared at the message, controller forgotten in my other hand. My character died on screen. The game suggested I respawn. I couldn’t move.
