That was true. My human performance major focused on athletic training and injury prevention, and Tanner’s biomedical engineering work on protective equipment was basically the other side of the same coin. We’d figured that out three weeks into living together, bent over our respective laptops at the kitchen counter, and I’d made some comment about concussion protocols that had made Tanner’s head snap up.
We’d been circling each other’s coursework ever since.
“Okay,” Tanner said. “Yeah. I could use another set of eyes on the data.”
His small smile gutted me. That was the problem with living with Tanner McBride—he barely smiled, so when he did, it felt like winning something I hadn’t known I was competing for.
We took our coffee to the living room. Tanner grabbed his laptop from where he’d abandoned it last night, and I settled on the couch, close enough that I could see his screen. He pulled up spreadsheets covered in numbers I was slowly learning to read.
“These are the force measurements from yesterday’s tests,” he explained, fingers moving across the trackpad. “This column is the baseline—standard padding configuration. These three are my prototype variations.”
I leaned closer. The numbers meant something to him, told a story I was only beginning to understand. “The third variation performed best?”
“By six percent. It’s not enough.”
He’d said as much last night. I disagreed with his assessment. Six percent wasn’t the minuscule improvement he made it out to be. “It’s progress.”
“Progress doesn’t prevent anything.” His voice went flat, hollow in that specific way it got when he was thinking about things he couldn’t change. “Six percent is a statistical footnote. It’s not going to show up on anyone’s injury report as the thing that made a difference.”
Again, he was wrong, but with where he was coming from, I wasn’t sure anything less than a complete reduction would satisfy him.
I didn’t touch him. Wanted to, but Tanner flinched away from comfort when he was in this headspace. Instead, I said, “Yourdad played before we knew half of what we know now. Before anyone was designing equipment with the specific goal of preventing cumulative trauma.”
“And in twenty years, someone will say the same thing about the equipment players use now.”
“Probably. But that doesn’t mean your work isn’t valuable.”
Tanner’s hands stilled on the keyboard. After a long moment, he nodded once and went back to his data.
We worked in silence for the next hour. Tanner walked me through his testing methodology, and I asked questions about material properties and impact angles. Some of it connected to the biomechanics coursework I’d taken last semester—the way force transferred through the body, the threshold where tissue damage began.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table, the screen lighting up with my father’s name. Another call. I kept my eyes on Tanner’s laptop.
Tanner’s gaze flicked to the phone, then back to me. “You going to answer that?”
“Don’t want to.”
“Family?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded once and turned back to his spreadsheet. That was one of the things I appreciated about Tanner—he understood boundaries, respected when someone didn’t want to talk about something. God knew I’d given him plenty of space around the subject of his father.
The phone went silent. Thirty seconds later, it started buzzing again, skittering half an inch across the glass tabletop.
“Persistent,” Tanner said, not looking up.
“They usually are.” I reached over and grabbed the phone, holding down the side button until the screen went dark. “They’ll give up eventually.”
“Will they?”
I met his eyes. He’d set his coffee down, both hands wrapped around the mug like he needed something to hold on to. His gaze moved across my face the way it moved across data points—careful, cataloging.
“My family doesn’t like that I play football.” The words came out before I could stop them. I leaned back against the couch cushions, putting distance between myself and the dead phone. “They think it’s a waste of time. Think I should be doing something more respectable.”
Tanner’s eyebrows drew together. “More respectable than being a college athlete? Your athleticism got you a full-ride scholarship at a great school. They should be over the moon.”
“Their words, not mine. They’ve never been to a game. Not one. They probably heard about yesterday’s hit, and now they want to lecture me about quitting.”
