He shrugs, but his eyes flicker with something I can’t name. “Practice is six days a week, sometimes seven if we’ve got a big game. Morning lifts, evening drills, film review, meetings. Games twice a week. Classes squeezed between.”
I let out a low whistle. “When do you breathe?”
He huffs a laugh, small but real. “Not often.”
I lean back, sip my coffee, and let the realization hit: He’s this busy, this suffocated by schedules, and yet he just agreed to meet me on Sunday.
Not a teammate, not a sponsor, not a family member.
Me.
I tuck that away like a treasure.
“What about you?” he asks, surprising me. “Your job. My teammates said you work at the coffee place by campus.”
“Wow,” I say. “Word gets around. I’m a legend.”
He smirks, faint but there. “They like your band flyers.”
That earns a laugh out of me. “Yeah, that’s me. Coffee-slinger by day, bassist by night. Glamorous life.”
“Why bass, though? You can clearly play guitar.” He nods toward the music shop.
“I started on guitar, yeah. But the band needed a bassist, so I stepped up. Somebody’s gotta be the anchor. Thing is, I’m also the one with the mic, so I get the spotlight anyway. But the bass? That’s the glue. Without it, the whole thing falls apart.”
Ollie smirks, and fuck if I don’t feel like I’ve won the lotto. “So you get to be the backboneandthe center of attention? Figures. Fits your ego.”
The words should sting, but his tone is soft, almost warm, and I can’t help grinning. “Takes one to know one, Captain. You’ve got the spotlight too—whole team depending on you, whole campus watching.”
His smirk falters. He goes quiet for a beat too long, eyes fixed on the swirl of foam in his cappuccino. When he speaks, his voice is lower, almost like he’s not sure he means to say it aloud.
“It’s different,” he says. “When I’m on the court, everyone’s waiting for me to hold it together. Doesn’t matter if I’m tired, or off, or… whatever. I can’t crack. Not once. Not in front of them.”
He exhales hard, like he’s regretting sharing so much, but his words are already out. His shoulders hitch, then settle. “It’s like—if I stumble, they all stumble. And sometimes it feels like I’m not allowed to be human.”
I blink at him, surprised he even gave me that much. He looks surprised, too, like the confession slipped past his defenses before he could stop it. His jaw tightens, eyes flicking to me like he’s waiting for me to laugh or poke.
But I don’t. I lean forward, elbows on the scarred table, voice even. “Sounds like you know exactly what it feels like to be the bass.”
That earns me a startled glance, then a quick huff of air that might be a laugh, or maybe just relief. The tension in his shoulders eases, just a fraction, like admitting it out loud hasn’t broken him the way he thought it might.
For a moment, we just sit together, the hum of the café wrapping around us. Then his eyes lift again, sharper now, as if he’s turning the words over. His brows knit, his focus locked on me in a way that makes the room feel smaller.
“You make it sound bigger than just four strings.”
“That’s because it is.” I shrug casually, but there’s pride in the words. “Bass is heartbeat. Pulse. Without it, the song has no spine.”
I don’t say it out loud, but I think it:He’s the same.The bassline of his team. The one who steadies everyone else, who carries the weight even if no one outside the court sees it. They only notice when he falters, which he won’t let himself do.
No wonder he understood what I meant.
Something shifts in his expression then—like he’s weighing the comparison, maybe even recognizing a piece of himself in it. His cheeks pinken again, and I can’t stop the grin that tugs at my mouth.
We fall into a rhythm, questions traded like a game of catch. He asks about my family; I tell him about my parents, immigrants who worked their asses off so I could even be here, and my little sister who’s sixteen and thinks I’m either the coolest guy alive or a total embarrassment, depending on the day.
“She sounds like mine,” he says quietly.
“You’ve got a little sister too?”
