"So I started going back to the gym," his dad announced, pulling him back to the present. "You know, just to move. Doc says it's the cartilage. Knees are shot, can't really play ball anymore. Getting old, you know?"
Adriel made a soft sound in his throat.
"But you still can," he continued, and Adriel could hear the faint good-natured laugh in his voice, the one that pretended it was all just harmless observation. "Hell, you're young. It'd help. Clear your head. Get the blood pumping." A pause. "Help you feel better about yourself."
Help you feel better about yourself.
"Yeah," he said.
His father kept talking. Stories about old teammates, glory days under Friday night lights, weekend pick-up games with the guys. Each anecdote a brick in a wall, building the silhouette of a son who should be out there, sweating, striving, improving.
"You could come play sometime," his dad added, tone light, almost offhand. "The guys wouldn't mind. Be good for you. Get you out of the house."
Adriel pictured it. The sharp smell of a gym. The echoing slam of a ball. The sidelong glances. His father's friends.
"Maybe," he breathed. A lie.
There was a pause on the other end. It stretched two seconds, three.
"I'll think about it," Adriel added, his voice dropping to a whisper.
His dad laughed. "Alright, alright. No pressure. I'm just trying to help, kiddo."
The call ended with a casualtalk soon.
Adriel lowered the phone slowly onto his chest, over his still-tight heart. He stared at the water stain. The silence had a physical weight, pressing down on his sternum, making each breath a shallow, effortful thing.
His eyes burned. He blinked rapidly, refusing to let the heat spill over.
A man like Landen Waters did not look at a man like Adriel Alvarez and mean it. Whatever he thought he'd seen in that stairwell; it was nothing. A narrow space and bad lighting and his own imagination, which had always been the most destructive thing about him.
The tears came before he'd finished the thought. Slow, humiliating, unstoppable.
∞∞∞
Time became a sticky, indistinct thing.
The light bled into deeper blue, shadows pooling in the corners of the room. The phone was a dead weight on his chest. The tears had carved their cool, itchy tracks down his temples and into his hairline. Every muscle locked in a futile effort to hold himself together.
The door opened without a knock.
Jenna stood in the frame, backlit by the hallway light. She took him in and her expression did the thing it always did; the brief flicker of something sharp and pained, gone almost instantly.
"Your dad," she said. Not a question.
Adriel didn't answer.
She crossed the space and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped with her weight, her shoulder coming to rest a whisper away from his.
"What did he say this time?"
Jenna waited, watching the tight line of his jaw, the way his throat worked as he swallowed. "Was it the gym again?"
A pause. Then a single, almost imperceptible dip of his chin.
She exhaled. "Adriel." His name, a plea and a reprimand in equal measure. "You can't keep letting them do this to you."
His eyes welled over. He blinked hard, a futile defense, and a fresh wave of tears spilled free, tracing the old paths down his skin.
