He leans over my notebook ten minutes later and circles the right answer with my own pen. “You’re overthinking it.”
And because hope is a vicious little animal, I let myself believe maybe the old wound doesn’t matter as much as the new thing growing right in front of him.
The postgame dinner is what really gets me.
He texted after a home win:Still awake?
I answered:Unfortunately.
Come outside.
When I get there he’s at the bottom of my dorm steps in sweats and a black jacket, hair still damp from the shower, duffel over one shoulder, looking tired in the way only athletes look good tired.
“You cannot keep appearing outside my dorm like this.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m developing expectations.”
That gets me a real look. Dark and still and too interested.
“Dangerous,” he says.
“Very.”
He lifts a finger, “Burgers.”
I stare. “You won and your celebration choice was ground beef?”
“Fries too.”
Twenty minutes later we’re in a diner off El Camino with sticky booths and bad lighting and milkshakes so thick they should count as architecture. No cameras. No legacy nonsense.Just Tristan across from me in a booth too small for his legs, postgame edge still in his body but softer now.
He watches me steal one of his fries. Then another.
“You always take mine.”
“You always order more than you need.”
“I’m six-four.”
“Tragic.”
He smiles around a bite of burger.
And there—in that stupid diner—is where it starts to feel less like a joke and more like a possibility.
Because he tells me things. Not everything. Never everything. But enough. About pressure. About Harvard. About transferring without using the word regret even though I can hear pieces of it. About how sometimes he misses the East Coast in ways that have nothing to do with weather.
I tell him about Texas. About pageants. About soccer camps in hundred-degree heat. About how men have been underestimating me based on lip gloss since middle school and how I’ve turned it into a hobby. How I hate that when guys look at me they see a pretty petite doll instead of a D 1 athlete. That’s why I rarely dated… I didn’t want to be some guy’s arm candy or prom date for points.
He frowns, then touches my wrist. “You need a guy who sees you, Texas.”
By the time we walk back out into midnight air and he puts his hand lightly at the center of my back to steer me around a puddle without thinking, I am gone enough to know I should be more careful.
Instead I let him walk me all the way back to the dorm.
At the steps he pauses. Looks at me. Then reaches up—and this time his hand does touch my face. Just the side of it. Knuckles grazing lightly under my cheekbone like he’s checking whether I’m real or just another late-night bad idea.
