Colten’s sleeping face reveals nothing.
Whatever. It’s fine.
I text Julian to let him know Colten’s passed out in his room and head home after saying my goodbyes.
Despite feeling keyed up, I don't really want to stay at the party anymore. I briefly consider hopping the fence to run a few laps or work through some drills, but quickly decide against it.
Running in the dark seems like a great way to reinjure myself. Maybe if I could control the glow, it'd be worth the risk, but it's not like Colten's about to tell me how.
My mind flashes back to us glowing in the bathroom. I scrub a hand over my face, frustrated, and shove it aside. It’sfine.
I still have no idea what set it off, and I'm feeling too much to think it through right now.
The walk home helps. The cold air clears most of the alcohol from my head, but it does nothing against the restless energy simmering beneath my skin.
When I get to the apartment, the quiet hits me immediately. Despite Colten avoiding me in his room all week, without him, the place feels empty.
Rolling my shoulders back, I try to ignore it and grab a beer from the fridge. I take a long sip, the chill pouring down my throat as I consider what to do next.
I could go back out, text some of the guys, maybe see if there are any girls I could interest at the bar.
A nice date with a nice girl would be good right now.
But that still doesn’t seem like enough. There’s some laundry I could do, a whole basket of dirty, grass-stained clothes sitting in the living room where I left it earlier, planning to do it after my PT sessions with Colten.
But the apartment is empty, which is rare. I could be as loud as I want, watching my reality TV shows or even something a lot hotter—
My brain suddenly supplies the memory of Colten’s hand gripping the back of my neck, tight and in control.
I cough on my beer.
What the heck?That was weird.
I set the bottle down and run both hands through my hair as a shiver goes down my back.
“Focus,” I tell myself. The evaluation is in less than a week, and Coach doesn’t go easy on anyone, not even the scholarship students.
I don’t have time to waste right now. Colten asking me if I really want to go pro was a good reminder of what my focus should be.
I exhale slowly and decide to be responsible.
Plopping myself on the living room couch, I turn on the TV and hook it up to my laptop so I can review footage on the website Coach uploads all of it to. The dirty laundry can wait.
I pull up the last game I played before I injured myself during practice in my junior year. Coach already put up a playlist of clips with his performance analysis of it, but I ignore it, deciding to watch the full game this time.
The screen flickers to life, and there I am, number 14.
“Okay,” I murmur, leaning forward and taking another swig of my beer.
My first touch on the ball is decent, but my body angle is off when I receive the pass. I should’ve opened my hips more to get better traction.
Instead, I hesitate half a second, which gives their center back time to close the gap. I’ve already reviewed the notes Coach had about that, but I once again work through the movement in my mind to make sure that hesitation doesn't happen again.
I take another sip of beer, watching and rewinding and judging every tiny decision and movement I make on the field.
I did this countless times during my injury with every clip of my plays that I could get my hands on. It was the only real practice I could get to mentally prepare myself for diving right back into it.
"You're going to burn yourself out before you even get back on the field," Colten had told me after several days of obsessing over one of the clips. Still, he would sit down and watch it with me until I finally fell asleep.
