by Lainey Davis
The dickhead Justin isn’t in this morning, thank god. The girl Olive knows—Julia I think—has me strip to my shorts in the training room and start out with a deep tissue massage, which is fine by me after a game like yesterday. I’m in my own world, hooked up to the stim, when I feel someone slap my ass.
“Hunh?” I turn over to see Kevan grinning, hopping up on the table next to mine.
“How’s the shoulder, dude?”
I grunt in response. He recounts the finer points of our victory yesterday while getting his own massage and I try to pay attention. Kevan isn’t that bad a guy, now that I realize he’s not trying to get in Olive’s pants. “You had a good game at QB, dude,” I tell him.
But then I turn my attention back to my massage and I sort of drift off on the table until I feel him kick my leg.
“What?”
“I said I wanted to ask you a favor. You got a minute?”
I sit up, realizing I’m all done, massage over. Free to go. That was one hell of a treatment session. “Yeah,” I say, grabbing my shirt. “I guess I do.”
He follows me outside and then that fucker asks me on a date.
“Wait, what?”
“I asked if you’d go with me to the banquet next week. Just as friends.”
“You want me to be your date to the athletic association donor’s banquet?”
He shrugs. “Were you going to take someone else?”
I blink at him for a minute. “I usually bring Olive with me to that.” It’s nice seeing her dressed up a little, showing her off. I flush, feeling guilty that I always leave with another girl for dirty sex I never remember after. I’m a pretty terrible date, actually. Why does Olive agree to go with me?
Kevan draws back, looking smug. “Way I hear it, Olive’s already going with someone else.”
I feel my face twist in confusion. What the hell is this guy even talking about? She would have mentioned it if she had a date to the banquet…hell, she’s fucking asleep right now in my god damn bed. It’s been like an hour since I saw her last. I drag my hands down my face. I’ve got to go find her. We already had a lot to talk about, and now this. “I gotta go, Kev.”
“Let me know about the banquet, ok?”
I shoot him a thumb’s up as I walk back toward my suite, where I hope like hell Olive is still in my bed waiting for me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Olive
I ALWAYS THOUGHT I’d feel elated if I ever kissed Baxter, ever heard him express feelings that matched my own. When I wake up in his bed, alone, I just feel empty.
Drugged out of his gourd, he told me the words my soul longed to hear. By the light of day, he’s back to his solitary focus in life: football. He can’t take time to linger in bed with me, even with an injury. He doesn’t even remember what happened last night—just knows that he’s hurt and needs to get to the training room so he can be in shape to play by next game.
He needs to stay focused to make his dreams come true. Neither of us has the time or spare energy to create a relationship. I know this, and this morning, I feel it more than ever.
I slip out of his suite, careful not to wake his roommates, and head home for a quick shower before I’m supposed to be in the training room for the end of morning swim practice.
I don’t even have time to process all this or share with Tia and Elyse to get their take. I decide I’ll visit them later to see what they think, even though I know they both really think my sole focus this year should be having sex with Baxter to see how it shakes out.
Emily is in the training room when I arrive, bending one of the swimmers practically in half as she stretches out his long arms. She smiles as I check the roster.
Soon enough, Tim lumbers into the room, all lanky muscles and hairless limbs. “How’s the back?”
He grins. “So much better,” he says, stretching his arms above his head. “You’ve been an awesome help.”
“Well, that’s why they pay me the big bucks,” I say, laughing and patting the table. I get started stretching out his legs first, helping him to use the foam roller on his hamstrings.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” he says, looking at me from underneath his arm.
“What’s up?”
“Would you want to go with me to the banquet next week? You know, the donor banquet?”
I freeze.
Tim is asking me on a date? I’m always Baxter’s date to the banquet. I sit with him during the dinner, smile at his side while he talks to the rich people supporting the athletic programs, and then watch from the sidelines while he leaves with a gymnast or a volleyball player.
He always makes sure one of his roommates walks me home…but the evening is generally a mixture of humiliation and sweet torture.
I’m close to Baxter, in public, but I’m not the one taking him home at the end of the night.
All the same, I usually go with Bax, and I know he’s probably expecting that I will this year. Though he hasn’t asked me yet… What would he think if I agreed to go with Tim?
Bax could just as easily take one of his fangirls and save himself having to find me a chaperone later.
Would it be fun to go to the banquet with someone actually excited to be there with me? Maybe Tim and I can have fun there together as friends. I shift my weight around, realizing I need to respond to Tim in some way or he’ll think I’m being rude.
“Just as friends?” He asks, raising a brow hopefully at me.
“You don’t have friends from the team who are dying to go with you?” I tease, stalling. But Tim shakes his head and explains that most people on the swim team are already paired off. He looks around the room—we’re the only ones still in here apart from Emily and the other trainer. “The person I really want to be my date…I can’t ask.”
Well, I certainly know how that feels.
“Ok,” I tell him. “Just as friends. Maybe we should grab a coffee now that your back is loose. I don’t really know much about you other than you have tight hamstrings!”
Tim laughs and asks me to wait for him while he changes in the locker room. I see him pull out his phone to fire off a text, and I smile, excited that someone is so excited to go on a date with me.
I wander over to Emily. “You hear any of that?”
She rolls her eyes. “Please. You know I know all the dirt about all these kids. I know exactly who is sleeping with whom on the swim team, soccer team, and lacrosse team thanks to my knee research.”
“What did Tim mean about not being able to ask the person he really wants to ask to the banquet?”
Emily doesn’t answer right away. She studies my face for a minute and sighs. “That’s not my story to tell,” she says. “Go on and get coffee. I’ll see you back here tomorrow before they all hit the weight room.”
I give her a fist bump and meet Tim outside. As we walk to the coffee shop, he tells me a bit more about his plans after graduation. He seems pretty set up to get a job right away in his field: finance. It shouldn’t surprise me that he has a whole 5-year plan mapped out. Work, MBA, promotion. All the athletes at SCU have to be disciplined and organized or they wouldn’t be competing at this level. It makes sense that this carries over to other aspects of Tim’s life.
“You don’t want to continue your swimming career,” I ask. I’m not used to this perspective, since all I’ve ever heard about from Bax is how football is his means to a different end.
Tim shakes his head. “There’s no future in swimming unless you’re heading to the Olympics or something. I mean, I’ll probably always swim to keep in shape.” We get to the front of the line and Tim orders his coffee black.
“Oh my god, how can you drink it that way?” I pour in 2 sugar packets and enough skim that my drink is more like coffee-flavored milk.
He shrugs. “Our nutritionist would spit fire if I started adding sugar to anything.” I say a silent prayer of thanks again that my college funding isn’t attached to anything I’m doing with my phys
ical body.
“Thankfully I can still stretch out an athlete without a balanced diet.” I get quiet then, thinking about how often I had to fend for myself at home, making boxed rice or canned pasta for meals. Anything I could get from the corner store with the change I’d pull from my dad’s pockets. He and mom never seemed to get around to making grocery trips more than once a month, and they both seemed to drink all their meals. Coffee with all the sugar and milk I wanted—that was always available. My parents drank it strong to get through work each day.
I smile at Tim, trying to pound back those unwelcome memories. “So tell me who you’d rather ask to the banquet.”
Tim flushes. He fiddles with his coffee cup. “My family wouldn’t approve,” he says, shaking his head. “That’s putting it mildly.”
Sensing there’s more to the story, I try to get Tim to open up by confessing one of my own secrets. “My family doesn’t approve of anything, anyone, and most especially me being at college.” I tell him about the last fight to end all fights—when I needed them to sign the financial aid paperwork after I’d been accepted on a full scholarship to SCU. All that stood in my way was one of their signatures, even though I was 18. That first year, I needed them to sign off because I was still their dependent, for tax purposes.
Growing up, my parents never noticed that I was quietly excelling in math and science, with special interests in biology. I took all the life sciences classes my high school had to offer and, thanks to Baxter, got to shadow the athletic trainers who worked with the football team. Everything clicked when I started reading medical journals about sports injuries, about treating injuries and healing bodies.
But my parents never understood that world. Their world was limited to physical labor, menial work for low pay. They weren’t expecting to have kids, and I threw a wrench in their gears they never quite seemed to dislodge.
Tim looks on in shock as I tell him how my parents cut me off for heading a different direction from them.
“I guess they thought I’d either get into the factory with dad or get a job answering phones like my mom. I don’t know.” They eventually signed the papers, with the understanding that if I turned away from their roof to chase these high-falutin’ dreams, I shouldn’t bother coming back.
“And I haven’t. Gone back, that is.”
Tim looks horrified. “I can’t imagine my life without my family in it,” he says. “They are everything to me.”
“Well, it sounds like you have imagined it, and it’s not something you’re willing to let happen.” I pat his hand. “If they don’t know how amazing you are, they’re really missing out.”
He snorts. “Oh, they think I’m amazing. But only because they have no idea who I’d—” He pauses. He picks at the rim of his coffee cup, unfurling the waxed cardboard. He leans close and whispers, “They don’t know I’m gay.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Bax
OLIVE ISN’T ANSWERING her phone, and when I try to stop by her place later, she’s not even home. I hate that she’s been moved to another sport for her training room rotations, because now our schedules don’t line up at all. Even though I’m on injured reserve, I still have to be at practice, watch game tape, do what I can in the weight room, plus now spend my last free hour of the day getting treatment for my shoulder. I’m getting pretty sick and tired of my schedule not being my own, but I guess that’s the life I’m signing up for if I want this for my career.
I storm into the athletes’ dining hall and of course, the only seat left is next to Kevan. Fucking QB transfer wants to talk my ear off as usual. “What,” I say to him. “No potato chips today?”
He shakes his head. “That’s only for game nights. Helps me focus. So are you in for the banquet?”
I throw my hands in the air, which tweaks my shoulder and makes me groan. “Fuck, man. Fine. Whatever. I’m not getting you flowers.”
“Wouldn’t want you to.”
I raise a brow at him. “What do you know about Olive going to the banquet with some other guy?”
This makes him grin. He points his fork at me. “I’ll tell you if you fess up about why it matters.”
“I told you. Olive’s like family. She’s all I’ve got.”
Kevan twirls the fork. “You know, a lot of romantic shit goes down at these banquets. So I hear, anyway. Hope Olive can handle it.”
I tug at my hair with both hands, trying to calm down. I know that he’s just trying to get under my skin. But it’s been a long week.
He takes a swig of his protein shake and looks at me. “Why won’t you just say you want to fuck her, man? It’s obvious you want to bang the shit out of Olive Hampton. You want to pound her—”
My fist shoots out into his face before I can even control my arm. “Fuck!” I scream as the impact jars my injured shoulder. “Just shut your fucking mouth, Kevan. Jesus. Shut up.”
The cafeteria is silent as everyone stares at us. Kevan pats my face playfully and punches my good shoulder as he works his jaw open and shut. “We’re just screwing around, guys. It’s fine,” he says. Everyone else goes back to their meals. “So,” he says, grinning. “I’m just going to go ahead and assume I’m right.”
“It’s not like that, man. I fucking love her.” The words fall out of my mouth before I can stop to think about it. Before the conscious part of my brain can yell at me to shut up and ignore that impossible scenario. “I fucking love her.”
Kevan leans back in his chair, munching on a chicken breast. “So what’s the big deal, then? Go marry her and put giant babies inside her.”
I shake my head. “I can’t do that. I can’t risk our friendship. When I say she’s all I have, man…she’s it. I don’t have a family. I don’t have parents who support me no matter what.” Kevan’s social media profile is full of pictures of him with his parents all decked out in Pride shirts.
I looked him up online. He’s right—I had to be an asshole not to notice he’s gay.
I meet his eye. “If—no, when. When I mess shit up with Olive, romantically, then I won’t have her as a friend anymore. You have seen first hand that I’m a dick. I don’t do relationships, I don’t know how to be with women. And I’m not going to risk turning Olive away. I can’t risk that. I need her.”
He raises a brow at me. “How do you know you’ll fuck it up? You seem ok. I mean, yes. You’re an asshole, but the team likes you.”
I scoff at him. “Trust me,” I tell him. “I’ll fuck it up.” All I’ve ever heard my entire life is what a piece of garbage I am. My father’s favorite line is that I couldn’t convince my own mother to stick around once her preferred kid died. “It’s better this way.”
Kevan chews the rest of his carrots and takes a long drink of his shake. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stares at me. “You’d rather go on a friend-date with your gay substitute quarterback than tell Olive you love her?”
I open my mouth to tell him he’s an idiot and hasn’t listened to anything I said. But he keeps going. “You can’t even sit and imagine what it would look like if things turned out your way? You’re right—I have no idea what your family situation is, man. My family is fucking amazing. They’re coming over today just to hang out. But listen.”
He stands up and throws a crumpled napkin onto my plate. I swat it away and look up at him. “She’s not all you’ve got, ok? You’ve got me.” He gestures his elbow toward my roommates, who are currently arguing over an issue of Car and Driver. “And you’ve got those assholes, too. We’re not going anywhere, even if you’re a sulky prick.”
And then he walks out of the cafeteria before I can come up with something snarky to say back to him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Olive
I’M AVOIDING BAX. And I know he knows it. I’m not done figuring out how I should respond to what happened after his game. The feelings he drummed up when he told me he loved me, when he kissed me…I know he wasn’t conscious, but I haven’t been able to le
t go of my racing heart, of my throbbing ache of need.
And, frankly, Tim needs me right now. His confession to me in the coffee shop opened a floodgate for him, and he and I spent hours together talking about his fears that his family will reject him, shun him forever.
Where my parents’ rejection stung, it wasn’t unexpected or even unwelcome. It’s not like I had a warm and loving embrace to miss now that I have no relationship with them at all. Tim has nieces and nephews and siblings, and he’s absolutely convinced they will reject him if they find out the truth.
Baxter is going to lose his damn mind when he finds out I’m going to the banquet with Tim. Bax has always been so protective…I’m not sure if he knows, but his intimidation of every guy in a 20-mile radius meant that I have basically zero experience with guys. A few fumbled kisses at parties. A few stolen dances in dark frat basements where I awkwardly ground against some stranger’s hips.
That prolonged kiss with Bax the other night was far and away the most action I’ve had. And one thing became crystal clear: I need more. If I don’t get some physical stimulation with a guy, I’m going to combust.
So rather than deal with any of the crap going on with me and Bax, I dive into my work in the training room, utterly ignore my best friend, try to console my newest friend…and grow increasingly sexually frustrated.
Tia and Elyse are, of course, insisting I try to seduce Bax. I sort of snapped at them the last time I saw them, so when I rap on their door later, I try to smooth things over so they’ll help me make a plan.
“Hey,” I say. I’ve come bearing peace offerings from the training room. “Anyone want any SCU gear? It’s the good stuff.” I hold out a box full of extra team polos and the coveted gray SCU sweatpants all the athletes wear. My neighbors gasp and urge me into the room.
“How’d you get all this stuff,” asks Tia.
I remind her and Elyse that I work in the training room “This is a perk, I guess!”
