by Lainey Davis
Elyse pulls the sweatpants on over her pajama shorts. “These are so soft,” she says, cooing. “This is amazing of you to share.” She nods at the TV. “Wanna watch Outlander with us?”
I perch on the edge of Elyse’s bed and sigh with them as the attractive actors fight off their enemies. “Men in kilts, am I right?” Tia flops back against the bed. I nod in agreement, getting interested when the female lead begins treating a shirtless guy’s dislocated shoulder.
I’ve been studying dislocated shoulders for years. We see one or two each season with the football team…not really any with the swimmers. I’m suddenly super interested in this show, but Tia grabs the remote and fast forwards just as Claire is about to help the wounded guy. “Wait!” I yell. “I want to see her fix his shoulder.”
Elyse gags, and I explain my professional fascination with this injury. “OMG,” Tia says. “Better you than me. I’ll go to the bathroom so I don’t have to hear. Pause it after the gross part, ok?”
She and Elyse run off to the ladies room and I watch Claire fix Jamie’s arm, sighing at the thought of relieving someone’s pain with such skill, even as I cringe at her technique. When the girls get back, they tease me about my morbid fascination with injuries. I just shrug. But the time feels ripe to ask them for help.
“Hey,” I say timidly, fidgeting with their popcorn dish. “Can you help me pick an outfit for the banquet?”
They click off the TV and turn toward me, rapt. “Holy shit,” they say. “Are you finally going to bag Baxter Morgan?”
I flush. Seeing my face, Tia rolls her eyes. “Come on, Olive.”
“Like I said, Baxter and I are just friends,” I tell them. They start to respond, but I hold up a hand. “But I decided I agree with you. I need to get laid. I was thinking I could…entice someone Friday night at the banquet.”
Suddenly the room is a whirlwind of activity. Elyse is a business logistics major with an entire closet full of power suits. Tia agrees with her that, since I’m not one for skirts, I should rock a sexy suit on Friday. We spend the next 45 minutes practicing walking the dorm halls in spike heels until I feel confident I’m not going to tip over.
They both agree to help me with my hair and makeup on Friday, and when I finally go off toward my room, I feel energized and excited. I’m going out with a guy, and there’s no pressure because, well, he’s in love with someone else, too.
And, somewhere along the way, I’m going to find someone at that party and I’m going to have sex with him. I’m going to let all out the sexual frustration and it’s going to help me focus. I can tell.
High on the anticipation of the next few days, I don’t notice that my room is occupied until someone pulls me inside, slamming the door shut behind me.
“Where the hell have you been, Liv?” Baxter Morgan has apparently gotten sick of me avoiding him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bax
I KNOW IT’S not fair that I storm in and out of Olive’s life like this, but damn it, I need her this week. So much shit is going on. And I haven’t talked to her for days. I don’t think I’ve gone this long without seeing her in the whole time we’ve known each other.
“Liv,” I say, as she opens her mouth to scream. “It’s me! Where have you been?”
When she tells me she’s been across the hall watching television, I tug her over to the couch, and accidentally pull her onto my lap as I hit my head on the damn loft bed. “I don’t mean just today. I haven’t seen you since Sunday morning!”
I pull her tight into a hug, not knowing how much it was going to affect me to see her again after so long. I feel my heart racing and I realize what I’d most like to do is kiss her, and so I take a deep breath and ease her onto the couch next to me, leaning back to put some space between us before I cross a line.
“Bax,” she says, “It’s just been a long week.” She tells me how she feels bad she wasn’t able to be at my whole game, how she blames herself for me getting distracted and getting injured.
“Liv, no. This isn’t on you, babe. Don’t even think that.” I tell her my shoulder has been feeling great, that even though Justin is a total prick and I hate him, he’s taking good care of me. “I can start contact practice again if I pass a range of motion test in the morning.” I hold my arm out front like Frankenstein. “Look how good I’m getting.” I don’t tell her I will likely need another cortisone shot to get through the game this weekend. I can rest it in a few months. It’ll be fine.
She smiles and swats me with a pillow from the couch. “Hey,” she says, twirling some of that wheat-gold hair around her finger. “I need to tell you something.”
I’m pretty sure I know what this is, so I just wait for it and try to control my breathing. She’s going to tell me she’s going out with some other guy. Another athlete at this school.
I don’t want to be an angry neanderthal. I just can’t help it most of the time. She tells me how she’s going to the booster banquet with Tim from swimming, just as friends, and to my surprise I still feel sort of calm about it. “Ok,” I tell her. “I sort of knew that you were going. One of the other football guys knew.”
She furrows her brow. “That’s weird,” she says. “I didn’t tell anyone but Tia and Elyse…well, I guess the other trainers knew.” She crinkles her nose. “I don’t really like that they talk like that.”
I don’t tell her that Kevan knew, and I’m not sure how he did. “I didn’t know it was Tim, though. That’s the guy you’ve got your hands all over these days?” I’m teasing, sort of, but Olive cracks a smile.
“His hairless skin is so smooth,” she says, stroking my arm with her hand. My dick springs to attention faster than I can draw breath. “Not like your gritty, hairy flesh.” I close my eyes as she rubs my arm. I’m suddenly very close to coming in my pants. Thankfully, Olive stands up and rummages in her cupboard. She pulls out a granola bar and brings it over to me.
I take it from her, grateful for the distraction.
“Tim says they shave everything to cut back on drag in the water,” she says. “It makes him faster I guess.”
I take a huge bite of the granola bar, which makes her smile. “I’m sorry I went AWOL this week,” she says. “I won’t do that again.”
“Promise?” She nods. I take a risk and cup her cheek. God, she feels good. “I don’t like being away from you.”
She seems to melt into my hand, her eyes closed. “I don’t like it, either.” We sit that way for a few minutes. My arm gets tired holding up her head, but I’ve got my thumb stroking along her jaw and the scent of her shampoo filling my nostrils. I don’t want to move.
And then she yawns and I realize it’s getting really late. We both have to be up early. “You should get to bed,” I whisper. She nods and unstraps the ridiculous shoes she had on when I got in here.
“Wish you could stay here tonight,” she says. “We could cuddle up like bears and then get breakfast in the morning.”
There’s no fucking way I can fit up on that loft bed she’s got. “I’d break the ladder,” I tell her, shaking my head.
She pouts and groans, but I can see she’s really getting tired. “I’ll boost you up,” I say, “and I’ll turn out the lights before I leave.”
She nods with a sigh. I move to pick her up—but her eyes fly open. “Stop! Your arm!” I freeze where I am, with my hands on her hips, right in that curve where her waist gives way to the round fullness of her ass. And I just stand there, with my hands splayed across her backside.
The air between us feels electric and heavy, the like the sky before a thunderstorm. I feel my heart racing and can see my chest rising and falling as I breathe shallowly and rapidly. I have to get out of here. But I can’t leave her like this. I watch Olive swallow, see the pulse tick in her neck. I’m probably making her uncomfortable, standing in her space like this. I pull her close—just for a second—to plant a kiss on her forehead, and then I peel myself away from her.
“Good night,
Liv,” I whisper. I back toward the window as always, but as I see her confused face, I know that something has happened. Something has changed. Just like always, I’m sure it’s my own damn fault. I slip out of her window as she shuts off the light, and I walk home, trying to forget the warm feel of her body beneath my fingers.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Olive
“YOU’RE DISTRACTED TODAY,” Julia teases as I get the wires tangled on the TENS unit I’m trying to disinfect. Julia and Gabe got moved to volleyball and lacrosse. I guess Justin keeps shifting people around left and right these days, and all of us are sort of unsteady as we double check our protocols.
I can only nod. Julia’s right. My head has been swirling since Baxter left my room last night. These days, our physical contact doesn’t feel platonic. Not for me. I’m getting desperate.
Last night was not a training room massage or a pinpoint scan of his sore muscles. Baxter Morgan was strumming up heat inside of me with each swipe of his fingers. His hands pressed against my backside were pushing straight through my clothes, burning his mark upon my skin. At the thought of him marking me, I shudder. Julia notices.
“That’s some blush you’ve got there, Hampton.” I blush deeper and raise my hands to my hot cheeks.
“Let me see—is that maybe because of your hot date this weekend?”
I shake my head. “Tim and I are just going to the banquet as friends.”
“Is it like Gabe and I ‘just friends,’ or are you actually just friends with this one?” Julia stoops to put away a box of the plastic wrap we use to hold bags of ice in place on the athletes. “Cuz aren’t you ‘just friends’ with Baxter, too?”
I chew on the inside of my cheek and look around to make sure everyone else is gone. “Ok, you cannot tell anyone this,” I tell her. “I haven’t told anyone this.”
“Yes!” She claps her hands. “I am here for this. I am ready,” she says, hopping up on the table. She leans her elbows on her legs, chin in hands. “My lips are sealed.”
I explain that I’m planning to get laid at the banquet. Julia looks confused. “It’s just that…” I hesitate. This is really new territory for me, but I had a lot of success opening up to the girls across the hall. I take a deep breath. “I’m a virgin still. I’d like to not be anymore. I just want to find someone who would be decent about it, you know?”
Julia looks like she wants to say something, but holds back. “This isn’t where I thought this conversation was going,” she says. When I just look at her expectantly, she rolls her eyes. “I was sure you were going to ask me for advice finally jumping out of the friend zone with Baxter.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling the flush again. And here I go remembering his hips thrusting against me on his couch last week. “We’re just friends,” I whisper. “Truly.”
Julia sighs and reaches out to grab my hand. She gives me a reassuring squeeze. “Honey,” she says. “I’ve seen friends. I’ve seen family friends. And then I’ve seen Baxter Morgan look at you for years.”
I shake my head. She squeezes my hand harder. “This isn’t a risk for you, Olive. The man is in love with you. In. Love. Also lust. Fiery lust.”
“I just don’t think we can risk having something go wrong,” I tell her. She gestures for me to join her up on the table.
“Olive,” she says. “Has anything gone wrong in your lives since Baxter’s been in it?”
I recoil. “Um, basically everything,” I say, listing off his brother’s death, my parents basically kicking me out when I enrolled in college, his mother leaving. “Oh, his dad pretty much disowned him, too. He told him to never come back.”
Julia whistles through her teeth. “Those are some pretty fucked up circumstances. It sounds to me like your relationship has already survived a lot of hard shit…what makes you think you can’t weather some hot sex, too?”
I hadn’t considered things from this perspective before. “I have zero models for a healthy relationship in my life,” I tell her. “I don’t even know how to do that. And before you interrupt me, I don’t think Baxter and I have a healthy level of dependence.” I remind her how he comes over every night for my chicken nuggets and Mac n cheese. “I just wanted to see if having sex—with someone else!!—would help take the edge off.”
She laughs. “Oh, you’ve got an edge, girl.” She shrugs. “I just don’t know if sex with any old athlete is gonna scratch that itch.”
Saturday morning, I’m a mess of nerves. Tim is back to full strength and comes into the training room for one final treatment before his meet. I feel a swell of pride when the trainers make sure to include my name a number of times in the writeup in his file.
“Excited for tonight?” He smiles warmly as he shakes out his long arms. I nod. He gestures toward the stands. “My parents came into town for the meet,” he says. “They wanted to meet you after…”
“Oh,” I say, pausing. “Tim…I have to get to the football game after my shift. I’m so sorry.”
His face falls a little. I grab his hand. “I’m the only family Baxter’s got. I’m headed over there as soon as I get you into your goggles.” I give him a hug for luck and agree to follow him into the pool so he can at least show me to his parents from the deck. He waves energetically, catching his parents’ attention. I wave and smile, timidly. Then he pecks me on the cheek before heading over to the team bench.
I raise a hand to the spot where his lips met my skin, noting that his touch felt warm and familial. Definitely like a brother. Further contrast to the feelings I get whenever Baxter enters the same room as me.
I stand by to watch as he takes the blocks and I smile when the buzzer sounds for his race to begin.
As I walk to the football game, I keep thinking about Tim. I would love to have met his parents and talked with them about Tim’s progress this semester, health wise. He’s become a good friend and I enjoy talking to him. If only he’d given me some notice I could have arranged to meet his family for breakfast or something. Now I’m stuck feeling like I let him down, when making him happy would have meant letting Baxter down.
Thankfully, I make it to the stadium in time for the game to start. I catch Baxter’s eye from the bench as I take my seat along his friends’ family members. Again, I feel a buzzing in my veins just looking at him.
Eventually, I’ll find this spark with someone else, and I’ll know that Baxter will always be here for me, as a friend, as a confidant. As someone who knows my history.
When he takes the field, I suck in my breath, waiting to see if his shoulder will impede his playing. I hear Scotty’s parents mention that there are scouts here from the pros.
I know Baxter is feeling the pressure to perform, feeling like his whole life is on the line. I think he underestimates his other skills. Hell, Bax would have a great career in private security based on how he has treated me for the past 12 years. But I also want his dreams to come true for him. The opposing team quarterback receives the snap and drops back for the pass. I dig my fingers into my lap hoping maybe Alex and the linemen will sack the quarterback, but the pass is up.
The wide receiver snatches it from the air and I see a blur of silver as Baxter streaks toward him. I can practically feel the collision as they both hit the ground, tackled out of bounds almost as soon as the player catches the ball. Is everyone else stuck in eternity to see if Baxter will rise, or is it just me? I focus on my breath, and then a cheer explodes from my mouth as he gets up and jogs back to his position.
Baxter is back in business.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Olive
I DON’T STICK around after the game to check on Bax. Justin and the staff can look out for him—I’m sure he’s feeling fine after the game because he sends me a huge smile from the bench as SCU seals up another win. I give him a wave, and then I sneak off to start getting ready.
Tia and Elyse meet me at the dorms, excited about helping me perfect my look for tonight. In my heels, black skinny pants, a lacy cami, and
a fitted black velvety jacket, I definitely feel sexy.
The heels add to my height, while the tailored clothes accentuate my curves in a way that surprises me. Tia works on my makeup—giving me dark red lips and impossibly long lashes. They slick my hair back into a high ponytail and then they curl the tail. I look and feel elegant and sexy. Like Catwoman.
We add in sparkling earrings and a chunky necklace to complete the look, and Tia whistles through her teeth. “Damn, girl. You could seduce me tonight if you wanted.” Elyse claps her hands and makes me do a little turn. I’ve never in my life spent this long getting ready before, but I have to admit this is amazing.
Right on time, I get a call that I have a visitor at the front desk of our dorm, and the girls follow me down the hall to spy as I greet Tim. He stands by the doorman wearing a fitted tux, looking insanely hot in dark grey with a long skinny tie.
He grins when he sees me, his eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline. I smile timidly, clutching the tiny black bag I brought with my phone and ID and some cash, just in case. Shaking himself back to the present, Tim stoops and plants a gentle kiss on my cheek. “You look beautiful,” he says.
“So do you,” I reply, truthfully. Tim is a beautiful man. His facial features are noble, strong lines. He has impossibly long lashes, too—and I’m pretty sure he didn’t spend the afternoon getting them curled or using mascara. I slip my arm into the crook of his and we head out to his car for the banquet.
The donor banquet is my favorite function every year, but it’s especially nice walking in on Tim’s arm. I love seeing all the athletes dressed to the nines. They all look slightly awkward in their formal wear, but their bodies are so elegant. It’s like a huge parade of glamorous people surrounded by a ring of their rich patrons eager to meet them. The two of us are definitely turning some heads, and it feels good to be seen this way. Most of the people in here have only ever seen me in khakis and an SCU polo shirt. As Tia said, tonight I’m reminding them I’m their trainer and a woman, too.
