“Sign and initial the flagged pages. Allergies, surgeries, concussions, all of it. Leave something blank, and we’ll hunt you down. Once your paperwork is complete, you can head on in. Start at station one and follow the signs. When you’re done, drop the clipboard and the paperwork back here.”
CJ blinked. “Got it.”
“Oh, and welcome to the team.” The guy grinned at him, a wide smile with a lot of teeth, and CJ smiled weakly back.
“Thanks,” he said.
He took a seat on a chair against the wall and started scrawling out his history. Broken pinky in high school, sprained ankle in college, one concussion in the minors. He initialed at every arrow and double-checked the information before he stood to start the gauntlet. A pitcher he knew from past matchups paused in front of him, and CJ raised a brow as he took in the other man, who was balancing a cup of water on his forearm for some reason.
“Bautista. You’ll hate my cutter by April.” The pitcher moved carefully to hold out a fist.
“Looking forward to it,” CJ said, bumping his fist against his new teammate’s.
He meant it too. Reading pitchers was one of his favorite parts of the job. He studied the spin, the arm angle, the release, because whatever got hit, he had to track before anyone else. Playing in the outfield was a lot of anticipation, chasing what no one else thought was reachable, and he was good at it.
Preseason physicals had always been an overwhelming circus for him, but experiencing it with a new team was worse, and CJ felt like he was walking into a battle. Trainers in matching polo shirts wove through the chaos like traffic cops, calling out names that reverberated in the open space. The noise didn’t stop, and he could feel his shoulders tense. Everything felt wrong.
Over the noise, his name was called, and CJ made his way to the first station. He got weighed and measured as if they didn’t have the records from Chicago and he’d grown since last season. At the next station, a trainer with forearms the size of tree limbs pressed on his shoulder and watched him carefully to gaugehis resistance and his reaction. He ran CJ through a few other exercises, and CJ did them without complaint.
“Range is good,” the trainer said, more to the tablet he was typing on than to CJ. “Keep up the T-spine work. I don’t want you losing that length.”
CJ nodded and moved to the next station, where a different trainer handed him a band to place around his ankles before ordering him to crab walk. He felt like an idiot, and it didn’t help when the trainer snickered.
“Sexy,” she deadpanned, and CJ laughed even though his hips burned.
He finished the walk up and back the length of turf laid out for the exercise before being waved away.
They weren’t ready for him at the next station, so CJ finally took a moment to look around. He should have been relieved with the short break, but the pause made it worse. Within seconds, the walls began to close in, and he started to feel like he was going to be buried under the noise and bright lights. Every sound was amplified: sneakers squeaked, blood pressure cuffs hissed as they deflated, Velcro ripped. The offbeat rhythm of sound was constant and unrelenting, and made his skin crawl.
CJ felt his jaw lock tight and his pulse tick faster than it should for a man standing still. His shoulders kept creeping up toward his ears until he forced them down, and the air was pressing in on him. He swallowed hard and tried not to think about how badly he wanted to be anywhere but there. Then across the room, through the noise and the motion, he saw him. Evan. For a breath, the chaos receded, and CJ felt grounded again.
Evan sat on an exam table, posture steady, a cuff snug around his bicep as a trainer jotted down his blood pressure. But his face was unreadable, and CJ felt off balance again. He had always been able to read him, always known the differencebetween a clenched jaw that meant frustration and one that meant anger, between a twitch of his lips that meant he was about to laugh and the one that meant he was holding something back. But now? There was nothing.
Evan lifted his head and their eyes caught across the room. The effect was instant, sharp and disorienting, and it felt like the ground shifted. He held the look, waiting for something that might crack the wall and let recognition through.
Just as quickly, Evan looked away. He turned to the trainer as he slid off the table, and the connection snapped, deliberate as a door closing. The trainer called his name and the noise in the room slammed back into CJ harder than before. His pulse spiked again and he swallowed hard against the ache of being seen and dismissed in the same breath.
CJ moved through the remaining stations on autopilot. He balanced on a wobble board while a trainer scribbled notes and felt his hamstrings burn as he leaned forward during the flexibility test. He answered questions in clipped sentences, signed his name when told to, and tried to keep his eyes from searching the room.
CJ found Evan again across the room, talking quietly with a strength coach as his shoulder was manipulated through its range of motion. He lingered too long, stared too long at the careful way Evan rolled through the motions.
The trainer next to him cleared his throat. “Eyes here, Hartman.”
Cheeks hot with embarrassment, CJ forced a smile and nodded before shifting his attention. It didn’t hold though, and a few minutes later, his eyes found Evan by the vision chart, arms folded as he leaned against the wall. Evan laughed at something said near him, and it carried across the room, full and warm and unguarded.
For a second, CJ was back on a college bus, leaning too close, saying something stupid just to hear Evan laugh like that. He remembered chasing that laugh with more jokes, greedy for it, needing to be the reason Evan came undone. Hearing it now, so familiar yet out of reach, twisted something inside him.
Before he could stop himself, CJ stared, waiting for Evan to glance his way. A flick of the eyes, even a glare, anything to show that he remembered too. But Evan didn’t turn. He thanked the trainer, took his chart, and angled his body away. Just like that, the laughter had been silenced, the wall between them slammed back into place. CJ swallowed hard, the ache sharper now because he remembered exactly what it felt like when the wall didn’t exist.
6
EVAN
The annual gauntletof physicals never got easier. Same stations, same tests, mostly the same trainers barking out names. Evan knew the drill, but it still felt like moving through a carnival crammed into too small a space. Everything was loud and crowded, and the weight of expectation hung in the air. Every poke, every measurement, every scribbled note was another reminder that his body was both a machine and an investment. He had gotten very good at letting the trainers see only what they needed to.
He was sitting on the edge of a table when he felt the air shift. Not really, of course. But something in him went taut, his body recognizing the change before his brain did. The blood pressure cuff tightened around his arm, and he fought to keep his eyes focused on his hands. He didn’t have to look to know who had entered the room. Still, when he let his eyes lift in the quickest glance, his stomach tightened.
CJ.
