It was unreasonable to think he wouldn’t see him, but he had stupidly hoped for more time. But there he was, lookingthe same but not the same. It was the not-the-same that landed hardest.
He was taller than Evan remembered, broader through the shoulders, with a face that had finally figured out how to grow even stubble. Anyone looking at him would think CJ carried himself with a confidence that came from years of experience in the league. But Evan knew better, even after all this time.
He could see the restless tension in CJ’s hands and the way he was forcing himself to stand still. His confidence was a performance, and Evan felt his lip curl in annoyance that some part of him remembered exactly how to read CJ, even when he wished he didn’t.
CJ stood in line for the station next to Evan’s, jaw locked, trying not to look like the walls were closing in on him. Evan knew that look too. He remembered the way CJ used to get cagey when rooms got too loud and pressed too close. He used to talk him down from it, cracking dumb jokes until the edge eased. Once upon a time, this would have been the moment when he reached out to calm him. His mouth remembered how to shape his name, and his hand remembered the curve of his shoulder. His muscle memory stirred like it was waking from a long, stupid nap.
The cuff hissed and deflated, dragging Evan back to the present, and he forced his eyes down. But they rose again like he wasn’t in control of them, and CJ’s head turned at the same time, their eyes locking on each other.
It hit like a pitch square to the chest. Not the kind of glancing contact you could shrug off. No, this hurt like a direct line back to a time when eye contact alone had been enough to speak volumes. Evan’s heart tripped over itself as that old familiarity slammed into him and some part of him registered when the trainer taking his pulse looked at him in concern. For a breath, the chaos of the room faded, and it was just them, suspended insilence. But it wasn’t something he could afford. Not here. Not with teammates and trainers and years of distance packed into the space between them. Not when everything was at stake.
So, he looked away first. He took a deep breath and turned his head, calm and deliberate, like there was nothing that mattered in front of him. He angled his body toward the trainer, slid off the table, and pretended it didn’t cost him anything. Pretended his chest didn’t ache from the slam of shutting that door. The noise rushed back in, and he let it flow over him, moving on to the next station, letting routine take over the way it always did.
“Any soreness?” Marco asked, rotating Evan’s arm carefully through the arc. The trainer had the forearms of a lumberjack and the patience of a saint, and his expertise had saved Evan from injury more than once.
“No,” Evan said. It was true today, but it hadn’t always been, and it wouldn’t be again. That was the job.
“Keep up the band exercises,” Marco said, attention fixed on his tablet.
“I will.”
“You always say that.”
“I always mean it.”
Marco looked up at him and huffed in annoyance. “Eyes on me, Delgado. You’re not my only player today. I need you to pay attention.”
The faint reprimand stung, and Evan felt his cheeks heat. He hadn’t even realized he’d drifted. But he could feel it now, the pull from the direction his body kept wanting to turn toward. The prickle of being watched sat like an electric charge under his skin.
“I’m here,” he said, locking back in until Marco was done with him.
The next station was the one where they strapped a band around his ankles and made him walk across a strip of turf while a camera tracked his hips and knees. It was ridiculous, but they all pretended it wasn’t.
The trainer smirked and said, “Strut,” and Evan swallowed a laugh and did the stupid strut because his glutes deserved the attention, apparently. Someone wolf-whistled, someone else tossed in a “work it,” and he ignored it all, relegating it to background noise. He was good at this kind of pretending. He had practice.
He finished the walk, the reverse walk, and the side shuffle.
“Beautiful,” the trainer said, making notes. “Posterior chain is happy.”
“I have so many comments I could make,” Evan replied, and the trainer snorted.
“Vision is open,” she said without looking up. He had been dismissed.
The eye chart was propped in a corner on an easel, the lines of letters marching smaller and smaller on each row. Evan handed the clipboard with his paperwork to the team’s optometrist, who flipped through it with the kind of efficiency that came from years of practice. When he was satisfied, the doctor set it aside and gestured for Evan to sit on the stool in front of him. The position brought them close enough that Evan could feel the man’s breath across his cheek when he leaned in.
A bright light flicked on, and the doctor studied each eye in turn, the beam sweeping across his pupils from millimeters away. Evan kept still and tried to ignore how uncomfortably close the doctor was. When he pulled away, Evan scanned the optometrist’s face, but his expression stayed neutral as he made notes on Evan’s paperwork.
“Left eye first,” the doctor said, slipping a pair of testing glasses onto Evan’s face and lowering the blinder to block his right eye.
Evan read the line smoothly, voice even and unhurried. The next line, smaller, came just as easily. The final one he delivered without pause, each letter crisp and sure.
The doctor jotted something on the clipboard. “Switch,” he said, then flipped the blinder to cover his left eye.
Evan shifted and settled into the change in view, then ran through the letters again with the same steady cadence. When he finished, the doctor took the glasses off and gave a small nod. “Sharp as ever.”
Behind him, one of the pitchers muttered, “He always crushes the eye test. Catchers are like bats but with better knees.”
Evan turned his head and grinned over his shoulder. “Better knees? Please. Every time I squat, it sounds like someone stepping on bubble wrap. Somewhere out there, an orthopedic surgeon is tracking my career like it’s the stock market, just waiting for me to retire so he can finally start a college fund for his kid.”
