Without missing a beat, the strength coach chimed in, “Maybe he’s got twins. With those knees, you could fund two.”
The comeback wasn’t even that funny, but it was so unexpected from a man they all thought didn’t know how to smile that the group fell silent before dissolving into raucous laughter. His own laugh slipped out before he thought about it. The surprise wasn’t the sound itself, but the way it pulled him straight back to a time when laughter like this had lived on midnight bus rides and in dim dugouts, carried on loud voices and bad jokes until his ribs ached. He’d forgotten how good laughter felt when it snuck into his bones and loosened things he didn’t know he was clenching.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled, and he didn’t need to look to know that CJ was watching him again. He stood and grabbed his paperwork, thanked the doctor with smooth, practiced words and a quick handshake, then slipped through the door without looking back. The hallway was cooler, quieter, and he drew in a steady breath, trying to clear the static CJ seemed to leave behind. By the time he reached the sign-in table, he was steady again.
“Looking good, Millie,” he said, handing his paperwork to the athletic trainer stationed there.
Millie had been with the team longer than some of the players had been alive. She gave him the same once-over she always did, eyes narrowing like she could spot a hidden injury from the way he breathed.
“Flatterer,” she muttered, unimpressed as always as she flipped through the pages to make sure everything was complete. “You’re cleared. Go home and rest. The flight to Arizona leaves early tomorrow.”
Evan nodded, grateful for her brusqueness, and turned toward the hallway that funneled players back to the main locker room. The fluorescent light reflected off the cinder block walls, and for a moment, the noise of the training room dulled behind him. He finally exhaled.
From the hallway, he caught a glimpse of some of the guys gathered in the clubhouse, shooting the shit. Most of them he’d known for years, but there were a couple of new faces, and Evan realized they must have been traded in the off-season like CJ. He felt like an ass. He’d been so focused on CJ being forced back into his life that he hadn’t paid attention to the other moves the team had made. He would have to make an effort to speak with them once they got to spring training in Arizona.
He also needed to figure out who was missing from the team this year. That was the part of this life that was impossibleto explain to someone who didn’t live it—how fast you could become a family and how fast you could become strangers again.
The door to the training room opened just as he passed, and CJ stepped out, nearly colliding with Evan. They both shifted one way, then the other, the kind of awkward dance that would make strangers laugh. But they weren’t strangers, and they didn’t laugh. Evan stood still and let CJ slide around him, inhaling sharply when their forearms made contact.
It was barely contact. Skin to skin for less than a heartbeat. But it lit Evan up like he’d touched a live wire. Heat flashed up his arm in a line from his wrist to his shoulder, across his chest and down to his stomach, where it dropped like a boulder. Every nerve ending fired up at once, and for a second, he fought an old reflex to lean in and close the distance until they slotted together in the geometry his body used to know by heart. It took effort to kill the instinct, and he pressed his back into the wall, the cinder block cool through his shirt.
“Sorry,” CJ said quietly.
“It’s fine,” Evan replied, keeping his eyes focused on the wall over CJ’s shoulder.
His voice was flat, steady, but his pulse felt like a hammer in his throat. For a moment they were close enough that he caught the clean smell of soap and the ghost of spearmint, and he could almost feel the slide of CJ’s fingers through his. Muscle memory was a traitor.
He kept walking toward the exit, hands still fisted at his side, and he knew without turning that CJ’s eyes followed him.
By the timehe made it home and his apartment door clicked shut behind him, the steadiness he’d forced into his steps wasalready unraveling. Normally the silence was a comfort and the little rituals of coming home—keys on the hook, shoes by the door, loose change and wallet on the console table—settled him. Tonight, he didn’t move. He just stood in the entryway, shoulder pressed against the door like he needed it to hold him up, the phantom brush of CJ’s arm still alive on his skin.
If a single, accidental touch could undo him, how the hell was he supposed to survive an entire season?
The question lodged in his chest, and before he could shake it off, a memory dragged him back to another time he’d questioned his survival. That first fall, freshman year, and the first time he’d met CJ at the start of what was affectionately called Hell Week. It was a week designed to break their bodies, minds, and spirits to see who would last.
Evan had been early to the field house, and his nerves had buzzed so loudly he worried everyone around him could hear them. His hands shook as he emptied his team-issued duffel bag into the drawers of his stall, and he’d jumped when CJ dropped onto the bench beside him.
“You’re Delgado, right?” CJ had asked, sticking out his hand, casual as if they’d known each other for years instead of moments, like they were already friends instead of strangers.
Evan had hesitated, glancing up at a grin so unselfconscious it almost irritated him. “Yeah. And you’re?—”
“Hartman,” CJ finished for him. “But everyone calls me CJ. Guess you can too.”
“Evan,” he’d said.
He still remembered the scrape of calluses in the first handshake, the heat of CJ’s grip, and how he leaned back and kept yapping, like they’d just sealed the deal on their friendship. And maybe they had because from that moment on, CJ was just there. During warm-ups that first day, when the coach had barked orders and they’d all scrambled to prove they knew howto hustle, CJ had jogged backward at Evan’s side, tossing out commentary like they were already in on a private joke.
“You think he yells in his sleep? Or do you think that vein in his forehead just throbs until morning?” Evan had tried not to smile, but failed, and that was the first time Evan saw CJ grin like he’d accomplished something big.
CJ showed up next to him during sprints, during endless pushups in the damp grass, during conditioning drills that left them all gasping. He was always moving, but somehow, he never let Evan drift too far out of his orbit. When they paired off for a throwing exercise, CJ picked him without asking, tossing the ball with a snap of his wrist and a steady stream of chatter that somehow kept Evan relaxed without distracting him. He was loud where Evan was quiet, joking when everyone else wanted to collapse, clapping shoulders and giving encouragement until Evan had almost hated him for it, and then hated himself for needing it.
And Evanhadneeded it. By the third day, when his legs shook climbing the hill to the dorms, CJ had fallen into step beside him, talking nonsense just to keep him moving. He’d dropped onto the turf during a brutal round of suicides, and CJ had leaned down, hauled him up by the elbow, and muttered, “Don’t give them the satisfaction.”
It had been the only time Evan had seen CJ’s easygoing façade crack that week. It had calmed something inside him to know CJ wasn’t as unaffected by Hell Week as he was pretending to be.
By the end of that final day, CJ was leaning against him on the dugout bench, shoulders pressed together like it was the most natural thing in the world. And the thing that stuck with Evan wasn’t the audacity CJ had to be comfortable enough to invade his space, but how easy it had been to let him.
He’d made it through the week, had told the coaches what they wanted to hear, and pushed his body past what he thought it could take. But even now, years later, he knew the truth was that he’d only survived because CJ hadn’t let him fall behind.
