Professional athletes were gossips, even if they pretended they weren’t, and CJ had heard the whispers the same way everyone else had. The half-finished comments that died when someone walked by. The conversations that shifted direction mid-sentence. But no one ever said anything openly. There were just fragments, like the mention of Mason crashing on someone’s couch and the quiet speculation about problems at home. One night, someone had murmured something about trouble in his marriage before quickly changing the subject.
Luis Alvarez sat beside Mason, halfway through a story about a video he’d seen online, reenacting it with his whole body likeacting it out mattered as much as the punchline. As he talked, his thigh stayed pressed against Mason’s under the table, casual and unselfconscious. CJ noticed it immediately, and he waited for Mason to shift away. He didn’t.
CJ lifted his beer and took a long sip, draining a quarter of the glass as he let the cold cut through the noise in his head. When he lowered the glass again, he glanced back toward Mason. Mason caught his eye for a split second before dropping his gaze again, lifting his drink, and taking a careful sip that looked practiced and controlled.
The table was crowded enough that the contact could have been accidental. Knees and chairs bumped together as they all settled, but Luis never pulled back and Mason didn’t move away either. If anything, he leaned into it, like that quiet point of contact was holding him upright.
CJ glanced around reflexively, wondering if anyone else had noticed. If they had, no one cared.
Rizzo had already launched into an argument with Noah about music, gesturing wildly as he insisted some band from the early 2000s deserved more respect. Noah listened with patient amusement, clearly unmoved, and CJ could tell by the twitch of Rizzo’s lips that he was deliberately trying to annoy the older man.
Chase leaned across the table toward CJ, laughing so hard he couldn’t get a word out. He simply shoved his phone across the table for CJ to see the video that had started the whole conversation.
Voices overlapped, glasses clinked, music hummed from somewhere overhead, and the noise of the bar filled the space between them. Around the table, everyone else carried on like nothing unusual had happened. CJ realized that maybe nothing had. When CJ looked back at Mason and Luis, something finally clicked.
He’d noticed the way the guys on this team stood closer, slung arms around shoulders, and hung off each other like they didn’t know the meaning of personal space. But there wasn’t the calculation he’d been used to in Chicago, where there had been unspoken rules in the clubhouse and space was respected so much that there was an automatic distance between all of them. Touch had been limited to high fives or quick butt pats that ended before anyone ever looked twice. He’d assumed the looseness on this team was a West Coast thing, but really, they were just a group of guys who believed that being close to your friends didn’t require an explanation.
He’d spent years assuming everyone else was living like he was, keeping careful distance and making sure casual touches didn’t last long enough to invite a second look. All this time, he’d told himself it was professionalism and being careful. But watching Mason sitting there now with his thigh still pressed to Luis’s and more relaxed than before, CJ understood what he’d missed.
He took a drink and swallowed hard. Around the table, the conversation shifted again, and someone flagged down a server to order another round. Rizzo leaned back in his chair, one arm slung lazily over the back of Noah’s seat, both of them entirely unbothered by the contact. CJ felt his own shoulders tighten instinctively in a way he’d always thought was normal, and he forced himself to sit with the discomfort. He wondered how many friendly moments he’d chosen to step away from out of fear. Had he always been a loner, or had he kept every friendship just shallow enough to stay unseen? Had he been quiet because that’s who he was, or because he’d convinced himself it was the smarter way to exist?
There was no way this train of thought was going to lead anywhere except to Evan.
Evan with his rigid posture and careful distance from everyone, who never lingered in the clubhouse or leaned too close to others in the dugout. Evan who wore control like armor but called it discipline. If CJ had been living this cautiously for the last seven years, maybe Evan had too. Maybe even more so, after everything CJ had done.
Across the table, Mason laughed at something Luis said, ducking his head when Luis bumped his knee against his again. CJ watched the easy familiarity of it and wondered how long it had taken Mason to be comfortable with that kind of closeness. Or if he’d ever had to think about it at all.
Rizzo elbowed him and leaned close, his voice loud and insistent in CJ’s ear. “Hartman,” he said. “You with us, or are you having an existential crisis?”
CJ blinked, then shook his head with a smile. “Both things can be true at once.”
Rizzo studied him for a moment, his eyes narrowed slightly like he was trying to read the thoughts CJ hadn’t said aloud. Then the look broke, and a grin spread across his face.
“Atta boy, Hartman,” he said, quieter this time.
He dropped a heavy hand onto CJ’s shoulder and gave it the kind of squeeze that was followed by a small shake. The contact lingered longer than it needed to, and CJ got the feeling Rizzo somehow knew where his head had been, even if he couldn’t have said how.
“Atta boy,” Rizzo repeated.
CJ lifted his beer in a small salute and drank. For once, he didn’t feel the urge to pull back or smooth his reactions into something less noticeable. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do with this new understanding, or how much of it he could afford to carry with him from now on. But sitting there, surrounded by the easy laughter and unguarded closeness of histeammates, CJ let himself consider the possibility that things didn’t always have to be so careful.
The crowd thinned out in stages as the hours passed, and the night wound down earlier than CJ expected. The music stayed loud, but the spaces between people widened, and people stopped shouting across tables and started leaning in instead.
CJ was halfway through his last beer when his ankle made itself known again with an insistent throb that he didn’t feel until he’d stopped moving. Now that he’d been sitting long enough for it to settle, the pain seemed to sharpen with every movement.
He shifted in his chair and rotated his foot carefully under the table, testing the joint. A sharp spike of pain was the immediate answer, and CJ winced at the reminder of why he’d planned on staying in that night in the first place. Unless it miraculously healed tomorrow, there was no way he was avoiding a visit to the training staff before the next game. He rotated his foot under the table again, testing it one last time. What had been a dull ache pulsed steadily, just enough to demand attention without causing real alarm, and CJ hoped the day off would be enough.
Eventually, the group drifted toward the door, goodbyes shouted over shoulders as chairs scraped against the floor. Outside, the night air had cooled just enough to be refreshing and the sidewalks were quieter with fewer people hanging about. He lingered near the curb with the others, leaning slightly against the yellow wall while rideshares blinked in and out of the traffic.
Rizzo sidled up beside CJ, close enough to brush shoulders, casual as ever. “You good?” he asked. His tone was light, but his eyes were sharp.
CJ lifted the water bottle someone had shoved into his hand at some point during the night. The cool plastic crinkled faintlyas he twisted the cap and took a long drink instead of answering. He swallowed, then took another as the silence stretched.
Rizzo squinted at him. “Not gonna answer?”
“That was an answer,” CJ said. “Just not the one you were looking for.”
Rizzo studied him for half a second before he broke into a grin, bright and unbothered. “Fair enough.”
