Page 14 of The Golden Receiver

“A bit?”

I nodded and stepped onto the treadmill, wrapping my hand tight around the little controller that adjusted the speed and incline. I was planning on starting slow, but I knew myself well enough to know that it wouldn’t stay that way. Teagan turned around and flipped on the light of the mirror he’d put on the desk and started pulling makeup from the drawers. “It’s not so much about the list, but what happened after,” I explained.

“When Evan followed you?”

“Evander,” I corrected, “but yeah. I told you he followed me, right?”

“Yeah, and then you couldn’t even come right back to the dorm, because you realized he lived here too?”

I groaned. I’d forgotten I’d told him about that in my rambling. I’d realized right before we got to the dorm that the path he was walking led to only one place. I didn’t feel like having him realize we lived in the same building, so I kept walking. I found a bench and sat for a good fifteen minutes before going back into my dorm. I knew I wasn’t really hiding where I lived. Chances were, me and Evander would run into one another in or near the dorm and he’d put two and two together.

“Yeah, but it’s not about that,” I grumbled.

Teagan turned around to look at me, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised in question.

“It’s about what he said when we were talking. He offered to do some extra training with me, see if we could get me on that starting list.” When I said it out loud, it sounded smart. It sounded really nice of him, not like something that should be tearing me up inside. But knowing that didn’t do anything for the way it felt: like I was some human charity case. I’d never been that great at accepting help. I blamed my dad.

“Is there something wrong with that?”

I hit the button on the remote to up the speed. “It wasn’t that he offered. It was how he offered. He was talking to me like I was something that should be pitied, you know?”

Teagan didn’t look like he knew, but I was going to make him understand. Or I was going to do my best. I talked for a good thirty minutes with Teagan asking a few questions here and there, making astute observations, all of it. I probably could have talked longer, but we were interrupted. The room belonged to someone now, a new guy who had just moved in named Ryker. He was a gargoyle, assigned to guard Teagan for some reason.

When he’d moved in and saw our stuff in his room, he’d raised an eyebrow. We offered to move it, but he’d told us it wasn’t necessary. He was only using the room to sleep, anyway. He’d told us we were all welcome to come and go as we liked, keep our stuff in there, whatever. I can’t say I minded. My walking pad fit a lot better in his room than mine.

But even though he didn’t mind us being in there, it broke the whole mood. Teagan’s attention had shifted to Ryker, and even I could recognize the way they were looking at each other. It was time for me to make a graceful exit. I thanked Teagan for his time and went back to my room to mull it over some more.

Sunday night, my phone lit up the same as it had every night since Friday.

Evander

Tomorrow morning. 6 AM. Library steps.

I looked at the words. I thought about everything Teagan and I talked about the night before. He’d made a good point about gift horses and mouths and not looking in them. If I wanted to make a real go of my time at Creelin, then I should do whatever it took. That meant meeting up with Evander Hemmings.

I sent back a thumbs up emoji, turned off my light, and went to bed.

My alarm went off a few hours later. There wasn’t even light coming through the small dorm window to let me know it wasn’t the middle of the night. I flipped on the light, wincing as the harsh brightness filled the room. I felt like a zombie as I got ready to meet Evander, all the while questioning if this was possibly one of the worst ideas I’d ever had. It wasn’t like me and Evander were friends. He annoyed the hell out of me most of the time, but I’d already said I was going to be there.

So, I grabbed my gym bag and left the dorm.

Ten minutes later, I found Evander in front of the library. He was bent almost entirely in half, reaching down to touch his toes with a kind of ease I’d never been able to manage. I watched from a few yards away as he straightened and reached up toward the sky, his hands joined together. His shirt raised just slightly, showing off a slip of his slender torso. My eyes were drawn to that strip of creamy flesh, a sharp contrast to the black shirt he was wearing. That was the only reason my eyes were drawn there, the only reason I struggled to stop myself from looking.

Until he noticed me.

The second he opened his mouth, it was easy to look away. “Hey, you made it!” he exclaimed, his hands flopping down to his side.

I grimaced at his excitement. It was too damn early to be that excited. “Figured it couldn’t hurt.”

“You need to stretch?”

I knew that I should, so I nodded. I ran through my stretches as quickly as possible, not looking at him as he went back to his routine. I didn’t need to get distracted. We stretched for about five more minutes, and then I announced I was ready when he was. He showed me where he was leaving his bag, and I put mine down beside it. It wasn’t like anyone was up and moving around, so it wasn’t likely anyone was going to steal them.

And what would they get if they did? My sweaty gym socks? That seemed like more of a punishment than anything else I could think of.

I followed Evander around the building and to the edge of campus. He stopped at a trailhead I must have walked past a thousand times without noticing. The entrance was just barely wide enough for him to pass through, and when I followed him, I felt the brush of tree leaves against my arms. “Is this a safe place to run?” I asked him.

He smiled over his shoulder, shrugged, and started running. I guessed that was as good an answer as I was going to get, and while I could have turned back, gone back toward the lights of campus, I didn’t. I took off after him. The trail wasn’t lit except for the light of the moon and the stars shining down. I could only really see where I was going because of Evander. His light blond hair was some of the only brightness in these woods. The ground was uneven, and there were a few times I felt like I was about to trip and fall, but I kept going. I kept pushing.