Chapter 20
TWENTY
THEO
I’ve been in this gym a thousand times.
As a student, an athlete, a teacher, and now, for the past six years, assistant basketball coach. The floors have been polished since then, the paint freshened. New banners line the rafters. But the air still smells like waxed hardwood and too much adolescent ambition.
And tonight? It’s packed with nostalgia. And hairspray. And the soft rustle of name tags being awkwardly pressed against button-downs and dresses.
Welcome Back, Millions! reads the glitter-strewn banner hanging above the check-in tables.
It’s still early—just after six—and the gym’s filling up.
Laughter rings out in waves. Hugs. Back slaps.
People snapping selfies beside their old lockers.
I help with some light crowd wrangling after a brief stint of manning the registration desks.
I recognize most of the faces. Some more than others. That’s what happens when you’re the teacher who stayed. You end up straddling two worlds—the guy who was one of them and the one they now call “Coach Brooks.”
It’s disorienting.
I glance toward the folding table near the bleachers. Maddie Coyle, two years below me in school and now the PTA president, is handing out name tags. Her toddler’s already face-planted in a tray of glitter markers. I offer her a smile, and she throws me a look of deep maternal despair.
“Beer later?” she mouths.
I nod. “Count on it.”
I do my rounds, slipping easily into small talk. I’m good at this. Familiar. Friendly. Safe. I float through conversations like someone who isn’t half cracked beneath the surface.
It’s 7:23 p.m. when it happens.
He walks in through the side doors.
He’s not even trying to be dramatic, but everything slows. The music. The buzz of conversation. The quickening in my chest.
Caden.
I haven’t seen him since he left my porch last night. I didn’t sleep much after he left either—too wired, too raw, and too aware of how close his scent had clung to my sofa cushions.
He’s wearing dark jeans and a soft gray Henley that fits just snug enough across his chest and forearms to punch the breath out of me. His hair is shorter than it was back then, his jawline more defined. But the shape of him, the weight of him in this space? It’s unchanged.
He still draws attention like gravity.
A few heads turn. I hear a few murmured greetings—people recognizing the old basketball star, connecting dots. Someone claps him on the back. He smiles, polite but guarded.
Then his gaze finds mine across the room.
It holds, and for a second, I forget how to breathe.
He doesn’t move toward me, and I don’t move toward him.
There’s too much air between us, thick and humming.
Instead, I turn away like I’m needed somewhere—which, technically, I am.
A mic isn’t working. Another teacher from the art department needs help hauling a projector. I move through it all automatically.
By nine thirty, I’ve had two conversations about booster funding, one about my dating life (shout-out to Martha Brewer for that invasive line of questioning), and barely any sightings of the man who set my entire nervous system on fire just twenty-four hours earlier.
“Hey, Coach Brooks!”
I turn to see Trina Jennings waving me over near the bleachers, a sparkly reunion cup in one hand and a crooked smile on her face.
“Come do the yearbook photo trivia!” she calls out. “There’s a prize!”
I give her a thumbs-up but don’t move. Instead, I check the time again and let out a breath.
“I’m gonna head to Timbers,” I tell Justin as I pass him. “See who’s migrated over.”
I grin as I back away, giving Vanessa a half-hearted salute and promising to swing by later to help clean up, though we both know I probably won’t.
My volunteer duties are technically done, and the weight in my chest has only grown heavier the longer I’ve stayed.
Smiles are starting to feel a little too fixed.
Every shadow at the edge of the gym has me turning my head, hoping—stupidly—that he’ll still be here and I can talk to him.
But he’s nowhere to be seen, so I make my exit.
Outside, the warm May air hits like a balm. The streetlights cast long shadows across the parking lot as I head to my truck. My name badge is stuffed in my pocket, and my pulse thrums somewhere in my throat.
I take the long way to Timbers, past our old route from the school to the court, past the convenience store that still stocks those awful green apple slushies Caden used to swear were “hydrating.” I’m not particularly keen to stay out any longer, but I go anyway.
Because if he’s going to be anywhere, it’ll be here.
The after-party is already in full swing at Timbers & Tallboys. It seems like a lot of folks ducked out early. The bar’s louder, darker, more relaxed than the school gym. String lights crisscross the ceiling. The old wooden floors creak under the weight of alumni reclaiming their youth.
I spot Moses behind the bar, already deep in orders. He clocks me and lifts a brow. I hold up two fingers and mouth, “Beer.”
When I turn, Caden’s leaning against the far end of the bar.
Of course he is.
He’s nursing a bottle of something that’s definitely not local. His stance is relaxed, but I know him. I see the tension in his jaw, the way his thumb circles the lip of the bottle like he’s counting beats.
Swallowing my nerves, I slide in beside him, leaving just enough space between us to keep things plausible. “So, how many ‘remember whens’ have you been hit with so far?”
He smiles into his drink. “Twelve, I think. Thirteen if you count the guy who swore I threw a game senior year because I wanted to impress a girl.”
I laugh. “Let me guess. Max?”
“Bingo.”
A pseudo-comfortable silence opens between us. Not the same one as last night. This one has edges. The kind you don’t lean into unless you’re ready to bleed.
“I forgot how loud this place can get,” I say, nursing my beer. Sure, I come here fairly regularly, but it’s never as packed as right now.
“Feels smaller,” he replies. “Or maybe I’m just bigger.”
I glance sideways. “You were always big.”
That earns me a soft chuckle. “I don’t know if that’s a compliment or—”
“It is.”
The music shifts to something older—Bon Jovi or Bryan Adams, nostalgia for some of the room.
For others, it’s just background noise while they wait for something with a little more soul.
Couples dance near the jukebox. A group of former cheerleaders commandeer the photo booth.
There’s a flash as someone captures a moment that, after three whiskey shots, probably shouldn’t exist.
“You didn’t stay long at the school,” I say.
“Didn’t want to linger,” he admits. “Felt too… staged.”
I nod, sipping leisurely. “That’s how it always feels now. Like I’m standing still while everyone else cycles through.”
He looks at me then—really looks. “You ever think about leaving?”
“Sometimes,” I admit. “But I like it here. I like the kids. The job.”
He watches me for a beat longer than necessary. “You seem like you’re good at it.”
I lift a shoulder. “I try.” Truth is, I love it. Teaching. Coaching. Staying rooted in this place in ways I never expected. But I don’t say that. Not out loud. Not to him.
There’s a pause. It’s not awkward—it’s charged. Like the moment before a storm when everything holds its breath.
“I was surprised to see you last night,” I say finally, voice lower than before.
“I wasn’t sure what I was doing or even if you still lived there,” he admits, watching the condensation roll down the side of his beer bottle.
I nod, letting the silence stretch. I could ask him why he came. Why now. Why after all this time. But the questions feel too sharp for the space we’ve made tonight. So instead, I give him a softer out.
“How’re your folks?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His jaw ticks, eyes skimming over the bar like maybe there’s a safer place to look. “They’re in San Francisco, fairly close by to me,” he says finally. “They wanted me to say hi for them.”
I blink, caught off guard. “Yeah?”
He nods. “They always liked you. Missed you and your family after… everything.”
There’s something in his voice—a flicker of guilt, fast and sharp—and I know exactly what he’s thinking because I’ve thought it too. He was the one who told me to leave. The one who shut the door on all of it.
And in doing so, he cut the lines between all of us.
“Mine ask about you sometimes,” I say quietly, “wondering if I’ve heard from you. They know what happened and respected your choice to stay away.”
Caden doesn’t say anything, but the guilt deepens in his eyes like a tide rolling in. I don’t push. He already showed up unannounced on my doorstep after fifteen years—maybe this is enough for tonight.
We do the only thing we can: pivot.
Caden glances around the bar like he’s seeing it for the first time. “Did Moses always hang those ugly-ass antlers up there, or is that new?”
I follow his gaze. “They’ve been there since the second Bush administration. You’re just finally noticing because they’re now next to a framed photo of someone riding a mechanical bull in a prom dress.”
He snorts. “God, please tell me that’s not someone we know.”
“Oh, it is,” I say with a wicked grin. “Cassie Benson. Junior year prom. She wore the dress over her uniform because she was working first thing in the morning and was worried about oversleeping, and Brad dared her. You don’t forget things like that.”
“I think I just fell back in love with this town,” Caden says dryly, raising his beer. “And I’m also still kind of terrified of it.”
It’s easy, this back-and-forth. Like the years haven’t calcified between us.
“So,” he says, after another sip, “the pizza place. Still as criminally bad as I remember?”
“Worse,” I reply. “New owners last year. They tried to go fancy. ‘Gourmet wood-fired crust’ that tastes like its main ingredient is regret.”
He chuckles, head tipping back, and for a second, he looks so much like the boy I used to know that it stings. “We used to eat similar crap after every game.”
“Yup. Usually with you bitching about Coach and me pretending I didn’t want to kiss you even with your mouth full of pepperoni.”
He chokes on his beer, and I win that round.
“I can’t believe you just said that.” He laughs, dabbing at his shirt.
I shrug, trying not to grin too hard. “You started it with the antlers.”
We keep going, trading stories like playing cards tossed onto the table.
“Remember when the gym lights used to flicker every time it rained?”
He groans. “Don’t remind me. That buzzer beater in the regional semis? I couldn’t see shit. I hit the shot blind.”
“Which makes it sound way cooler than the truth,” I say. “You were aiming for the other side of the rim.”
“I’ll never confirm or deny that,” he says, smirking.
I roll my bottle between my palms, stealing a glance at him. “They finally fixed the lights in the east wing last year. Whole place smells the same, though. Bleach, rubber, and teenage angst.”
His expression softens. “I miss it sometimes. The gym. The game. All of it.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “Me too.”
A beat passes. He doesn’t flinch. I don’t either.
We talk about the seniors on the current team—my kids now. About how I inherited Coach Sanders’s whistle and his overuse of the phrase “Run it again.”
Caden smiles. “And that right there is how I know for certainty that you are good at it.”
I snort and shake my head.
He’s quiet for a second and then gently says, “I mean it. You always had a way of making people feel like they mattered.”
I glance down, suddenly too warm in the face. “Well, at least someone still listens to me. I told Jeremiah not to wear mismatched sneakers to practice, and he said, ‘It’s fashion, Coach.’”
Caden chuckles. “He’s not wrong. That’s peak Gen Z defiance.”
“And Coach nearly had a coronary. Thought the kid was concussed.”
We laugh again. It’s the kind of laughter you forget your body needs until it fills you up. The brimming tension is still there and pressed between us. But we’re making space around it. Light is cracking through.
“So….” Caden leans an elbow on the table. “Moses still isn’t here full-time, huh?”
“Nope. I rarely see him these days.”
“Still because of all that shit that went on years back?”
I nod. “Yeah. I think so. But if you’re drunk enough, he’ll show you the shelf of people’s secrets.”
Caden lifts a brow. “Wait, what?”
I sip my beer. “You’ll see. Just don’t piss him off. He still remembers who broke the foosball table in 2004.”
“That was definitely Finn.”
“Tell him that,” I say, laughing. “Moses has a memory like an elephant. A bitter, bourbon-soaked elephant.”
The conversation meanders.
We talk about dumb pranks from senior year. About how Kirkwood’s hair hasn’t changed and how Vanessa still makes cookies for teachers. About Clara, who probably knows more than the NSA and has no shame about eavesdropping.
“It’s wild,” Caden murmurs, looking around. “Feels like the whole town just… paused. Like I could walk outside tomorrow, and it’d be senior year again.”
I hum in agreement. “Except we’re not those guys anymore.”
“No,” he says. “We’re not.”
But he doesn’t sound sad about it. Just… aware.
And neither of us points out that despite the years, despite the scar tissue, we still fit like puzzle pieces with slightly softened edges.
At midnight, the bar starts to thin out. The jukebox plays something older than either of us. Moses yells good night to a group staggering toward the exit. I watch Caden finish his beer, the curve of his fingers around the bottle as familiar as the ache it triggers.
“You checked in okay at Emmett’s?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“You good to get back tonight?”
He nods. “It’s close enough.”
I hesitate. “Tomorrow’s the alumni game.”
“I saw,” he says. “You coaching?”
“Reffing,” I say with a grin. “But yeah. I’ll be there.”
He holds my gaze. “Good. I’ll come.”
It’s not a promise. But it’s something.
We walk out into the warm, humid night. The scent of honeysuckle is thick in the air, crickets chirping like a soundtrack to something inevitable—like they know we’re circling closer to what neither of us has dared to say.
At the curb, he pauses. “Good night, Theo.”
“Night, Caden.”
He turns and starts down the sidewalk. I watch him go, some part of me aching in a way that’s both old and unbearably new.
And just before I climb into my truck, I see him glance back. Like maybe he’s thinking the same thing I am. That this—whatever it is—still matters, even after all this time.