6. Evan #2
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 impossible to 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 time he made it home and his apartment door clicked shut behind him, the steadiness he’d forced into his steps was already 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 how to 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 Evan had needed 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 facade 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.
The realization sat in Evan’s chest, heavy and unwelcome, and he pressed his palm flat against the door behind him to ground him in the present. He hated that the memory still had the power to surface, and hated even more that it was tinged with gratitude. CJ didn’t deserve that from him anymore.
He pushed off the door and headed toward his bedroom. Starting tomorrow, he’d have to see CJ every day for six straight weeks. There was no room for slipping back into old memories. His suitcase lay open on the bed from where he’d started packing earlier, half-filled with neatly folded clothes.
Packing was usually methodical, soothing even, but tonight, each shirt he added felt like a reminder that tomorrow there would be no buffer left—just a charter flight and six weeks in Arizona.