Chapter 11
OLIVER
Making coffee for a living has its pros and cons. Pro: I get to meet new people every day and learn something about them. Con: The routine of it all allows plenty of time for my mind to wander.
The pool. The moonlit water. Twenty-something naked idiots sprinting across campus in a scene straight out of Porky’s.
Ryan’s hand on my shoulder in the deep end, his fingers curling against my skin.
Ryan in those tighty-whities.
I squeeze the mug in my hand harder than necessary.
“You’re going to break that.”
I glance to my left. Alex Donovan is standing at the prep station, his small frame nearly swallowed by The Brew’s oversized green apron. His soft red hair is tucked behind his ears, and his large hazel eyes are watching me with quiet attentiveness.
“I’m not going to break it,” I say, loosening my grip.
Alex isn’t convinced, but he doesn’t push it. He returns his attention to the pastry case and arranges the blueberry muffins equidistant from their neighbors.
Working with Alex is like working with a ghost. He moves silently, completes tasks without being asked, and communicates primarily through nods, head tilts, and the occasional whispered sentence.
Most people find it unnerving. After years of managing a hockey team full of personalities that could fill stadiums, it’s just what the doctor ordered.
The bell above the door chimes, and a girl in running shorts shuffles in, earbuds dangling from her neck. She orders an iced Americano, and I make it on autopilot. She takes the mug and disappears to a corner table.
The espresso machine hisses and sighs. Jazz music tiptoes through the speakers, piano notes falling like gentle rain. Upstairs, metal chair legs scrape against hardwood, followed by a muffled “sorry” that no one downstairs was meant to hear.
“Alex, can I ask you something?”
A tiny furrow forms between his brows. “Sure.”
“How did you and Kyle avoid getting caught Saturday night?”
The furrow deepens, and a pink flush creeps across his pale cheeks. For a second, I think he’s going to pull the drawbridge up, lower the portcullis—the whole medieval defense system he deploys when conversations get uncomfortable. But then he does something unexpected. He almost smiles.
“We weren’t naked,” he says simply. “When Drew created a diversion, Kyle and I pulled back. We walked to the edge of the quad, where the other students who had come out to watch joined us. Nobody gave us a second thought.”
Sons of bitches.
“Kyle pulled his hood up and put his arm around me,” Alex adds. “Made it look like we were just a couple watching the commotion.”
The image is unexpectedly tender and catches me off guard. “Smart,” I say.
Alex nods, and the almost-smile lingers for a beat before retreating behind his usual neutral expression. He picks up a cloth and starts wiping down the already spotless counter, telling me the conversation is over. Alex operates on a strict word budget, and I’ve received a generous allocation.
I turn to restock the cup lids, and my mind wanders again. I keep thinking about what Ryan said in the pool. I told him he was taking me away from my best friend, and I’d never forgive him. Ten-year-old Ryan screaming at his military father. For me.
The thought balloons inside my chest, creating a warm ache that presses against my ribs.
I want him back. The kid who built cardboard space helmets with me, who grabbed my head in a public pool and nearly drowned me because he was scared, and I was the only thing within reach.
I want another Saturday night. The version of us that existed in that pool, honest and unguarded.
I want to hear about the constellations he’s discovered since we were kids, want to tell him about every goal I’ve scored that he wasn’t there to see.
I want my phone to light up with his name at two a.m. when he can’t sleep, want him to know he can collapse against my shoulder when the world gets too heavy.
The problem is, I don’t know how to bridge the gap. One wrong move, one too-eager text, one moment where I push too hard, and Ryan will retreat into his shell faster than Alex at a frat party.
“Oliver?” Alex’s voice cuts through my spiral.
“Yeah?”
“You seem…distracted.”
Coming from anyone else, that would be an invitation to talk. From Alex, it’s an observation as detached as a weather report. Partly cloudy with a chance of emotional turmoil.
“Just thinking,” I say.
He nods slowly, accepting this the way he accepts most things—without judgment and without follow-up questions. He slides a package of scones into the display case, each one placed with the same obsessive care he gave the muffins. “Kyle says thinking too much is bad for you.”
“Kyle thinks everything is bad for you.”
“He’s usually right.”
I can’t argue with that.
Another cluster of summer school students rolls in around nine, and for a while, I’m lost in the rhythm of orders. Oat milk latte, extra hot. Cold brew with vanilla. Matcha something-or-other that takes four steps and makes me question my career choices.
Alex handles the register surprisingly well; his interactions with customers are limited to the minimum words required to complete a transaction. “Size? Name? Card or cash?”
Around nine-thirty, the rush dies down to a trickle, and I flip the little clock sign on the counter that says BACK IN 15.
I grab a water bottle from the mini-fridge behind the counter and drop into one of the chairs near the back wall, where customers can’t see me.
My legs stretch out, and I tip my head back.
Every muscle in my body is still sore from Saturday night’s Olympic sprint across campus, and sitting down is cathartic.
Alex appears a moment later, settling into the chair across from me. He has a glass of water and a scone he broke in half, eating it in tiny, meticulous bites. For a full minute, neither of us speaks. Then Alex looks up from his scone.
“What was it like?” he asks.
“What was what like?”
“Jail.”
I take a long sip of water, buying time. “Honestly? Imagine being crammed into a concrete room the size of a bathroom with six other guys, all but one of whom are naked and don’t have any concept of personal space.”
Alex’s eyes widen fractionally. A normal person wouldn’t catch it, but I’ve spent enough time with him to read the micro-expressions.
“Gerard curled up on the floor like a giant hairless dog and fell asleep in about three minutes,” I continue.
“Drew and Jackson spent half the night arguing about whether the university owes us emotional damages. Nathan snored. And the bench—” I wince at the memory.
“The bench was this slab of concrete that I’m pretty sure was designed by someone who actively hates the human spine.
My ass went numb within twenty minutes, and I don’t mean metaphorically.
I mean, I literally could not feel my ass. ”
Alex blinks. “That sounds terrible.”
“It was terrible. And cold.”
“Did you sleep?” Alex asks, pulling apart another tiny piece of scone.
“An hour at most. Hard to sleep when Nathan’s snoring rivals a malfunctioning garbage disposal, and Drew kept muttering legal precedents in his sleep.” I pause, turning the water bottle in my hands. “But it wasn’t all bad.”
Alex tilts his head. Go on.
“Ryan was there.” I don’t miss the way my own voice softens.
Traitor. “We talked for the first time in years. And yeah, the circumstances were objectively terrible—me naked, us freezing, sitting on what amounted to a medieval torture device—but it was also kind of…” I search for the word.
“Refreshing. To be in the same room without him running away.”
Alex considers this, chewing thoughtfully. “What happens now?”
“What do you mean?”
“The consequences.” He says it plainly, the way someone might ask what time the store closes. “For the pool and getting caught.”
“That’s the million-dollar question. From what I’ve gathered, Dean Morris isn’t expelling anyone—apparently, the boosters would have his head if he kicked out the championship team. But he’s not letting it slide either.”
“So what then?”
“We find out tomorrow.” I drum my fingers against the water bottle.
“There’s a meeting. Ten a.m. at the library, which is a weird place to hear our verdict, if you ask me.
Everyone who got caught has to show up. Gerard, Drew, Nathan, Jackson, me, Ryan—the whole crew.
” I grimace. “In clothes, presumably, though nobody specified.”
Alex processes this with a slow nod. His eyes drift to the window, where a pair of students cross the sunlit quad with iced coffees from the rival café down the street.
“Kyle’s worried,” Alex says after a beat, and the admission clearly costs him something, because his gaze drops to his scone and stays there.
“About what? You two pulled the greatest vanishing act since D.B. Cooper.”
“He’s worried about you. All of you. He won’t say it, but he’s been checking his phone every ten minutes since Saturday.”
That hits me somewhere soft. Kyle, the guy who communicates primarily through glares and monosyllabic grunts, is being a worrywart. I file that information away under Things Kyle Would Murder Me For Knowing.
“Tell him we’re fine,” I say. “Or as fine as a group of guys who got arrested for skinny-dipping can be. The dean’s not going to throw us out. Worst case, we’re looking at some kind of community service or summer labor situation.”
“And Ryan?”
“What about Ryan?”
“He’s not on the team. He’s not a jock. He doesn’t have the shield.”
The shield? It takes me a second to understand what he means, but when I do, my stomach drops.
He’s right. Gerard, Drew, Nathan, and I are championship athletes.
The university has a vested interest in keeping us happy and enrolled.
Jackson’s a star quarterback with his own set of institutional armor.
But Ryan? He’s an astronomy major with no athletic affiliation, no booster backing, no safety net beyond his academic standing.
If the dean decides to make an example of someone, Ryan’s the obvious choice.
“I won’t let that happen.” The steel in my voice surprises me.
Alex nods, as if he expected exactly that response. He finishes the last crumb of his scone, folds the napkin into a perfect triangle, and stands. “Break time’s over.”
“Yeah.” I push myself to my feet, the chair scraping against the floor. “Alex?”
He pauses, half-turned toward the counter.
“Thanks. For asking.”
Another micro-expression. This one might actually be warmth, though with Alex, it’s hard to tell. He gives me the smallest of nods and drifts back to the register.
I toss my water bottle in the recycling bin and return to my station behind the espresso machine. The morning sun has shifted, the golden rectangles on the floor now stretching toward the door, and the soft jazz has cycled to something with a saxophone that feels too melancholy for a Monday.
Whatever happens tomorrow, we’ll face it together. That’s nonnegotiable.