Chapter 2 #2
They hand me a practice jersey.
My number stitched clean.
VALE across the back in block red.
I run my thumb over the letters.
It feels earned.
Photos happen immediately. Studio lights. Cardinal red. West Coast sun pouring through high windows.
By evening, it’s everywhere.
Instagram.
X.
Sports blogs.
By morning, ESPN runs a headline:
Harvard Transfer Tristan Vale Commits to Stanford — Final Four Implications?
My phone detonates.
Former teammates.
High school coaches.
Guys I haven’t spoken to in years.
My father texts:
Strong move.
Which is as close to approval as I get.
That night, the team refuses to let me disappear.
We end up at one of the upperclassmen houses just off campus. Music low. Pizza boxes everywhere. Someone puts last season’s tournament run on the TV.
They treat me like I’ve been here all along.
Trash talk.
Film breakdown arguments.
Debates about who’s taking the last shot in March.
At some point the noise thins out. A few guys head inside. I step onto the back porch for air.
The California night is cool. Quiet.
Footsteps behind me.
Kane.
He leans against the railing beside me, easy. Like we’re not about to be fighting for minutes. Or for the same girl.
“Big day,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“You good?”
I glance at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He shrugs. “New team. New system. Spotlight just doubled.”
He’s not wrong.
“And?” I ask.
“And we both want the same thing,” he says. “You know that.”
A title.
Minutes.
Impact.
Respect.
Her?
I nod.
There’s a beat.
“And Cortez?” he adds, casual.
My jaw tightens before I can stop it. “What about her?”
He smirks slightly. “You weren’t subtle in the gym.”
I huff a breath.
“Neither were you.”
Friendly.
Competitive.
Until it’s not.
I hold his gaze.
He nods once.
“I’m not letting anything personal fuck up our chances this season. How about you?”
“Hell, no, Haverhill. I came here to compete. To win. But I have to fly back to Boston and tie up loose ends.”
He claps my shoulder.
“I’ll make sure they’ve got your room ready with fresh minted chocolates on your pillow, country club.”
“I’m going to wipe the floor with that mouth of yours real soon, Haverhill.”
It’s not a threat.
It’s a promise.
He just laughs and claps me on the back. “We’ll see about that Vale.”
The plane cuts through a bank of clouds over the country, and somewhere below me California disappears.
I should sleep.
I don’t.
The cabin lights are low, everyone around me half-zoned out in first-class silence, but my brain won’t shut up. Not after today. Not after Stanford. Not after the gym.
Not after the gym.
Not after her.
I keep seeing it.
Not Stella’s face at first.
A flash of long tan legs.
That dark ponytail snapping high as she turned.
The sound of a volleyball detonating off hardwood hard enough to crack through my rib cage.
Then the whistle.
“Cortez! Get your head in the practice!”
Cortez.
The name still lands like a fist.
I shift in the seat and stare out at nothing but black sky beyond the window.
I should be thinking about the paperwork I signed.
The roster.
My dorm key card in the pocket of my carry-on.
The fact that by this time next semester, Stanford will be home.
Instead, I’m replaying Leo’s kitchen in Cambridge like it’s a film loop I can’t shut off.
Warm light.
Jazz low in the background.
Jade curled under a blanket on the couch.
Leo leaning against the counter with a glass of bourbon like he already knows I’m about to say something I can’t unsay.
“You look like you lost a duel,” Jade had said.
“Party was lame,” I told her.
Leo snorted.
“Brookline lame?”
“Expensive lame.”
Jade laughed, but she kept watching me.
I can still see the way Leo’s face shifted when I stopped joking.
“You okay?” Jade asked.
I remember looking at the soup in my hands and saying, “Define okay.”
Leo had pushed off the counter then, arms folded.
“Portal stuff?”
“Partly.”
He waited.
He always waits just long enough to make me hate how well he knows me.
So I gave him the version I could live with.
“Harvard’s not bad,” I said.
Leo lifted a brow.
“That sounds like a setup.”
“It’s just…” I remember dragging a hand through my hair. “It all makes sense. That’s the problem.”
Jade had looked between us.
“What does that even mean?”
And I’d laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.
“It means I’ve got the name, the school, the path, the draft buzz, the old-money resume my father can show off at dinner. I’ve got every version of a life that’s supposed to impress me.”
Leo had gone quiet.
Then:
“And?”
I’d looked at the fire.
At the bowl in my hand.
At the stupidly polished calm of their brownstone.
And said it.
“And I feel nothing.”
The plane jolts lightly through turbulence.
My fingers tighten once on the armrest.
Because that’s still it.
That’s still the truest thing.
Harvard made sense.
It just never felt alive.
I close my eyes for one second, and Leo’s kitchen sharpens again.
“You’re starting next year,” he said.
“Captain buzz. Your father’s happy. Donors are probably writing sonnets about your loyalty. So why blow it up?”
I remember looking right at him and saying, “Because it doesn’t feel like mine.”
Jade had gone still at that.
Leo took a sip of bourbon.
Then, quieter:
“That’s not the same as saying it’s wrong.”
“I know.”
“Then what is it?”
The answer sat in my throat for a second before I let it out.
“It’s gray.”
Jade frowned.
“Gray?”
“The campus. The weather. The people. The parties. The whole damn rhythm of it. Everything there feels muted. Like the place is holding its breath so it doesn’t disturb history.”
Leo had laughed at that, but not because he thought I was joking.
“You sound insane.”
“Maybe.”
“No, seriously, Vale. That sounds insane.”
“I walk into the gym and feel nothing,” I said. “I go to those parties and all I can think about is how easy it would be to stay forever and become exactly the kind of man everybody expects me to be. And the idea of that makes me want to put my head through a wall.”
That had shut him up.
For maybe three seconds.
Then:
“So this isn’t boredom.”
I remember looking up.
“No.”
And Leo, because sometimes he’s annoyingly good at this, said the one thing that still keeps replaying now, somewhere over the dark middle of the country while California gets farther behind me and somehow already feels closer than Boston ever did.
“You’re finally sick of becoming the version of yourself that makes the most sense to everybody else.”
I open my eyes again.
The cabin is quiet.
A flight attendant moves down the aisle with practiced silence.
The seatbelt sign still glows.
And all I can think is that he was right.
Harvard made sense.
My father made sense.
The girls, the legacy, the expected path, the clean old East Coast story of it all—
it all made sense.
None of it made me burn.
Stanford did.
I see sunlight on the runway.
Palm trees.
The ocean flashing blue in the distance from the freeway.
The gym humming with bodies in motion instead of echoing like a cathedral.
The team.
The warmth.
The possibility.
And then, because the universe apparently has no interest in subtlety, I see her again.
Stella.
Hair dark as wet ink under the lights.
Shoulders stronger.
Body honed into something sharper than memory.
That laugh.
My fists clench,
That laugh.
I scrub a hand over my face and let Leo’s voice cut back in one last time.
“This about a girl?”
That was when Jade sat up straighter under her blanket.
“It’s always a girl,” she said.
I rolled my eyes.
Leo just watched me.
Then, after a beat:
“What about freshman year at Royal Oaks?”
I stared into the fire, finally I said, “There was a girl.”
No names.
Didn’t need one.
Leo knew.
“You still think about her,” he said.
I remember huffing a laugh.
“Not all the time.”
So I told them.
Not everything.
Just the part I’ve never been able to replicate no matter how many girls or parties or polished, easy setups tried.
“When I kissed her, it was like sticking my hand in a socket,” I said. “Like every atom in my body lit up and I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
I can still see Jade’s face when I said it.
The way it softened.
The way Leo just stared at me over the rim of his glass.
Then Leo said, very quietly:
“And you let that walk away.”
The plane feels too small all of a sudden.
I shift again.
Look out at the dark.
Because yeah.
I did.
And now, after years of silence and distance and every wrong life I tried on in between, I walked into a Stanford gym and found her there like fate got tired of waiting for me to catch up.
I can still hear myself in that kitchen when Leo asked the last question.
“You transferring because of that? Trying to find lightning?”
And me, after too long:
“No.”
A beat.
Then:
“…Maybe.”
Jade laughed softly.
“Maybe you’re just bored.”
I remember looking down into my soup and shaking my head.
“No. Bored’s not right.”
Leo tipped his glass toward me.
“Then what is?”
I looked at the fire.
At their place.
At the kind of warmth that comes from a life that actually fits.
And I said it.
“Empty.”
The word had landed and stayed there.
It stays now too.
Not because Stanford fixed it.
Not because seeing Stella magically turned me into some romantic idiot who thinks the universe writes in neon.
But because all of it together says the same thing.
Harvard was never wrong.
It just wasn’t alive.
Stanford is.
And Stella standing there when I walked in?
That wasn’t coincidence.
That was the universe looking me straight in the face and saying:
Try freezing this time.
I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes.
The transfer was already the right move before I saw her.
Seeing her there?
That just made it impossible to lie to myself about it anymore.
Boston feels smaller when I land. My old dorm room looks temporary now. I pack slower this time.
Clothes.
Shoes.
Old game wristbands.
The Harvard jersey folded at the bottom of a drawer.
The guys throw a goodbye party in the common room.
“Can’t believe you’re leaving Harvard,” one of them says. “It’s Harvard.”
“Believe it or not,” I reply, “there’s life outside of Boston.”
A few of them laugh.
A few of them look at me like I’ve betrayed a blood oath.
Coach finds me alone in the gym before I leave for good.
“You did good work here,” he says. “Don’t waste it.”
“I won’t.”
He nods.
“Good luck, Vale.”
It’s simple.
It lands.
The real interrogation happens two nights later at dinner with Leo, Jade, and X.
We take over the back table at our usual place. Too much food. Too many drinks.
Jade is already emotional.
X is pretending he’s not.
Leo is watching me too closely.
“So,” X says, raising his glass. “To Tristan abandoning us for sunshine.”
I smirk. “It’s called ambition.”
“Sure it is,” Leo mutters.
Jade narrows her eyes. “Why do I feel like I’m missing something?”
Leo looks at me.
I look at my plate.
“Tristan?” Jade presses.
X leans back. “Oh, this is good.”
Leo exhales through his nose. “You gonna tell her, or should I?”
“Tell me what?” Jade demands.
Leo points at me. “He ran into his old flame. Cortez.”
Jade freezes. “Stella?”
I don’t answer fast enough.
Her mouth drops open. “She’s there?”
“Yes,” I say finally.
X’s fork clatters against his plate. “No way.”
Leo shakes his head slowly. “He ‘randomly’ runs into Stella Cortez in the Stanford gym, and suddenly Harvard isn’t the end-all-be-all anymore.”
“It was random,” I snap. “I didn’t even know she was there until this final visit. The contract was already basically signed before I even saw her.”
“How poetic,” Leo says.
“You horse’s ass,” I shake my head.
Jade is practically vibrating. “Back up. Back all the way up. Stella from high school? Velvet curtains, Stella?”
X bursts out laughing.
I close my eyes briefly. “We’re not doing this.”
“Oh, we’re doing this,” Leo says.
X points at me. “You kissed her behind the stage.”
“I remember,” I mutter.
“She ran,” X adds. “Maybe the kiss wasn’t as hot for her as it was for you.”
“She hates me. Tried to kill me with a volleyball when I entered the auxiliary gym. Her serve is lethal. My ears rang for two hours after the ball slammed into the concrete wall. Missed me by two inches.”
They all go quiet.
I rub a hand over my jaw.
“I liked her,” I admit. “I had a massive crush on her. I panicked when the lights came on. I didn’t say anything. And then the rumor started. She thought I humiliated her.”
Leo studies me.
“And you never fixed it,” he says.
“No.”
Jade looks genuinely offended on Stella’s behalf. “She was a scholarship kid, Tristan. You were… you.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I know.”
Jade suddenly slams her hands on the table. “That’s it. We’re flying out.”
“What?” Leo says.
“For his first game,” she insists. “I have to meet this girl.”
Leo stares at her. “How, Jade? I’m a walk-on now, remember? I’m still playing ball even though Tristan left me and the team. We still have a season.”
She waves him off. “We’ll figure it out.”
Leo looks at me again.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” he says, softer now. “You could’ve stayed. We could’ve built something here.”
That one hits.
“I know,” I say.
“And if she’s the reason,” he adds, “just be honest about it.”
I hold his gaze.
“She’s not the reason. How could she be? I didn’t know. I never looked her up,” I say carefully. “But she’s… unfinished.”
Jade’s expression softens.
“You still like her,” she says.
“Yeah, I do. Maybe more now than before.”
Leo shakes his head, “Just don’t screw it up again.”
X raises his glass.
“To unfinished business.”
We all clink.
And for the first time since signing, the move feels real.
I have a second chance. And next time, when the lights come on—
I’m not freezing or letting her walk away.