Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Stella
The whispers start before the match even ends.
Not loud.
Not obvious.
Just… there.
Like static.
Like something crawling under your skin that you can’t quite scratch.
I hear it when I rotate to the back line.
I feel it when I step up to serve.
Quick glances.
Half-smirks.
Phones tilting just a little too casually from behind our bench where the student athletic trainers sit, snickering while looking at their phones.
I don’t ask anyone.
I don’t need to.
I already know.
“Cortez, it’s your serve.”
Coach’s voice cuts through everything.
I step to the baseline.
My fingers tighten around the ball.
One bounce.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Always five.
My ponytail is high today — tight, sleek, pulled so clean it lifts my cheekbones. No bow. No softness.
Armor.
I inhale.
Exhale.
Toss.
Jump.
The serve explodes off my hand.
The crack echoes across the gym, sharp and final, the ball slamming into the hardwood untouched.
Ace.
“Again!” Coach barks.
I don’t smile.
I don’t react.
I just reset.
Five taps.
Again.
Harder.
By the third serve, my palm stings.
Good.
Let it.
Let it hurt.
Because pain is clean.
Pain doesn’t whisper.
The whistle slices through the noise. That’s game.
The match ends in a blur of squeaking sneakers and water bottles cracking open.
But whispers don’t stop.
They get louder.
Looser.
Less careful.
I catch pieces as I walk to the locker room.
“…T & T…”
“…basketball and soccer royalty…”
“…guess she fumbled…”
“…thought she was too good…”
“Did you see the viral post. They kissed right in the Econ building. Mid day!”
My jaw tightens.
I keep walking.
Head high.
Back straight.
Like I don’t hear a damn thing.
The locker room is worse.
Always is.
Confined space.
No escape.
Delia throws me a look the second I walk in.
Not pity.
Not judgment.
Just… awareness.
But the others?
They’re not subtle.
Phones out.
Screens glowing.
A couple girls whisper and then look right at me.
One doesn’t even bother lowering her voice.
“Guess Vale moved on real quick.”
That does it.
I rip open my locker harder than necessary.
Metal slams.
The sound echoes.
Conversations stutter.
I don’t turn around.
Not yet.
Because if I do, I might actually say something I can’t take back.
And I don’t lose control.
Not anymore.
Not like before.
But then someone laughs.
Soft.
Sharp.
Directed.
And something in me snaps.
I spin.
“Say it louder.”
Silence drops like a weight.
No one expected that.
Good.
“I don’t give a fuck,” I say, voice cutting clean through the room.
A few girls flinch.
Others freeze.
“Okay?”
I step forward.
Not aggressive.
Just… unbothered.
Controlled.
“I’m the one who turned him down.”
That lands.
Hard.
“You can hashtag it if you want,” I add, a sharp smile tugging at my mouth. “#rejectedVale. Go ahead.”
A couple of them look away.
One mutters something under her breath.
I don’t wait for a response— instead I slam the locker shut.
Metal cracks through the room like a warning shot.
And I walk out.
The hallway outside the gym is quieter.
But my blood is still hot under my skin.
I shove my arms through my hoodie, ponytail swishing high behind me, bag slung over my shoulder like I’ve got somewhere better to be as I get on the bus.
Hours later we roll back to campus and unload at the athletic complex. I ‘d rather be anywhere but inside their narrative.
And then—because the universe has a sick sense of timing. I walk straight into them.
Tristan.
And her… the Texan.
T & T.
The new campus headline.
They’re mid-conversation when I come around the corner.
They stop.
All three of us do. The two of them look like they just strolled out of the weight room. I guess they now workout together to.
For half a second, everything just… stills.
Tristan’s brows lift slightly.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Awareness.
His eyes move over me — quick, sharp, like he’s checking for damage.
Like he’s trying to read me.
I don’t let him.
Isa notices it.
Immediately.
Her cheeks flush.
Not shy.
Territorial.
Her hand slides into the crook of his arm.
Deliberate.
Claiming.
She presses closer to his side, body angled into his like she belongs there.
Like she chose him.
Like he chose her back.
Her chin lifts just slightly.
Message received.
My stomach twists.
Fast.
Sharp.
Ugly.
I hate it.
I hate that I feel it at all.
So I don’t give it oxygen.
I don’t slow down.
I don’t speak.
I just—
Turn my head.
Look away.
And keep walking.
But I do one thing.
One small thing.
My ponytail swishes sharper.
Higher.
Like punctuation.
Like I’m done here.
Like they don’t matter.
I don’t look back.
Because I won’t.
Because I chose this.
I chose me.
I chose the court.
The grind.
The future I fought for.
Not boys.
Not whispers.
Not headlines.
So why—
Why does it feel like I just lost something anyway?
After that, I flatten out.
Not in a dramatic way.
No crying in bathrooms. No angry music. No late-night spiral texts I’ll regret in the morning.
I just… go still.
The kind of stillness that looks disciplined from the outside.
Coach loves it.
Delia hates it.
I stop lingering after practice. Stop sitting around in the locker room. Stop giving anyone the chance to read my face before I’ve decided what expression I want on it.
I’m up before dawn.
Bleachers.
Lift.
Classes.
Film.
Library.
Laundry.
Protein.
Sleep.
Repeat.
Everything gets folded into clean corners.
Everything gets measured.
Even my coffee order becomes a system.
Hot. Always hot. Even when Palo Alto is eighty-two and bright enough to make the sidewalks glow.
No parties.
No mixers.
No “accidental” dinners in the athlete hall.
No stopping to chat on the quad.
If it doesn’t help me win, it doesn’t deserve my time.
That’s what I tell myself.
And for a while, it works.
Practice gets easier.
Not physically.
Mentally.
Because numb is useful.
I’m quicker in rotation.
Cleaner on serve receive.
Meaner at the net.
Coach notices.
She doesn’t compliment me much, but I catch it in the little things.
A longer look.
A short nod.
My jersey hanging in the first slot before road matches.
I’ve become reliable again.
Predictable.
A machine in spandex with a good GPA.
The girls who wanted my spot stop whispering so much once it’s obvious I’m not giving them anything to work with.
The rumor pages move on too.
Fresh scandals always arrive.
Fresh faces.
Fresh hookups.
Fresh athletes to chew up and spit out.
Campus resets faster than people think.
Kane resets too.
That one catches me off guard.
Not because I thought he’d pine.
Kane doesn’t pine. He pivots.
One week he’s eating alone with the team.
The next, there’s a girl from track sitting across from him in the athlete dining hall, laughing into her smoothie while he steals her fries.
She’s pretty.
Fast-looking.
All sleek limbs and shiny ponytail and easy confidence.
He looks relaxed with her.
Not intense.
Not careful.
Just easy.
I register it.
Then I move on.
Or I try to.
Tristan is harder to pin down.
There are no big moments.
That’s what makes it worse.
It’s all flashes.
A laugh I hear before I see him.
That stupid dark lock dropping over his forehead in the quad.
His watch catching light outside the business school.
Isa’s hand on his arm.
A photo on a Stanford athletics page.
A tagged clip on somebody’s story.
Enough to know he’s fine.
More than fine.
He’s folding into Stanford the way expensive things always seem to fit wherever they land.
The campus likes him.
The team likes him.
The cameras definitely like him.
And Isa—
Isa makes sense beside him.
She looks polished where I look practical.
Easy where I feel sharpened down to function.
The kind of girl who knows how to stand in sunlight and let it adore her.
They look right together.
That’s the part I hate.
Not because I want him.
Because I don’t want to care whether he looks right with anyone at all.
No one shows at my sunrise bleacher workouts anymore. I’m on my own just how I had asked.
It’s somewhere in September and everyone has settled into patterns.
The campus fills out.
The energy changes.
It’s no longer athletes in a bubble.
Now it’s real college again.
Freshmen getting lost.
Clubs tabling on the quad.
Sorority girls in little skirts pretending they don’t sweat.
Engineering boys living on iced coffee and panic.
Life keeps happening.
And I am in it, but not exactly part of it.
I go to class.
I answer questions.
I hold doors.
I study in the library under that same stupid green lamp on the second floor because the light is less harsh there.
I do my laundry late enough that the room is empty.
Iron my clothes because wrinkled fabric makes me irrationally irritated.
Meal prep on Sundays with military precision.
The girls on my floor start calling me “domestic” as a joke.
I laugh when they say it.
But the truth is uglier.
I’ve made my life so tight there’s no room for surprise.
No room for softness.
No room for anyone to get in.
And maybe that’s smart.
Maybe that’s maturity.
Maybe that’s me learning.
Or maybe it’s just lonely.
That’s the part nobody warns you about.
How choosing yourself can still feel empty in the quiet moments.
How being right doesn’t always feel good.
How discipline keeps you warm in the daylight and cold at night.
I don’t miss chaos. I miss being looked at like I was someone’s something…
That realization irritates me enough that I shut my laptop too hard one night in the library and get glared at by a grad student in wire-frame glasses.
Fine.
Whatever.