Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Stella
The athletic complex always sounds different in the middle of the day. Mornings are sharp—whistles, sneakers, clipped commands, the clean violence of people trying to earn things before breakfast.
But noon? Noon is softer. Recovery hour.
Bodies limping in and out. Trainers speaking low. Ice machines churning in back rooms. The faint medicinal smell of tape adhesive, muscle rub, and lemon disinfectant settling over everything like a film.
I should be in the library.
I know that.
We’ve got an away match tomorrow, and I told myself I’d spend lunch reviewing film and getting ahead on a stats assignment because if I don’t keep moving, I think too much.
But my shoulder’s been barking all morning, a deep hot ache under the joint every time I swing crosscourt, and Coach gave me a look during drills that meant, don’t be stupid, Cortez.
So now I’m here.
In the training room.
Waiting for an ice sleeve and trying not to make eye contact with anyone.
The room is partitioned into little sections with pale blue curtains that never fully close.
The vinyl treatment tables are lined up under fluorescent lights that make everyone look slightly sick.
There’s a soft murmur from the front desk.
A trainer is wrapping some football player’s wrist. Someone’s getting cupping done in the corner.
The TV on the wall is muted but cycling through sports highlights.
I sign my name on the clipboard and head toward the back fridge for ice packs because no one has stopped me yet and I know where everything is.
The floor is cold through the thin soles of my slides.
I’m halfway behind one of the curtains when I hear laughter.
Female.
Light.
Polished.
Not the kind that belongs in here.
I pause.
Not because I’m trying to listen.
Because I recognize one of the voices.
Isa.
I shift the curtain just enough to reach the freezer and keep my eyes down. There are three girls in the curtained section next to me.
I can see shadows through the fabric. Long legs crossed at the ankle. One girl perched on the treatment table, another sitting in a swivel chair, one leaning against the wall with a Stanley cup in hand.
Their voices are muffled at first. Bits and pieces. The soft rustle of shopping bags. The metallic click of a lip gloss cap.
“I’m just saying,” one of them says, “your mother is going to lose her mind if she sees that article.”
Isa laughs.
That laugh.
Easy. Bright. Texas sunshine in sound form.
“Oh, she already did.”
The girls giggle.
I slide the sleeve over my hand and tell myself to go.
I don’t.
Because something in her tone makes me still.
Not mean.
Not cruel.
Just… knowing.
“My mom sent me six screenshots before breakfast,” Isa says. “And then called me to say, well, don’t screw it up now.”
More laughter.
One of the girls gives a dramatic gasp. “She did not.”
“She absolutely did. You know how she is.”
I hear the faint clink of bracelets. The whisper of fabric.
“My God,” another voice says, “didn’t she literally tell you to get on that portal news the second it dropped?”
I go still.
My hand tightens around the ice sleeve.
What?
The curtain shifts slightly from the AC vent and I can smell perfume now. Something expensive and floral and soft, layered over the antiseptic air.
Isa sighs in this exaggerated, amused way.
“Please. The second his name hit the portal, she sent me a whole voice note.”
The girls start laughing again.
I can hear Isa smiling when she talks.
“She was like, baby, if Tristan Vale is coming to Stanford, you need to make sure he doesn’t leave without remembering your name.”
The girls howl.
One slaps the treatment table.
“Oh my God.”
“No, wait,” another says, laughing so hard her words blur, “say it exactly how she said it.”
Isa clears her throat and drops her voice lower, warmer, a little theatrical.
“Go on, baby. Lock him down. We need six-foot-three NBA baller babies in this family.”
The room erupts.
I close my eyes.
Just for a second.
Not because it hurts.
Because I need to make sure I heard that right.
The girls are shrieking now.
“Stop.”
“She did not say that.”
“She absolutely said that,” Isa says, laughing harder now. “I almost choked.”
My mouth goes dry.
I tell myself it’s a joke.
This is how girls talk. Exaggerated. Dumb. Performative.
I should leave.
I should absolutely leave.
But then one of them says, “I mean… she wasn’t wrong.”
And something inside me sinks.
Not fast.
Not dramatic.
Like a slow stone lowering through black water.
Because now they’re not joking.
Now they’re sharing the joke. I open my phone to voice notes and hot record.
I hear a zipper.
The rustle of paper.
“He was already in your lane,” one girl says. “Tall, old money, Harvard before Stanford? Your mom probably saw wedding china.”
Isa makes a sound—not denial, not exactly.
More like embarrassment softened by agreement.
“She definitely saw grandchildren with cheekbones,” she says.
I stare at the floor.
At the white tile scuffed gray in places.
At the little crack near the baseboard.
Anything but the curtain.
Anything but the picture forming in my head.
The girls keep talking.
About wardrobe.
About upgrades.
About “soft launch energy.”
And each phrase lands softer than shouting, which somehow makes it worse.
“My mom literally took me shopping that weekend,” Isa says. “Like, full emergency mission.”
A girl laughs. “No.”
“Yes. Beverly Hills-level intervention. New dresses, new heels, that whole thing.”
“Not the arsenal.”
“The arsenal,” Isa says, unashamed now. “The self-tanner. The gloss. The perfume. All of it to lock down Vale before the holiday season.”
The other girls are eating this up.
I press the cold ice sleeve to my forearm just to have something freezing against my skin.
One girl says, “Your mother is terrifying.”
Isa sighs again, but there’s affection in it. “She’s a Texas debutante. They all think they’re raising daughters for legacy deals with good hair.”
A pause.
Then, quieter:
“And honestly? She did tell me to stop being stupid and go after what I wanted.”
That lands differently.
The room shifts.
The laughter softens.
One of the girls says, “Okay, that part I respect.”
“Same,” another agrees.
“Because you did want him.”
I can’t see Isa’s face, but I can hear the smile leave her voice just a little when she answers.
“Yeah, who wouldn’t.”
Apparently, me.
That’s the part that hurts.
Not the mother.
Not the shopping.
Not even the strategy.
The yeah.
Because it means this wasn’t fake.
It was planned.
But it was also real.
And that is so much harder to hate.
One of the girls lowers her voice conspiratorially.
“So what was the game plan? Like… what exactly did your mom tell you?”
A beat.
Then Isa laughs, but it’s smaller this time.
“She said Texas girls know how to bag and tag a man without making it look like hunting.”
The girls squeal.
“Oh my God.”
“Say less.”
“She did not say ‘bag and tag.’.”
“She did,” Isa says. “And then she sent me a whole list.”
Now I can picture it without wanting to.
A perfect mother with a blowout and diamonds and a voice like polished steel, sending bullet points to her daughter about how to catch a boy with a last name.
I don’t realize I’ve stopped breathing until I hear myself inhale.
The voices pause on the other side of the curtain.
My leg kicks the cooler involuntarily.
One of the girls says, “Did you hear that?”
“Probably a trainer,” someone else mutters.
I don’t move.
Don’t blink.
My heart is beating too loud.
Then the conversation resumes, a little lower, a little closer.
“She told me,” Isa says, “if he’s already paying attention, never make him work too hard too fast. Men like to think they chose you.”
The girls make those scandalized, delighted sounds girls make when a secret is too good.
“But,” Isa continues, and now there’s something thoughtful in her voice, “I think she underestimated how much I actually like him.”
“Are you falling in love, girl?”
“Maybe…”
Silence.
A soft silence.
No giggles now.
“Maybe? Or Alrady are..?”
“Yeah,” Isa says quietly. “He’s loyal. Smart. Sexy. The complete package. And his kiss makes my toes curl.”
There’s no performance left in her voice now. No pageant charm. No audience.
Just a girl talking.
A real one.
And somehow that makes the whole thing worse.
Because now I can’t even write her off as some gold-digging Barbie in cleats.
She wanted him.
Her mother encouraged her.
She went after him.
And somewhere in all that strategy, she actually fell.
One of the girls asks, “Do you think he feels the same?”
The room goes very quiet.
I hold still.
Isa doesn’t answer right away.
When she does, her voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it.
“I think…”
She stops.
Starts again.
“I think part of him is with me.”
That sentence lands like a bruise.
Part of him.
Not all.
Even she knows.
The girl on the table says, “And the other part?”
Isa laughs once. A sad little sound.
“You tell me.”
No one answers.
They all know.
I know.
She knows.
The whole damn campus probably knows.
The other part is me.
And the fact that I’m standing here behind a curtain listening to it like a thief makes heat flood my face.
I should leave.
I finally take one step backward.
Then another.
Slow, silent.
And just as I’m about to slip out fully, one of the girls says something that stops me cold.
“You still going to keep trying?”
No hesitation this time.
“Yes. We haven’t done anything but kiss. Or put a label on anything but. We’re talking. He texts me like all the time and we hang out almost everyday. I will do what my mama said and lock him down.”
Quiet.
Firm.
A promise.
“Until he tells me not to.”
I stand there, ice sleeve cold and sweating in my hand, my shoulder throbbing, my mouth dry.
And all I can think is—Why wouldn’t she?
She saw him.
She wanted him.
Her mother gave her the playbook.
Her world gave her permission.
Something twists ugly in me.