Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Isa
By eight-thirty Monday morning, I am trending in my own personal hell.
Not literally.
Literally, it’s Tristan and Stella.
Again.
Everywhere.
On TikTok edits with moody music and too much slow motion.
On sports blogs.
On campus gossip accounts.
On some truly unhinged Stanford athletics fan page that posted side-by-side photos of them in formalwear like they’d just gotten engaged instead of simply attending a dance in Rhode Island and detonating the internet with their cheekbones.
S&T
Stanford’s New Power Pair
Royalty x Royalty
East Coast Prince + Volleyball Queen
This one is burning up
I hate every single word of it.
Not because it’s inaccurate.
That would be easier.
I hate it because it fits.
Because I remember when T&T was just a joke.
A whispered little nickname.
Two letters that meant potential.
Possibility.
A vibe.
Something private and unfinished and maybe, maybe headed somewhere if he ever stopped looking over my shoulder for a ghost in dark eyes and long legs.
T&T had no substance.
S&T apparently has a full media package.
Fantastic.
Just absolutely fantastic.
I push through the doors of the athletic complex with my sunglasses on even though I’m indoors, because dignity is a fragile thing and mine is currently hanging by a thread made of lip gloss and spite.
The first thing I notice is how everyone is trying not to look at me.
Which is worse than if they just did.
Girls from soccer glance and then glance away too fast.
A student manager from baseball gives me that painfully sympathetic little half-smile people reserve for girls who got dumped by boys with publicists in their blood.
Two rowers pause their conversation when I pass and immediately start pretending they were definitely discussing electrolytes and not my humiliation.
I keep walking.
Head high.
Back straight.
Texas-sized poise.
Because if I let one single person smell blood in the water, I will have to start committing felonies before lunch.
My phone buzzes again.
Another text from a friend back home.
Babe are you okay??
followed by three screenshots and a lot of unnecessary exclamation points.
I don’t answer.
I don’t answer anybody.
Because I am fine.
Not fine fine.
But functional.
Mascara intact.
Still capable of deadlifting more than half the men around me.
That counts.
I make it to the locker room, toss my bag into a cubby, and stare at my reflection in the mirror over the sinks.
Hair up.
Skin clear.
Lashes on.
Game face.
There is no visible evidence that the boy I almost had— just put another girl on a private plane and took her to rewrite their tragic origin story like some East Coast version of a romance novel.
You would never know by looking at me that my chest has felt like a cracked windshield all morning.
I splash cold water on my wrists and head back out toward treatment because my left hamstring has been barking for three days and apparently the universe believes heartbreak should come with maintenance issues.
The training room is packed.
Monday means taped ankles, ice packs, compression sleeves, sore shoulders, stressed trainers, and the particular smell of menthol and ambition that clings to every athletic facility in America.
I sign in, grab a seat against the wall, and immediately regret existing.
Because two tables over, some lacrosse girl is whispering to her friend while staring at her phone.
And I know.
I know without looking what’s on the screen.
Still, because I’m weak and self-destructive and apparently committed to emotional self-harm before ten a.m., I look anyway.
Stella in that dark blue dress.
Tristan in a tux.
His face bent toward hers like the rest of the ballroom already disappeared.
There’s another one too.
The one everybody keeps reposting.
Them outside somewhere with wind in her hair and his hand on her waist and enough chemistry in one still image to short-circuit the east coast electrical grid.
I look away so fast my neck almost protests.
My jaw locks.
The trainer calls somebody’s name.
Tape rips.
A football player laughs too loudly at something near the whirlpool tubs.
Normal Monday.
My personal apocalypse is apparently not enough to stop the world from continuing.
Rude.
“Damn, Texas.”
I close my eyes.
No.
Absolutely not.
I know that voice.
Too deep.
Too amused.
Too close.
I turn my head.
And there he is.
Drew Travers.
Wide receiver.
Highlight reel addict.
Six-foot-whatever of muscles, noise, and misplaced confidence.
The kind of man who probably thinks subtlety is a European disease.
He’s standing beside the empty chair next to mine in sweats and a sleeveless Stanford training shirt, one massive forearm wrapped in tape, dark hair still damp from lifts, looking at me like I’m cotton candy at a county fair and he just got handed cash.
I hate him instantly.
I have always hated him instantly.
Everything about him is excessive.
Too broad.
Too loud.
Too smirky.
Too comfortable taking up space that does not belong to him.
There is probably not a single thought in his head that doesn’t arrive wearing shoulder pads.
He drops into the seat beside me before I can tell him not to.
“Good morning,” he says.
I blink slowly.
“Is it?”
That grin gets bigger.
“Touchy.”
“Observant.”
His gaze flicks to my phone, screen-down in my hand.
Then to my face.
Then back again.
He knows.
Everyone does.
He leans back like we’re just two friends having a nice little chat and not one girl actively holding herself together with acrylic nails and grace.
“I can be your new hashtag,” he winks.
I stare at him.
He does not flinch.
“Excuse me?”
“One upgrade package,” he says, gesturing vaguely to himself. “Bigger arms. Faster forty. Better truck capacity. I can be your new hashtag, Texas.”
I almost laugh.
That’s how annoying he is.
He says things so stupid they circle all the way back around to nearly funny.
“I would rather date a dishwasher.”
He puts a hand over his heart.
“Cold.”
“You smell like wet shoulder pads and ego.”
“That sounds made up.”
“It should.”
I glance pointedly at his chest. “And yet.”
He looks down at himself, then back at me.
“I smell elite.”
“You smell like if protein powder became sentient and got a DUI.”
That actually gets him.
He throws his head back and laughs, loud enough that the baseball player across the room looks over.
It is, unfortunately, a good laugh.
Warm.
Uncontained.
Annoyingly real.
I hate that too.
He looks back at me with something brighter in his eyes now.
“There she is.”
I narrow mine.
“Do not ‘there she is’ me.”
“You’ve been doing that fake pageant-smile thing all morning.”
The words land harder than I want them to.
Because it’s true.
I go still.
He notices that too and his voice drops a notch.
“People are staring.”
I cross one leg over the other and fix my gaze on the trainer’s desk.
“Yes, Drew. I have noticed.”
He follows my line of sight, then leans in just slightly.
“Want me to start a fight?”
I turn so fast I almost throw my own neck out.
“What?”
“With who?” he says, shrugging one shoulder the size of a tactical vehicle. “The internet? The pity squad? Volleyball Twitter? I’m flexible.”
I just stare at him.
Because that was not the answer I expected.
At all.
He shrugs again.
“What? You look like you might enjoy violence today.”
I let out one short, disbelieving breath.
“I am not starting fights.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“Also you are not my bodyguard.”
His grin returns.
“No, but I’d be excellent at it.”
God.
He is such a neanderthal.
A very large, very smug, very unfortunately good-looking neanderthal. Like someone fed him nothing but creatine and bad ideas. I look away before that thought can do anything embarrassing.
“Don’t you have a ball to hog somewhere?”
“Later.”
“I’m shocked you had time to stop admiring yourself in reflective surfaces.”
“Not all of us have your discipline, sweetheart.”
My eyes cut back to him.
“Do not sweetheart me.”
His gaze drops to my mouth for a second.
Then back up.
Too slow.
Too deliberate.
And all at once I remember that Drew Travers did, in fact, put the moves on me once.
Before Tristan went quasi-available.
Before I let myself believe maybe I could make the safer choice and actually mean it.
Before Stella Cortez came walking back into his orbit and every false piece on the chessboard got swept away.
Drew asked me out after a football game in September.
I told him I’d rather chew denim.
He looked delighted.
Psychopath.
“Okay, Texas,” he says now. “What do you want?”
That throws me.
“What?”
“You’re glaring at everyone like you’re about to start handing out death sentences. What’s the move?”
I laugh without humor.
“The move is surviving the training room without committing homicide.”
“Done. Sit by me.”
I blink.
“That is your solution?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s stupid.”
He tilts his head.
“People will stop giving you pity eyes if I’m sitting here looking mean enough to eat drywall.”
I look him over.
Massive shoulders.
Thick forearms.
Thighs like somebody sculpted a bear and taught it route running.
He is, objectively, alarming.
And somehow, even more annoyingly, he knows it.
“You look more like you’d eat crayons,” I say.
His grin flashes.
“Only the good flavors.”
I laugh.
A real one this time.
Fast, involuntary, out before I can stop it.
And the second it happens, his expression shifts.
Not softened.
Satisfied.
Like making me laugh was the assignment and he just nailed it.
I hate that.
The trainer finally waves me over.
“Isa, table three.”
I stand.
Drew looks up at me from the chair, sprawling and overconfident and entirely too aware of his own body.
“You gonna be mean to me forever?”
“Yes.”
He nods like that’s perfectly reasonable.
“Cool. I’ll wear you down.”
I stare.
The smile he gives me then is all white teeth and broad male confidence and the kind of steady attention that would probably feel predatory from someone else.