Eli
The first day I leave Mila with someone else feels wrong before I even get out of bed.
Nothing actually goes badly—that’s the stupid part. Mrs. Alvarez arrives five minutes early, wearing a soft cardigan and a calm smile that makes everyone in the room unconsciously lower their voices.
She’s divorced, in her sixties, raised her own kids, and has references so glowing that I’m half convinced she could calm a riot with one look.
Even Killian, who distrusts almost everyone by default, had only managed a reluctant, “She seems competent,” which, in his language, is basically a standing ovation.
He does his usual intimidating thing for the first ten minutes, standing there with his arms folded.
Mrs. Alvarez doesn’t even blink at him. She just pats his forearm once and tells him he worries like a man who was made too responsible too young, and I swear to God, I see Killian short-circuit for half a second before he recovers.
So, nothing goes badly. That should make me feel better, but all morning my chest feels packed too tight.
I keep checking the time. I keep asking if she’s okay, then hating myself for it because Mrs. Alvarez is clearly competent, kind, and patient.
My daughter is not being abandoned; she’s being looked after by a woman with grown children and solid references, while I go to classes and football training.
Julian told me that if I wanted Mila to have a normal routine, I’d have to survive the first day I let somebody else help.
Killian told me, in his usual soothing manner, that if I hovered one more time, he’d physically remove me from the room.
All of them were right in different ways, which is irritating as hell.
I’m already half-cooked from stress when I step into practice. The field looks the same as always, the air smells the same, the guys are loud in the same way they always are, but something in me stays split down the middle.
Part of me is lacing up cleats, adjusting pads, and listening to Luca run through the warm-up plan.
The other part is back at the Sin Bin, counting the ounces in Mila’s bottle and wondering if she’ll cry when she wakes up and I’m not there.
If Mrs. Alvarez will think I’m an idiot for labeling everything twice and wondering if somebody will send me a photo just to prove she’s okay, or if asking for that would make me even more unhinged than I already feel.
I miss the first change in the drill because I’m two beats behind, and Coach actually has to repeat himself.
That alone should earn me a blistering public teardown.
Usually, if I’m off by even half a second, he’s on me immediately, voice cutting across the field in front of everybody because football doesn’t give a shit about what’s happening in your personal life.
But today, he just looks at me for a moment, says, “Matthews, lock in,” and moves on. No shouting. No humiliation. No extra laps. The lack of it feels almost stranger than the thing itself would have.
I catch Luca’s eye a few minutes later, and he looks away too fast. Then I see Julian jogging back into position after the rep, sweat already darkening the collar of his shirt, and he gives me a quick nod.
A tiny, ugly little realization slides into place at the base of my skull: they said something to Coach.
The thought warms and humiliates me at the same time. I’m grateful. I also apparently need people running interference so I can survive the first day of football practice after becoming a dad.
That’s the thing nobody tells you about being this overwhelmed. Gratitude and humiliation start sharing the same oxygen until you can’t always tell which one you’re breathing.
Still, I get through practice. Barely and not gracefully, but I get through it. My routes are a step messier than usual, but I stop missing cues after the first third of practice and settle into the rhythm enough that my body remembers what it’s built to do.
Hit. Block. Adjust. Move. Catch. Listen. Repeat.
For an hour and a half, I’m a football player first, a father second, and a man with a legal folder full of trauma-shaped paperwork somewhere under his bed third.
It doesn’t fix anything, but it gives my brain somewhere else to go for a while.
By the time Coach blows the final whistle, I’m exhausted enough that the buzzing panic in me has dulled to a more manageable murmur.
The locker room after practice is the same loud, humid chaos it’s always been.
The first thing I do after showering is check my phone.
There’s a text from Mrs. Alvarez with a photo of Mila asleep in the duck-print sleeper she put her in after lunch, one tiny fist up by her cheek, and a caption that says:
Mrs. Alvarez: She took her bottle well and is down for a nap. She has very strong opinions about being burped.
I stare at the picture longer than necessary, relief hitting so fast it almost makes me stupid. Then guilt follows, because relief seems to be my body’s favorite way of making me feel terrible lately.
I dry off, pull on my boxers, and stand in front of my locker with my towel around my shoulders, staring at the clutter inside.
The weirdness starts because I know Jules is somewhere in here, and my body has apparently decided that the last few days weren’t enough of a mindfuck, so now we’re adding this on top.
This. These strange, sharp little stutters inside me whenever I look at him too long.
That stupid warmth low in my stomach when he says Mila’s name.
The way I keep noticing his hands, his mouth, the tattoos climbing his body.
Then there’s that quiet, creeping awareness that something in me shifted the night he stood in my room with Mila against his shoulder and the lamplight catching on his skin.
I’ve been trying not to look at it too directly because I’ve had enough upheaval for one lifetime, not to mention that looking at it means asking questions I’m not ready to answer.
What exactly am I feeling? Why now? Is this attraction, exhaustion, or gratitude curdling into something else because he’s here and steady, and I’m falling apart in ways only he seems able to witness without flinching?
I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.
I’m still standing half dressed when Luca says something across the room, low enough that I can’t make out the words but familiar enough that I turn my head automatically.
Julian is standing two lockers down from him, towel slung around his neck, completely naked and apparently without a single care in the world.
That in itself should not be earth-shattering.
It isn’t exactly a rare sight in a football locker room, and it definitely isn’t a rare sight when it comes to him specifically.
We’ve changed in the same spaces for years.
We’ve skinny-dipped. We’ve grown up together.
There is no objective reason for my brain to seize the way it does the second I actually register him now.
But it does.
God, it does.
He’s turned partly toward Luca, still talking about route timing for Saturday, and because he’s talking and has no clue what seeing him is doing to me, I can actually look for one disastrous beat too long.
I see the broad line of his shoulders, the dark ink covering his chest and arms, the hard length of his torso tapering into his waist, the muscle in his thighs from years of football, the thick, heavy curve of his cock between his legs—all of it so fucking male and familiar and suddenly not familiar at all.
It hits me in one hard rush, not just awareness but arousal, immediate and hot and so mortifying I actually stop breathing for a second. There’s no confusion about what my body is doing:
I’m getting hard in a football locker room because I looked at my best friend.
What the fuck.
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
I jerk my gaze away so fast it makes my neck hurt, but the damage is already done.
Luca keeps talking. Julian answers something under his breath, followed by a muttered “for fuck’s sake” that makes Luca laugh.
Neither of them notices me. Thank God. Thank fucking God, because if either one of them turned right now—if Jules caught my face or the way I’m standing or the pure panic blowing through me—I would probably walk barefoot into traffic before I tried to explain it.
My hands shake as I yank my locker wide open and grab the first pair of sweatpants I see.
I move too fast and nearly drop them, which makes me curse under my breath and glance sideways in reflexive terror, but they’re both still talking, still normal, still completely unaware that my internal life has become a crime scene in the last ten seconds.
Breathe.
Act normal.
Do not look over there again.
The worst part is that the second I tell myself not to look, every traitorous inch of me becomes aware of him all over again.
Mortification hits in waves with confusion right behind it.
Can straight guys get hard looking at their naked best friend?
I get dressed as quickly as I can without making it look frantic, which is harder than it sounds when you’re trying to hide both physical arousal and the fact that you feel like your skin is turning inside out.
I drag on the sweatpants first, then my shirt.
Then socks with fingers that still don’t feel steady, while my brain screams increasingly inventive forms of what the fuck.
I finish dressing, stuff my damp towel into my bag with way more force than necessary, then sling the duffel over my shoulder before I do anything even more pathetic, like run.
“Matthews,” Luca calls just as I’m about to make it out of the row.
I freeze and turn, praying with everything in me that nothing about my face is giving me away.
He’s pulling a shirt over his head, his expression easy but mildly puzzled. “You heading out already?”
“Yeah,” I say, and my voice sounds normal enough that I could cry from relief. “Need to get home.”