Chapter 7 Jaden
Jaden
Taryn must be too distracted by our morning workout plan to dig back into the Bryson Moss conversation.
She gave it a break during practice yesterday but picked right back up when we got home and showered.
I think if I hadn’t dozed off on the couch while we were eating midnight cereal, she would have pulled an all-nighter on the subject.
Five a.m. workouts, though, are tough enough to get up for as it is.
And the list waiting for us when we walked in this morning was daunting.
I line my body up under the squat rack while Taryn spots me for my final set.
My shoulders set and grip in place, I lift the bar from the hooks and shuffle forward.
My first rep is clean, but when I lower myself again, there’s a sudden shift in the weights on my right side, and the bar ends up rolling along my scapula, pinching a nerve.
“Damn it!”
Taryn steadies the bar on my shoulders and maintains her grip as I walk it back to the rack.
I immediately pull my right arm across my body in a stretch and walk around the mat while I dig into the tight muscle with my left hand.
The clip, which I neglected to put back in place when I loaded on more weight, taunts me in the center of the floor.
I kick it in frustration, then retrieve it a couple of lifting stations down when the embarrassment from my tantrum burns my cheeks. I’m scaring the freshmen.
“I should have noticed, Jay. I’m sorry,” Taryn says, taking the clip from my hand and securing it on the bar.
I roll my neck, wincing from the sharp pain.
“No, that’s on me. Let me try to finish this out,” I say, ignoring the fact that my friend’s head is tilted in a cautioning way.
“Just spot me for one more,” I huff, centering myself under the bar.
With my hands set, I lift the weight on my shoulders. The zap of pain is instant and travels up my neck and into my ear. I plop the weight back in place and shake my head. I hate not being able to finish things.
“I’m gonna see if Aaron’s in the back,” I say, praying our trainer is in today. I don’t mind working with his grad students, but Aaron’s really the best.
Taryn nods and busies herself putting our plates away.
Sometimes, I think I don’t deserve her friendship.
I can be . . . a lot. She rolls with my impatience and constant drive, though, and never makes me feel as if there’s something wrong with me being the way I am.
I know there’s plenty of room for self-improvement.
It’s just that self-work gets in the way of tennis, and I will always pick tennis.
I need to learn to pick friendship sometimes.
I brush her arm before she turns her back to me and meet her eyes. “Sorry I didn’t listen.” I grimace and shrug.
“Chin up, Champ,” she says, touching my literal chin with her fingertip before sliding the next weight off the bar. “If I didn’t love your intensity, I wouldn’t stick around. Turns out, it’s kind of my favorite part of you.”
She winks before heading toward the weight rack, leaving me with yet one more surprising drop of insight from my pot-smoking, longboard-riding best friend. Her perspective on life is my favorite part of who she is.
I cross the hall to the training room, the smell of prewrap spray lingering in the air.
It’s supposed to have a citrus scent, but to me it always smells like the classic car paint shop a block away from my parents’ restaurant.
I wave my hand in front of my face, as if that will help the pungent smell dissipate, as Aaron exits the back with a fresh roll of tape in his hand.
“Hey, how’s my favorite Storm athlete?”
His wide grin always sets me at ease. A short Black man in his early sixties, he’s surprisingly strong for his age and height.
He’s a former college wrestler, and he basically built Cordon’s physical therapy program from the ground up when he graduated from the school four decades ago.
He tosses the tape roll to one of his assistants and stretches his right arm out to give me a sideways hug.
I grimace with the awkward shift of my arm, and Aaron spots it right away.
“Okay, let’s get a look at that, shall we?” He nods toward the back room, urging me to follow. I trail behind him, stretching my arm on my own again as we walk through a pair of tables where two athletes are getting deep tissue massages toward an open one in the far corner.
Aaron gets the pressure many of us feel to get back to our sports. I think it’s why our school’s athletes trust him to handle injuries. Well, most of us trust him. I can think of at least one Storm athlete who didn’t have faith, and his eyes are locked on mine right now.
“Crash! Can’t get enough of me!” Bryson lifts his arms from the ice bath, the entire thing rattling like a giant cocktail as his weight shifts.
“Crash, huh? There’s a story there,” Aaron says, patting the top of the table as he waits for me to hop up.
“Oh, there’s a story all right,” I say, giving Bryson a sideways glance. The two of us were rarely in here together when he was rehabbing his injury. That was my choice. Otherwise, I’m sure Aaron would have heard my nickname sooner.
Aaron chuckles as he wheels his stool close to me and glances over his shoulder.
Aaron knows Bryson and I have history. He’s the one I tattled to about Bryson’s pill abuse, not that it did any good.
I’m still a little pissed at Aaron for never reporting things to the AD.
As far as I can tell, my confidential conversation with him about it three years ago stayed so confidential it never left our circle of two.
“Damn, it’s icier between you two than that water you’re in, Moss,” he says through a gravelly laugh.
“Sure is, Aaron. I think that’s my cue to leave.
” Bryson lifts his soaking body from the oval tub in the corner of the room.
His white T-shirt clings to his chest, and his black compression shorts leave very little to my imagination.
When he pulls the wet shirt off, I stare a little longer than I should, dropping my gaze to my lap after catching Bryson’s smirk.
The flash of the white towel he’s wrapping around his waist tickles my periphery, but I don’t dare lift my eyes to confirm it.
Thankfully, Aaron guides my arm across my body and finds the exact point of pain on his first attempt, providing the perfect pivot away from my soaking-wet fake-boyfriend enemy.
“Yeah, you did yourself dirty all right. You lift too heavy, Jaden?” Aaron winks, knowing me too well.
“I forgot the clip,” I admit, but his “mmm-hmmm” tells me he knows I was probably pushing myself as well.
Aaron’s always preaching form over numbers to us, and mostly, I listen. I may have wanted to prove something today, though. Or work out some aggression. The missing clip was just the final nail.
“Let’s do some stretching and a good deep tissue massage. Maybe some cupping. I’ll be right back,” he says, popping up from his stool and heading back to the front room where a few more athletes have wandered in.
I do my best to ignore Bryson’s dripping wet body about a dozen feet away from me.
He’s deep into a conversation with one of his many female fans.
I overhear her ask, and I quote, “Which slutty Halloween costume do I look hottest in?” and force myself to tune both of them out with the help of one of Aaron’s taping technique pamphlets.
The dry reading does a decent job of distracting me until Bryson forces his way through my invisible barrier.
“I guess we’re all a little banged up at the beginning, huh?
” Bryson is suddenly close enough to me that a few droplets of chilly water from his hair land on my shoulder.
I flinch, but before I can brush the droplets from my skin, Bryson does it for me, which sets off a totally different physical reaction.
I feel frozen in place, a prisoner of the myriad goose bumps that are quickly spreading the length of my arm.
“I’m fine.” Other than the zaps of liquid fire darting up my neck from the pinched nerve and the lava trailing down my arm from Bryson’s touch.
“Yeah, okay, Crash,” he chuckles, lingering as he slips on an expensive-looking watch he took out of the nearby supply cabinet. It looks like a Tag Heuer, probably from his plethora of NIL sponsorship deals.
“Weren’t you about to take your cue?” I remind him, my gaze drifting to his after spending way too long on the glimmer from the platinum band he just snapped into place.
His mouth forms a tight-lipped smile, and he nods.
“Yeah. You’re right. I’ll leave you to it.
” He snaps with both hands and points at me as he backs away, like a car salesman leaving me alone on the lot.
And I can tell that, like that salesman, he’s not really leaving.
He makes it almost to the door before circling back, eyes squinted as he turns to face me again while adjusting the tucked end of his towel.
“It’s just, I thought you and I were good now. At least, yesterday, it seemed like we were. Didn’t we mend some fences? Or did I read that wrong?”
I can feel my mouth agape, and I can’t seem to close it.
I puff out an airy laugh and swallow down the dry lump that’s formed in my throat, gathering my thoughts as I avoid making eye contact with the way his stomach muscles curve into the top of that towel, and that trail of hair below his belly button.
“Bryson, I’m not sure why you’re speaking like a cowboy, but sure. We’re good. There’s nothing to mend here.” I shrug and force a smile to really sell it.
“First of all, I am from Oklahoma, so I’m kind of a cowboy,” he drawls. “And yeahhhhh, I’m not buying your answer. You’ve got beef still. So why don’t you let me have it?”
Shit.