6. Evan
EVAN
The annual gauntlet of physicals never got easier.
Same stations, same tests, mostly the same trainers barking out names.
Evan knew the drill, but it still felt like moving through a carnival crammed into too small a space.
Everything was loud and crowded, and the weight of expectation hung in the air.
Every poke, every measurement, every scribbled note was another reminder that his body was both a machine and an investment.
He had gotten very good at letting the trainers see only what they needed to.
He was sitting on the edge of a table when he felt the air shift.
Not really, of course. But something in him went taut, his body recognizing the change before his brain did.
The blood pressure cuff tightened around his arm, and he fought to keep his eyes focused on his hands.
He didn’t have to look to know who had entered the room.
Still, when he let his eyes lift in the quickest glance, his stomach tightened.
CJ.
It was unreasonable to think he wouldn’t see him, but he had stupidly hoped for more time. But there he was, looking the same but not the same. It was the not-the-same that landed hardest.
He was taller than Evan remembered, broader through the shoulders, with a face that had finally figured out how to grow even stubble.
Anyone looking at him would think CJ carried himself with a confidence that came from years of experience in the league.
But Evan knew better, even after all this time.
He could see the restless tension in CJ’s hands and the way he was forcing himself to stand still. His confidence was a performance, and Evan felt his lip curl in annoyance that some part of him remembered exactly how to read CJ, even when he wished he didn’t.
CJ stood in line for the station next to Evan’s, jaw locked, trying not to look like the walls were closing in on him.
Evan knew that look too. He remembered the way CJ used to get cagey when rooms got too loud and pressed too close.
He used to talk him down from it, cracking dumb jokes until the edge eased.
Once upon a time, this would have been the moment when he reached out to calm him.
His mouth remembered how to shape his name, and his hand remembered the curve of his shoulder.
His muscle memory stirred like it was waking from a long, stupid nap.
The cuff hissed and deflated, dragging Evan back to the present, and he forced his eyes down. But they rose again like he wasn’t in control of them, and CJ’s head turned at the same time, their eyes locking on each other.
It hit like a pitch square to the chest. Not the kind of glancing contact you could shrug off.
No, this hurt like a direct line back to a time when eye contact alone had been enough to speak volumes.
Evan’s heart tripped over itself as that old familiarity slammed into him and some part of him registered when the trainer taking his pulse looked at him in concern.
For a breath, the chaos of the room faded, and it was just them, suspended in silence.
But it wasn’t something he could afford.
Not here. Not with teammates and trainers and years of distance packed into the space between them. Not when everything was at stake.
So, he looked away first. He took a deep breath and turned his head, calm and deliberate, like there was nothing that mattered in front of him.
He angled his body toward the trainer, slid off the table, and pretended it didn’t cost him anything.
Pretended his chest didn’t ache from the slam of shutting that door.
The noise rushed back in, and he let it flow over him, moving on to the next station, letting routine take over the way it always did.
“Any soreness?” Marco asked, rotating Evan’s arm carefully through the arc. The trainer had the forearms of a lumberjack and the patience of a saint, and his expertise had saved Evan from injury more than once.
“No,” Evan said. It was true today, but it hadn’t always been, and it wouldn’t be again. That was the job.
“Keep up the band exercises,” Marco said, attention fixed on his tablet.
“I will.”
“You always say that.”
“I always mean it.”
Marco looked up at him and huffed in annoyance. “Eyes on me, Delgado. You’re not my only player today. I need you to pay attention.”
The faint reprimand stung, and Evan felt his cheeks heat. He hadn’t even realized he’d drifted. But he could feel it now, the pull from the direction his body kept wanting to turn toward. The prickle of being watched sat like an electric charge under his skin.
“I’m here,” he said, locking back in until Marco was done with him.
The next station was the one where they strapped a band around his ankles and made him walk across a strip of turf while a camera tracked his hips and knees. It was ridiculous, but they all pretended it wasn’t.
The trainer smirked and said, “Strut,” and Evan swallowed a laugh and did the stupid strut because his glutes deserved the attention, apparently.
Someone wolf-whistled, someone else tossed in a “work it,” and he ignored it all, relegating it to background noise.
He was good at this kind of pretending. He had practice.
He finished the walk, the reverse walk, and the side shuffle.
“Beautiful,” the trainer said, making notes. “Posterior chain is happy.”
“I have so many comments I could make,” Evan replied, and the trainer snorted.
“Vision is open,” she said without looking up. He had been dismissed.
The eye chart was propped in a corner on an easel, the lines of letters marching smaller and smaller on each row.
Evan handed the clipboard with his paperwork to the team’s optometrist, who flipped through it with the kind of efficiency that came from years of practice.
When he was satisfied, the doctor set it aside and gestured for Evan to sit on the stool in front of him.
The position brought them close enough that Evan could feel the man’s breath across his cheek when he leaned in.
A bright light flicked on, and the doctor studied each eye in turn, the beam sweeping across his pupils from millimeters away.
Evan kept still and tried to ignore how uncomfortably close the doctor was.
When he pulled away, Evan scanned the optometrist’s face, but his expression stayed neutral as he made notes on Evan’s paperwork.
“Left eye first,” the doctor said, slipping a pair of testing glasses onto Evan’s face and lowering the blinder to block his right eye.
Evan read the line smoothly, voice even and unhurried. The next line, smaller, came just as easily. The final one he delivered without pause, each letter crisp and sure.
The doctor jotted something on the clipboard. “Switch,” he said, then flipped the blinder to cover his left eye.
Evan shifted and settled into the change in view, then ran through the letters again with the same steady cadence. When he finished, the doctor took the glasses off and gave a small nod. “Sharp as ever.”
Behind him, one of the pitchers muttered, “He always crushes the eye test. Catchers are like bats but with better knees.”
Evan turned his head and grinned over his shoulder.
“Better knees? Please. Every time I squat, it sounds like someone stepping on bubble wrap. Somewhere out there, an orthopedic surgeon is tracking my career like it’s the stock market, just waiting for me to retire so he can finally start a college fund for his kid. ”
Without missing a beat, the strength coach chimed in, “Maybe he’s got twins. With those knees, you could fund two.”
The comeback wasn’t even that funny, but it was so unexpected from a man they all thought didn’t know how to smile that the group fell silent before dissolving into raucous laughter.
His own laugh slipped out before he thought about it.
The surprise wasn’t the sound itself, but the way it pulled him straight back to a time when laughter like this had lived on midnight bus rides and in dim dugouts, carried on loud voices and bad jokes until his ribs ached.
He’d forgotten how good laughter felt when it snuck into his bones and loosened things he didn’t know he was clenching.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled, and he didn’t need to look to know that CJ was watching him again.
He stood and grabbed his paperwork, thanked the doctor with smooth, practiced words and a quick handshake, then slipped through the door without looking back.
The hallway was cooler, quieter, and he drew in a steady breath, trying to clear the static CJ seemed to leave behind.
By the time he reached the sign-in table, he was steady again.
“Looking good, Millie,” he said, handing his paperwork to the athletic trainer stationed there.
Millie had been with the team longer than some of the players had been alive. She gave him the same once-over she always did, eyes narrowing like she could spot a hidden injury from the way he breathed.
“Flatterer,” she muttered, unimpressed as always as she flipped through the pages to make sure everything was complete. “You’re cleared. Go home and rest. The flight to Arizona leaves early tomorrow.”
Evan nodded, grateful for her brusqueness, and turned toward the hallway that funneled players back to the main locker room. The fluorescent light reflected off the cinder block walls, and for a moment, the noise of the training room dulled behind him. He finally exhaled.