10. Evan
EVAN
Coach Reyes had a voice like gravel scraped over concrete: raspy and heavy, and blunt enough to silence a room in half a second.
Evan liked that about him, that he didn’t waste time, didn’t sugarcoat.
He didn’t pretend that baseball was anything other than a business at this level, and if you gave it a chance, it would chew you up and spit you out.
He sat where he always sat, in the second row on the end, notebook open and pen ready even though he’d heard Reyes’s opening speech for five years running.
In his periphery, he saw CJ choose a seat on the other side of the small room, and his chest expanded in relief.
Reyes gave his usual speech about expectations and competition, and about spring training being a proving ground and not a vacation.
Around him, he could see the rookies nodding in acknowledgment while the veterans slumped in their seats, waiting for something new to be said.
He tried to focus on the meeting, but he couldn’t help but hear the faint scrape of CJ’s shoe on the floor as he fidgeted.
He hated that he still knew the rhythm of CJ’s movements, that he knew the way his breathing changed when he was concentrating too hard or bracing for something.
He hated that he still recognized anything about the boy he used to know.
He forced his attention back to the meeting, keeping his eyes fixed on Reyes, taking notes, and nodding when appropriate.
He was good at this. Good at control. Good at compartmentalizing.
But an hour later, when Coach Reyes dismissed them with a grunt and a pointed reminder to a pair of rookies to be on time tomorrow, the knot in his chest still hadn’t loosened.
Evan didn’t linger, but he didn’t bolt out of the room either.
Around him, his teammates began to stand, their voices rising with them.
Chairs scraped the floor, and a laugh echoed too loudly behind him as someone to his right snapped their gum.
He made his way to the hallway and the noise followed him, bouncing off the narrow walls and creeping under his skin.
Every sound was sharp, and the air was thick as it wrapped around him, tightening his chest like a vise.
He needed to get out of there. He didn’t need fresh air or to get out of the crush of people. He needed to get out.
Evan pushed past two rookies arguing about where to order dinner and a group trying to see if they could get a last-minute tee time.
Rizzo was loudly asking if anyone knew if scorpions could climb into duffel bags, slight panic lacing his voice, and Evan shrugged silently as he passed him to open the side door and step into the blazing daylight.
The sun hit him full in the face, bright enough to make him squint as he crossed the parking lot.
Even in February, the Arizona sun had a way of making everything feel brighter than it should.
His SUV had spent the morning baking in the open lot, leaving the interior stuffy and carrying the familiar scent of warm leather and sun-heated plastic, and he was already starting it and setting the AC to full blast as he slid in.
The steering wheel was warm beneath his hands, but he held on anyway, welcoming the mild burn against his palms if only because it gave him something tangible to focus on besides the storm brewing inside his head.
“Fuck,” he whispered, dragging a hand down his face before putting the SUV in drive.
The ride back to the hotel was twenty minutes, and Evan spent every second of it ordering his mind back into the tight, disciplined lines he lived in now.
He focused on the road in front of him. Focused on the air-conditioning finally cooling his skin.
Focused on the fact that CJ being here, on his team, meant nothing.
Meant nothing.
He kept repeating it to himself even though part of him—the stupid, traitorous part—knew it wasn’t true.
At the turn into the hotel parking lot, Evan hesitated.
The rhythmic tick-tick-tick of his blinker knocked against the inside of his skull and he tapped his finger on the steering wheel to the beat.
He stared at the hotel on his left, then the road stretched out ahead of him.
He needed air, real air, and space that didn’t feel like it was pressing down on him.
Somewhere quiet and wide enough that he could breathe without thinking about CJ’s voice or the way the past had resurfaced.
He switched his blinker from left to right, pulled back onto the road, and kept driving until civilization slid away in his rearview mirror.
Residential developments were replaced by low scrub and stretching desert, with saguaros standing like sentinels and the mountains rising in dusty blues and purples ahead of him.
The farther he drove from the hotel, the more the tension in his shoulders uncoiled.
A sign on the side of the road proclaimed that he was driving around White Tank Mountain.
A memory tickled the back of his mind, a conversation with Eleanor a couple of seasons back when they’d been talking about things to do outside of baseball.
They’d been sitting in the courtyard, watching the sunset burn orange as it slowly sank behind the towering range before them.
“You ever go out there?” Eleanor asked, nodding toward the mountains. “White Tank’s got a waterfall trail. It’s pretty and quiet during the week. Good for clearing your head.”
Evan had shrugged. “Haven’t had time.”
“You should make time,” she’d said, ignoring his lie and bumping his shoulder with an easy grin. “You’d love it. The waterfall is more like a trickle unless it rains, but it’s a pretty hike. I keep thinking you’d appreciate the quiet.”
He’d told her he would check it out, but he never had.
Now seemed like a good time to do that. He pulled up directions on his phone, and forty-five minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot at the trailhead.
It was early afternoon on a weekday, so there weren’t many vehicles, and he was grateful it wouldn’t be crowded.
He grabbed his water bottle and the backpack that lived in his trunk, and headed for the trail.
The earth under his feet was starved for hydration, forming a pale and gritty path that wound through tall, sun-faded rock formations.
Ocotillo branches clawed at the sky, and a lizard darted in front of him, freezing for a moment before scurrying into the desert, leaving a faint trail in the dust. The silence was heavy but peaceful, the kind that belonged in the desert and not the kind that came with the anxiety and avoidance Evan was more familiar with.
With every step, the knot in his chest loosened another fraction.
He didn’t think about CJ.
Except when he did. Because of course he did.
He thought about the way CJ had looked at him after that media scrum, older and broader, with a smile on his lips and traces of the boy Evan had once loved tucked into the corners of his mouth.
When that turned into a memory of the night they’d been caught, and the back of his eyes began to sting, he sped up until he was almost jogging.
As if he could outrun the way it still hurt and how little it took for the wound to break open.
Evan hiked until he reached the narrow canyon where the waterfall should have been.
The walls rose steep, curving around him and shading the rocks into cooler grays.
The thin trickle of water down the stone face was more of a suggestion than an actual waterfall, but he ran his hand over the stone and let the water cool his skin.
Then he sank onto a flat boulder, rested his forearms on his knees, and tipped his head forward.
Why now? Why did CJ have to show up again, on his team, in his city, when he’d finally, finally felt like he had a handle on his life?
He rolled his eyes and leaned back against the cool rock wall behind him.
The canyon swallowed the sound of his sigh, and somewhere above him, a bird chattered.
In his pocket, his phone buzzed, but he didn’t look at it.
When it buzzed again, he pulled it out, in case it was important.
It wasn’t. In the team chat, someone was complaining about the heat and someone else was trying to wrangle people for dinner. He was about to return it to his pocket when it buzzed again, and Eleanor’s name flashed on the screen.
Eleanor
I have cookies for you. Your friend has been back for hours. Did you run away?
Evan huffed out a sound that might have been a laugh any other time.
Evan
Believe it or not, I finally listened to you and went to White Tank. I needed some time alone.
A few dots appeared, and he could almost hear her smug reply when it came through.
Eleanor
Told you. It’s good for clearing your head.
He wasn’t too sure about that, but he did feel slightly better.
Evan
Can confirm.
Eleanor
Everything okay?
Evan stared at the words until they blurred. If there was ever someone he knew without a doubt he could trust, it was Eleanor. But that didn’t mean he could say anything.
Evan
It’s complicated.
The dots appeared, then disappeared, then appeared again.
Eleanor
If you need to talk later, call me. Or come by the office. But if you need space, take it. You’re allowed that, you know.
He swallowed hard because, yeah, he knew.
He just rarely let himself take it. Taking space meant giving his mind too much room to wander, too much room for memories and thinking, and for all the things he worked so hard to keep compartmentalized.
He slipped his phone back into his pocket and leaned his head against the rock again, letting his eyes drift shut for a moment.
He stayed there until the canyon shadows lengthened, the heat began to ease into something bearable, and his restlessness had dulled to something he could maybe, possibly, manage.