12. Evan #3
Evan had to constantly remind himself that Rizzo had always been like this.
The younger man was loud, tactile, and thought personal space was optional.
He told himself he was reading more into their interactions than was there, and most of the time, that worked.
But then he would notice the ease they had with each other, the way CJ didn’t overthink his words or pull back when Rizzo laughed too loudly.
He touched Rizzo casually, guiding him out of someone’s way with a hand on the small of his back when Rizzo wasn’t paying attention, or bumping his shoulder when they sat together in the film room.
But what Evan really found interesting was that CJ didn’t flinch or shift away, like he’d always done with Evan, when Rizzo did the same to him.
It didn’t have to mean anything. People changed, and CJ was allowed to be easy and relaxed with someone who wasn’t Evan.
He told himself that often enough that he almost believed it, but the thought continued snagging on the same sharp mental edge every day.
CJ hadn’t just figured out how to be physically close to a teammate without fear.
He’d decided someone other than Evan was worth figuring it out for.
Once that thought took hold, it didn’t need encouragement to fester.
It lived quietly in the background of his days, surfacing whenever the noise fell away.
It showed up during the pauses between innings, or the drive home from the park, or in the rare stretches of time when there was nothing he had to focus on except his own thoughts.
Evan had built his life around motion for a reason.
Movement kept him from asking questions he didn’t really want the answers to.
A rare scheduling quirk gave the team an early-afternoon game, followed by almost two full days off.
Normally, Evan loved the days when it felt like the league had accidentally forgotten about them.
He got to sleep in, workout when he felt like it, and cook an actual meal instead of heating up one of the prepared ones he got from a meal plan.
For a little while, he could feel like an ordinary human being.
Right now, as the last of the adrenaline from that day’s game drained out of his system, the thought of the empty hours in front of him only made him restless.
So he focused on the familiar rituals he could control: stretching, recovery work, anything that didn’t require him to examine what was going on in his head.
Out on his balcony, Evan rolled his shoulder once, slow and deliberate, easing into the stretch the way the trainers had drilled into him over the years.
The resistance band pulled back against his grip, and the familiar tension grounded him in the moment.
He counted under his breath, holding the stretch before returning to the starting position.
The rhythm was supposed to be meditative as well as restorative, helping him anchor his thoughts in muscles and breath rather than letting them drift. It wasn’t working.
The late-afternoon air was warm, but a breeze off the bay cut through it, carrying the tang of salt and the smell of fried food from somewhere down the street.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, still somehow amazed that scent and sound from the neighborhood could reach him on the fourteenth floor.
Below him, Little Italy moved at an unhurried pace, and couples strolled past with shopping bags and cold drinks.
Someone laughed, loud and unselfconscious, and it was familiar enough that his attention snagged on it before he could stop it.
The band snapped back against his palm as he released it a beat too soon, and the sting was sharp enough to pull a quiet curse from him.
Irritation flared as he rubbed his hand, and he found himself leaning over the railing despite himself.
It didn’t take long for Evan to find Rizzo, perched on the low wall in front of the entrance, loose and unguarded. CJ stood in front of him, talking with his hands the way he used to, before he laughed, head tipped back and shoulders loose. Evan’s stomach dropped like he’d missed a step.
CJ could be friends with whoever he wanted, and Evan could lie to himself that it didn’t matter that CJ hadn’t chosen him. But this had all been easier when they were on separate teams, when CJ hadn’t wanted Evan in his life at all. Evan had learned how to live with that.
He turned away from the railing abruptly and faced the sliding glass door instead, breathing through the tightness in his chest. He knew with sudden, weary clarity that if he stayed out on the balcony, he would keep watching them, and he would let his thoughts jump to places they didn’t need to go.
Evan shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts and pulled out his phone, the screen lighting up in his palm.
He scrolled to a hookup app out of habit more than intention, and he stared at it, trying to remember the last time he’d used it.
Evan let out a slow breath as he considered it, thumb hovering over the app icon until the screen dimmed and finally went dark, and that felt like an answer somehow.
Evan slipped the phone back into his pocket and turned to stare at the city for a second before going inside.
He needed to be somewhere else for a while, somewhere that didn’t offer a view of the building entrance and the risk of seeing things he couldn’t stop thinking about.