Chapter Two Max
Chapter Two
Max
More. More. More.
Max Simmons’s heart pounded, sweat trailing down his throat and dipping beneath the neckline of his emerald-colored crew-neck sweatshirt. His ear warmers kept the moisture on his forehead from dripping into his eyes, but didn’t completely keep out the chill. Bitter-cold mountain air did that.
Just because it was January in Virginia didn’t mean he had the luxury of sprinting indoors.
They saved that for Division One schools.
Instead, he and the rest of the track and field team started every other winter practice scraping snow from the track when the maintenance department forgot to put the covers on.
Coach said it didn’t count as a warm-up, and Max was inclined to agree.
Faster. Don’t drag your left foot, carry through with your right, tighten your abs. Controlled breaths as you—no, not like that. You made that mistake last time.
Max increased his speed, pushing against the perpetual bite of air from the nearby Ash Mountains and into the valley where his university was nestled. It was more hills than real mountains, he thought, but Ash Hill University didn’t have the same ring to it.
He surged forward, closing his eyes against the wind. He didn’t need to see the finish line—it was something he felt in his marrow, in the deepest recesses of his brain.
Which is how he knew, when he’d crossed it, his times still hadn’t improved.
“Fuck,” he gritted out, slowing from a sprint to a jog, hands on his head. His lungs hurt in the best way, sweet, hard-earned pain lancing his chest. When he looked at Coach Miller and Coach looked away without making eye contact, Max muttered another, more heartfelt, “Fuck.”
Most of his teammates were already either in the showers or home for the evening. Max would have preferred those places over this one, but he was here still, the altitude biting at his lungs alongside the last vestiges of alcohol-induced regret.
It was two beers, days ago. Two and a half, maybe. And it had been Coach’s birthday. It wasn’t often Coach blurred the lines with the team, so when he agreed to go out, Max did too. He’d hoped to pick Coach’s brain uninhibited, dig into the secrets of how to improve his times.
How to improve everything, really, so he wouldn’t screw up so badly anymore.
But Coach hadn’t had time to talk to Max with everyone else vying for his attention, and Max was left alone in a room full of people. When someone offered Max another round, he took it, desperate to feel something.
He wouldn’t make that mistake again—the beer or the feelings. Alcohol worked differently in his athlete’s body, disappeared from his blood but lingered in his mind like cigarette smoke in a thrifted shirt.
“Hit the showers.” Coach’s voice echoed over the track and cut off with a crackle of static.
There were two other people out here, but Max knew the comment was meant for him.
No one else pulled that specific color of disappointment from Coach’s voice.
The girls he passed, high jumpers, waved at him.
One of them blushed, which made Max’s face go hot in turn.
Girls were a distraction, one he couldn’t afford, so he pretended not to see her wave him over.
Fifteen minutes later, too-hot water stung his frigid skin as he replayed his sprints in his head.
Right before take-off, he’d adjusted his left foot on the block.
Had he been back in position when the tone went off?
One of his spikes was a little loose this morning.
Or maybe it was the ear warmers. His sweatshirt was a little bigger than his normal sprinting unitard and had way more wind resistance. And there was a lot of wind tonight.
He was standing at the mirror, dragging a towel over his chest and through his hair when Coach’s voice bellowed through the room, bouncing off the walls and hitting Max square in the chest again. “Simmons. My office, once you’re dressed.” Coach coughed and muttered, “Please and thank you.”
Max saw this coming. The same way he could tell when he was doing his best, he also had an aptitude for pinpointing the exact moment he’d let others down.
He’d take the verbal lashing, or the wind sprints, or whatever other punishment on the chin.
No way Coach was madder at him than he was at himself.
He watched his reflection in the mirror, steam rising from his head.
His chest and neck were still red from the cold, the physical exertion of running in the dead of winter, and his scalding shower hadn’t helped.
His brown hair hung in clumps, but it would dry to soft waves, overdue for a trim.
He scrubbed his hands down his face, letting out a slow, heavy sigh.
“Hey, Simmons.” In the mirror, Nolan Aghil’s sable eyes met his tawny ones. “Doin’ okay?”
Nolan was on the relay team; he was the second to Max’s anchor. Nolan was the one who’d invited him to Coach’s birthday party. To most places, come to think of it.
Max tried not to be angry at Nolan for that. It wasn’t Nolan’s fault Max had over-imbibed and was still paying the price. No, that all fell firmly on Max’s own shoulders. Like he said, he was the anchor.
He was used to the extra weight.
“Fine.” Max shrugged. “What’s up?”
“My roommate got his hands on the new GTA. Was gonna grab some food from the Q and check it out, if you’re interested.” Nolan shifted on his feet. “It’s been a while since we hung out outside of practice. And I think they’ve got the grilled wraps today.”
The wraps were pretty good. Max’s favorite, if he thought about it hard enough. Did Nolan know that? They’d eaten enough of them in sophomore year, when they weren’t so worried about being cut from the team that they followed the dietician’s instructions to the letter.
Max glanced in the mirror again. Chest still bright red, lungs still tingling from the earlier exertion.
Exertion that hadn’t been enough.
“Some other time?” He swallowed. “Coach called me to his office.”
A cop-out, and they both knew it. Nolan’s shoulders dropped, but Max told himself it was a trick of the light, the flickering one in the corner, plus the steam from the showers messing with his perception.
“No pressure,” Nolan said, except Max didn’t know what no pressure was supposed to feel like. Nolan hefted his emerald-green, track-and-field-branded backpack onto his shoulder by one strap. “I’ll catch you tomorrow at practice?”
Max dipped his chin in a nod.
Once Nolan was gone, Max stared at himself again. At some point during their conversation, he’d taken to gripping the porcelain sink, and his knuckles nearly matched now. They cracked when he let go.
With a fierce shake of his head, Max dried off and got dressed. Time to face the music, even if it was a funeral march.
Coach Miller’s office was tucked in the back of the locker room, and Max had to dodge extra hurdles, a bin of shot-put balls, and, randomly, the head of the mascot costume. Beady bug eyes followed him as he approached the door. Max shuddered.
Night had fallen while Max was in the showers, Coach’s office now softly backlit with the desk lamp he preferred over the stark and unforgiving beam of the strip light overhead. As Max sat across from his mentor, he watched the last of the day slip below the Ash Mountains.
If he’d known his hope was going with it, he would have stared longer.
Instead, he turned his attention to the man currently watching him with an unreadable expression. Max was used to those, too, though he didn’t necessarily like them.
“I’m going to cut to the chase.” Coach cleared his throat. He glanced away briefly with a small shake of his head, then looked Max square in the face. “Your funding’s been cut.”
It took a few seconds for Max’s brain to catch up, because—
His brow furrowed. “That’s impossible. It’s airtight.”
“It was,” Coach drawled. The yellowing lampshade caused an illusion of sweat on Coach’s dark brown forehead. “Until your sponsors caught wind of what those shitheads on the football team have been up to.”
At the beginning of the fall semester, nearly half the football team’s starting lineup was cut after mandatory drug testing.
They’d tested positive for the hot new street version of human growth hormone.
The AMU rumor mill’s working theory was that they thought it was new enough not to be detected on the standard drug test.
Coach was right—they absolutely were shitheads.
“My tests came back negative,” Max protested, his pulse picking up like he was still on the track. “I can test again right now, if you want.”
“I appreciate that, son—”
Son? This was worse than Max thought.
“—but I’ve already tried, and they’re not having it. They don’t want the bad press.”
Max rubbed the back of his neck. Whatever good his hot shower had done to relax his muscles was becoming undone the longer this conversation stretched.
That sponsorship was the only reason the word Olympics was on the table.
A dull pang thudded in his chest, a dampened gong of hurt. He wouldn’t let something as inconsequential as football dopeheads stop him.
He couldn’t. Not when his dad needed this as much as Max did. Dad’s cancer was aggressive, but Dad was a fighter, and so Max had to be, too.
Max straightened in the chair. “What are my options for new funding?” It came out as less of a question, more of a barked demand.
It stiffened Coach’s spine as well. “I’m not sure we have any.
” If Max was in a laughing mood, he might have found it funny, the way Coach slipped into we because he was so used to it on the track.
This wouldn’t change anything for Coach, but everything for Max.
“It’s too late in the year. Everything’s already allocated. ”
“So, what? That’s it?” Max struggled to keep the anger from his voice.
Coach sat back in his chair with a violent squeak. “Don’t come at me for this, Max.” His tone held a warning. “I know you’ve worked hard to get here. After last year. . .”
Max looked away. He stared at his hands instead, clenched over his chair’s armrests. His knuckles were white again, his nails leaving half-moons in the wood.
Last year wasn’t somewhere he let his mind wander often, and on the tail of such a horrible training session and bad news, it was painful to go there now.
Coach’s voice was softer when he spoke next. “You may be able to talk to your career counselor.”
Max didn’t realize he had a career counselor. He vaguely remembered monthly emails from a Dr. Griff or something that he deleted unopened. “And you think that’s something they’d be able to help with?”
“I think they’d be able to offer more help than I will.” Coach’s mouth pressed into a tight line beneath his mustache. “Maybe they’ve got some extra cash hiding in the woodwork over there.”
He was joking, but Max still wasn’t in the mood to laugh.
“I’ll go first thing in the morning,” Max vowed.
Coach nodded like that was exactly what he wanted to hear. Max wished people would tell him what he wanted to hear, instead of everything wrong in his life.
Not fast enough.
No funding.
I’m sick, Max.
Max ran home after Coach released him, because there were a thousand thoughts on his mind at any given time, but they were muffled when his shoes pounded pavement.
But tonight, the voices didn’t quit.
Which, it turned out, was the least of his problems.