Chapter 4
BEA
A FEW MONTHS AGO
The chai had gone cold twenty minutes ago.
I knew because I’d taken a sip out of habit, expecting warmth, expecting something grounding—and instead got lukewarm spice and milk that sat wrong on my tongue. It clung there, coating everything in a way that felt… unfinished.
Like the rest of my life.
I set the cup down harder than necessary, ceramic clicking against the table, and forced my attention back to my laptop screen.
Sports Crisis Management and Communication — Final Paper
Case Study Draft #4
I stared at the paragraph I’d written, reading the same sentence for the fifth time without absorbing a single word.
In high-profile athlete misconduct scenarios, the organization must respond within the first twenty-four hours with a controlled narrative that acknowledges the issue without escalating liability—
“You’re not listening.” Micah’s gaze sharpened on me, the shift immediate. Subtle. But there.
“I am listening,” I scoffed.
The lie came out on instinct, brittle around the edges and thinner than I wanted it to be. Across from me, Micah didn’t buy it for even a second. She never did. Steam curled up from the fresh drink in front of her, carrying cinnamon and espresso and something sweet into the air.
Around us, the café moved in its own end-of-semester rhythm—chairs scraping, milk steaming, students laughing too loudly because they were running on caffeine and panic and not enough sleep.
A group at the window argued over a group project.
Someone behind us kept tapping a pen against the table in a maddening, arrhythmic beat.
The espresso machine hissed again. My laptop screen glowed in front of me, the same unfinished paragraph mocking me.
“You’re not,” she countered, leaning back in her chair. “I bet you’ve been staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes.”
The cursor still blinked in the middle of my half-finished final paper, pulsing steadily like a reminder that time was moving whether I was ready for it or not.
A citation sat incomplete halfway down the page.
Three tabs were open across the top of my screen—one for a journal article on athlete scandal response, one for a case study involving a league office cover-up, and one for an email inbox that had become its own special kind of torture over the last three weeks.
Every refresh was a quiet humiliation. Every empty response another small crack in the version of my future I’d been building since freshman year.
My grip tightened slightly around the cold mug. “I’m editing.”
“You’re spiraling.”
“I’m not spiraling.”
Her brows lifted. That one tiny look did more damage than if she’d laughed.
It was so purely Micah—no cruelty, no judgment, just a silent, Are you hearing yourself?
She knew me well enough to catch the difference between stress and actual collapse, and apparently I was toeing a line I hadn’t even realized I’d crossed.
I exhaled slowly, pressing my lips together before I spoke again. “I just need to finish this paper.”
Because papers had rules. They had rubrics. You researched, outlined, argued, cited, submitted. You got a grade. You moved on. Papers made sense in a way real life didn’t. Real life let you do everything right and still gave you failing grade.
“Bea.”
“I have a deadline.”
“Bea,” Micah’s tone shifted harshly. It wasn’t cruelty. It was precision. The verbal equivalent of a hand around my wrist before I walked straight into traffic.
I stopped. My eyes dropped to the table, to the edge of my laptop, to the notes scattered around me like if I arranged them correctly, they would solve everything.
Micah didn’t push immediately. She waited. That was her thing. She let silence do the work.
She had always been good at that. Better than most people, maybe because she didn’t need to fill every empty space to feel secure.
She could sit inside a pause without panicking.
Could let it stretch until the truth got uncomfortable enough that it came up on its own.
I hated that trick. It all pressed at the edges of my concentration until I felt thin with it.
“You haven’t heard back,” she finally whispered, a long sigh followed.
Her hand landed on mine. Her fingers were warm.
Entirely too grounding. I looked at where her hand covered mine and felt something sharp and tired move through me.
We’d spent four years at this table in different forms—different cafés, different papers, different crises—and she still knew exactly when to stop joking and get underneath the performance.
“No.” The word barely made it out. My throat felt too tight around it. Admitting it aloud made it real in a way it hadn’t been when it lived only inside my own head. No interviews. No callbacks. No polite rejections, even. Just a vast, humiliating nothing.
“How many applications?”
I let out a breath that felt too thin. “All of them.”
I’d tracked every single one in a spreadsheet because of course I had.
Organization, position, department, contact person, submission date, follow-up date, notes.
Football operations. Communications departments.
League offices. Agencies. Team PR staffs.
Sports media support roles. Entry-level positions, coordinator positions, assistant roles I was overqualified for and internships I was technically too qualified to be applying to at all.
I’d cast the net wide enough to exhaust myself and still every line I’d thrown out had come back empty.
Her eyes flicked over my face, reading everything I wasn’t saying. She was good at that. Too good.
“You applied everywhere,” she clarified.
“Yes.”
“And nothing.”
I shook my head once.
There was the shame of it. Not just disappointment.
Shame. Because I wasn’t someone who coasted.
I wasn’t someone who woke up senior year and realized I should maybe think about a career.
I had done the internships. The networking.
The late nights. The extra assignments. The practical coursework.
I had built this path piece by piece so carefully that the silence now felt personal, like the world had looked at all of that effort and shrugged.
“I did everything right,” I murmured, more to myself than to her. “I have the grades. I have the recommendations. I have—”
“You have the qualifications,” Micah cut in gently.
I had the campus PR work. The event staffing.
The communications experience. The professors willing to vouch for me.
The long nights translating, drafting, editing, helping clean up other people’s messes so quietly no one even noticed there had been messes in the first place.
I had the polish. The discipline. The ability to keep my face composed when everyone else was falling apart.
I had built myself into exactly the kind of person an organization should want. Hadn’t I?
“Then why is no one calling me?” The question came out sharper than I meant it to. A few people at nearby tables glanced over. I lowered my voice immediately, heat creeping up my neck. “Eu n?o entendo.”
Not understanding was the worst part. If I had failed because I’d been careless, I could have fixed carelessness.
If I had bombed an interview, I could dissect it, improve, try again.
But this? This was silence. An absence. Something shapeless enough that I couldn’t fight it directly.
I hated problems I couldn’t name. Hated them even more when they might be naming me back—too young, too foreign, too ambitious, too polished, too much, not enough.
Micah leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. “It’s competitive,” she offered.
“I know it’s competitive,” I groaned, sounding way too petulant than I wanted.
“You’re going after the MLS, Bea. That’s not entry-level friendly.”
There it was again—that reminder that I had chosen a narrow door and was now furious it wasn’t opening.
But I couldn’t make myself want smaller just because smaller might have answered back faster.
I had spent too long picturing myself inside a football organization, working comms, shaping messaging, managing fallout, building trust between players and the public.
I wanted the pressure. Wanted the stakes.
Wanted the room where everything mattered.
“I’m not asking for friendly,” I snapped, then immediately regretted it. “I’m asking for a chance.”
The edge in my voice scraped at both of us.
I saw the instant I’d gone too sharp. Saw Micah register it and not take offense anyway.
She knew the anger wasn’t for her. It was for every inbox that stayed quiet.
Every application portal that still read under review.
Every day ticking closer to graduation like a threat.
Her gaze softened. “I know.”
That made it worse somehow. Her understanding never let me hide in irritation for long. I looked back down at the screen, but the words there no longer looked like words. Just black marks. Meaningless shapes.
I pressed my fingers into my temple, trying to steady the pressure building behind my eyes. “I can’t not have something lined up,” I continued, my voice lower now, more controlled. “I can’t just… graduate and hope something works out.”
Because hope wasn’t a plan. Hope didn’t keep you in the country. Hope didn’t pay for rent. Hope didn’t fix paperwork.
Micah’s expression shifted again, something more serious settling in. “This is about your visa,” she muttered quietly.
Everything stilled for a second.