Stone Creek by Davis, Lainey (reading diary .TXT) 📕

tilt my head toward the door. He nods and I head home. Hopefully this weird mood I’m in is all due to me being tired. I climb into bed in my clothes, and only then do I realize I never texted Olive tonight to check on her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Olive

I come home from my shift and turn on the TV, waiting for a text from Bax that he’s coming over for a snack. I need to talk to him, see if we can figure out the best thing to do about the training room.

On the one hand, Justin is totally right. This experience training the swimmers is going to be amazing for me. On the other, I can tell that blindsiding Bax and pulling me to a different team with no notice once the semester has already begun is…off.

I think back to the other night at the bar and I feel uneasy. I wish Baxter were here so we could talk it out. When he has food and a couch, he can usually stay calm and help me talk rationally about my problems.

Of course, my problems don’t usually affect him like this one does.

Can you come over? I hate feeling clingy and texting Bax like this, but I also really need to talk this through with him. I wait an entire episode of Real Housewives and my message is still unread. I sigh. I need to talk to someone about this or I’m going to go insane.

I bite my lip. I’m not really friends with anyone other than Baxter. I talk sometimes with Julia and the other trainers, but I don’t have any girlfriends.

It’s not that late, so I decide to crack open my door and see if the girls across the hall are home.

Feeling like a creeper, I peer into the crack and I see that their door is open and they’re watching TV. I back up and rummage in my closet for a jar of animal crackers, and then knock on their door frame. Tia and Elyse look up and their faces brighten. “Hey, neighbor,” they say. “What’s up?”

I hold out the jar of cookies. “I brought sustenance. Is it ok if I hang out?”

Tia nods enthusiastically, reaching for the animal crackers. Cramming a few in her mouth, she pauses the show and asks, “What’s up? You don’t usually hang.”

I swallow. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I guess I’m shy about talking to people I don’t know very well.”

“You’re with Baxter Morgan from the football team, right?” Elyse raises a brow and looks at me skeptically. I shake my head vigorously.

“Oh,” I say. “No. Baxter and I grew up together. We’re just friends.”

Elyse rolls her eyes, but I insist. “I’m serious. He’s out picking up girls right now. I just…we went through a lot together growing up, that’s all.”

“I’ve got friends from home like that,” Tia says. “It’s good to have someone who knows your whole back story.”

“Well,” I say. “I was actually hoping I could maybe ask you for your input about something, since you two don’t know anything about my back story.”

Elyse’s face lights up. “Is this about hunky football bodies? Cuz I am here for that.”

That gets a laugh out of me. I explain to the girls that my boss acted sort of weird at the bar, got yelled at by Baxter, and then switched me to another sports team with no notice. They both look puzzled.

“So you’re not doing it with Morgan?”

“I’ve never done it with anyone!” I just blurt it all out then. How Baxter intervened in high school any time a boy showed interest in me. How I haven’t made time to date anyone in college because I need to keep my scholarship. How very desperate I am to find funding for a graduate program.

When I pause to catch a breath, Tia puts her arm around my shoulders. “Whew, girl. That’s a lot,” she says. “Let’s start with work. It’s creepy. That shit with your boss is creepy.”

Elyse nods. “Super creepy.”

I feel a wave of relief hearing them confirm that Justin’s behavior was indeed weird. They agree that nothing has actually happened yet, but that I should remain on alert. “Are you ever alone with him?” Elyse seems as concerned as Baxter when she asks. “Don’t let yourself be alone with him. Call us if anything else weird happens.”

“It’s weird, right? I’ve been shadowing the football staff the whole time I’ve been at SCU. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m so glad for the opportunity to do some real recovery stuff with the swim team. But it’s sudden, right?”

“So sudden.” Tia hands me a chocolate bar from her desk drawer, and I nibble on the end.

I want to protest, tell them I don’t want to bother them with a phone call and say they should keep their emergency chocolate, but it feels so good to just open up to people. While I eat the chocolate, Elyse tells me about a guy from her class that she’s been lusting after for years.

“The key for me getting in his pants is going to be whiskey,” she says. “I’m bringing whiskey when we study for midterms.”

Tia laughs and points out that Elyse has been wearing tight tanks and leggings when she studies with this guy, no matter how cold it is outside. “She’s not being subtle about anything,” she says.

As they talk about her plans to bag the boys, I get lost in my swirling thoughts again. I keep thinking about Tim the swimmer, how I had my hands all over his body. I could see absolutely everything outlined in his shorts, and yet I had no reaction whatsoever. He was just a person in pain, and all I could focus on was trying to make him feel better.

When I’m rolling Bax