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

out after practice or a game, I’m not nearly that professional. Baxter Morgan is a hulking beast of a human—6 foot, 2 inches. Two hundred pounds of solid muscle. Everything about him is huge, from his size 14 feet to his hands that are bigger than my entire face. When he lies on his back in his mesh shorts, I can see the outline of all his parts, too, and I don’t look away.

No, I objectify my best friend and stare at his junk, longing to touch it. I relate to Elyse when she talks about dropping pencils just so she can brush against her crush’s leg.

I glance at my phone and see that Bax still hasn’t even read my text message, which means he’s out with a random girl.

Tia sees me pouting at my phone and snaps her fingers. “Hey. Spill it. What’s making you upset right now?”

I show her the phone. “Bax hasn’t even read my text, and that usually means he’s banging some jersey chaser. And I don’t care—I’m serious. Don’t look at me that way.” Elyse has one eyebrow raised so high it disappears into her hair. “It’s just… Maybe I want to be someone’s casual fuck, too. I mean, it must feel good or he wouldn’t keep doing it over and over again.”

“Oh, this is good,” Elyse says. “Yes. We can get Olive laid! Tia, who can she bang?”

“Why not one of these athletes she’s always touching?” Tia looks dreamily at her poster of the SCU hockey team. “All those muscles…”

We talk for awhile about what makes for a good first time. Honestly, at this point I think I just need to get it over with. Maybe if I weren’t full of pent up sexual energy, I wouldn’t find myself thinking inappropriate thoughts about my best friend.

It could be so simple. Just wear tight tank tops and drop a pencil, wink at someone in my econ lecture. What if I just need to uncork this sexual dam and I can go back to just being friends with Bax?

Tia tells me she’s got an early class, and I take the hint and head back across the hallway after hugging the girls good night. I regret that I didn’t reach out to them earlier to make friends, but they insist we eat dinner tomorrow in the dining hall, and I’m excited about that.

The feeling doesn’t last long once I’m alone, however.

I turn off my lights and climb up in my bunk, hoping I can get some sleep, but in the dark, all I can think about is Baxter’s breath synching with mine, his face an inch from mine in his bed. All I would have had to do was lean in an inch, and my lifelong fantasy could have been realized.

I pull out my phone and start scrolling through my pictures. They’re all of him. Of us together. Me in his jersey with my arm around his waist while he’s in full SCU uniform. Him holding up my scholarship letter, pointing and grinning from ear to ear. No wonder Tia and Elyse kept asking me if we were together. It’s written plain and clear on my face how badly I want him. But it can’t happen. I know that.

But I also think about the other night, when he held me close in his bed, curled against the warm heat of his rock solid body. I feel an unrelenting throb in my center and I know there won’t be any sleep until I ease that ache. I reach down, sliding my hand under the waist of my panties, and I start to rub slow circles against my core.

I think about Baxter, about the heat in his eyes tonight in the training room. I imagine my hands on his back, on the smooth skin covering solid muscle. What would it feel like to trail my tongue along his hard lines? It doesn’t take long before I’m gasping, panting, plummeting over the edge of pleasure.

And then, as fast as it began, it’s over, and I’m alone in my room, somehow feeling ashamed about my entire day.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Olive

Bax doesn’t call, doesn’t return my text, and I don’t see him the entire next day. It feels so off to me, so foreign. I feel hurt about it, because I know he’s upset that Justin moved me to the swim team, but it all just feels worse because I can’t even see Bax to talk about it.

I run into Julia and Gabe in the training room when I arrive after class. They’re both in their final year in the doctoral program for athletic training at SCU, and I know Julia is eager to land a full-time university position. I try to feel her out and talk about what happened with Justin, but she seems tight lipped and quiet when I bring it up.

Instead, she launches into a story about a gymnast with basically a compound fracture in her leg. “Girl wanted to continue her vault work. I was like, um, no. Let’s get you scheduled for surgery.”

Gabe smiles and when I see him lean in to drop a kiss on her temple, I know that my hunch from the other night is correct. I wonder if they’ll get positions at the same university someday. Will they have to live in separate cities so they can each pursue their careers? It doesn’t take long until I start fretting about where I’ll go to grad school, how far that will be from where Bax gets drafted. I’m lost in my thoughts about them when I see Justin come in and tape up the schedule for the training room team for the rest of the week.

“Wait,” I say looking at my name on the chart. “Saturday morning meet?”

Justin’s eyes narrow. “Is there a problem with that, Ms. Hampton? I thought