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

“That’s good that you can be that disciplined on your own,” I tell him, gesturing for him to roll to his stomach. I crank back his hairless shin to stretch his quads, marveling again that I can be so close to an objectively beautiful body and feel nothing sexual. Not even a flutter in my belly.

I get him race ready and stare at the clock. One more hour of my shift. I’ll miss the first quarter of the football game. I head into the office to make notes, update Tim’s chart, trying to be ready to leave as soon as possible.

There’s a grad student trainer in here working on charts, too. She looks at me questioningly as I sit at the big table we all share. “Justin reassigned me the other day,” I tell her. “I was on football before.” I shrug.

“This is a big shift,” she says. “Anyway, I’m Emily.” She holds out a hand, and I shake it.

“Olive,” I tell her. “Pleased to meet you.”

We sit next to each other working for awhile, and then she stops and stares at me. “I know who you are,” she says. “Julia was telling me. You’re the undergrad wonderkid.”

“Wonderkid?”

Emily tells me how Julia was bragging about me to the other grad students in the program. I flush, embarrassed, but Emily grins. “I’m glad you’ll get more hands-on experience with the swimmers. This will be good for you.” She shows me her folder.

Emily’s doing her PhD research on knee ligament tears. She’s been trying to get moved back to soccer or a sport with more impact, since the swimmers don’t really damage their knees all that often.

Turns out, Justin has been shifting a lot of people around this semester.

“So who got sent to fill my spot at football? Why not you?” Emily shrugs and looks over my shoulder, like she’s searching for someone.

“Honestly? I wasn’t willing to kiss Justin’s ass, so he sent me here as punishment.”

“What? That’s insane.”

Emily shrugs. “It’s just a thing he does. He’s on such a power trip. None of the higher ups give a shit because the athletes are all fine. It’s just that none of us can really finish our research easily since we don’t get the right cases for our focus.”

I spend the rest of my shift thinking about Emily’s words, wondering what comes next. As soon as my time’s up, I hurry to grab my things, wanting to get to the stadium as quickly as I can.

Emily shouts out, “You wanna come to the Dark Horse? A bunch of us are going to watch the game on the TV there,” she says.

“Oh,” I pause. I look down at my Morgan jersey. It’s not one like fans can buy in the gift shop—this is one of Baxter’s actual practice jerseys. A lot of the players give these to their girlfriends…he says he just likes knowing he’s got a friendly face in the family section. “I actually have to get to the stadium. I have tickets…”

Emily nods. “Gotcha. Another time, right?”

“Definitely.”

By the time I get up into the family section, it’s midway into the second quarter. Scotty’s mom waves me over to my seat and hands me a bag of popcorn. “Olive, there you are! We just weren’t sure what on earth happened to you.”

I explain about getting my assignment switched to swimming. I realize with a jolt that I didn’t even check to see if the Otters won the swim meet. I really should be more invested if I’m going to help take care of the team. I start to feel bad until I see Baxter turn around from the bench. Then I feel worse.

“He’s having an off day,” Scotty’s mom whispers to me. “Maryland running back snuck past him for a first down early in the game.” I cringe. I know this isn’t my fault, but I feel guilty that I wasn’t here to show Bax support when he missed a tackle.

Bax scans the crowd, looking absolutely miserable, until he finds me. Relief floods his face as I wave and shout, and then his expression quickly fades to irritation. I can tell he’s angry that I missed so much of the game.

Bax leans down and talks to one of the water carriers, who looks baffled that one of the players is speaking to him. Bax puts an arm on the guy’s shoulder, and he nods rapidly and runs off. Soon, the water boy pokes his head into our section, breathless.

“Ms. Hampton?” I nod. “Baxter just wanted to make sure you’d be in the training room after the game.”

I swallow. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to do that…but if Baxter wants me there, I don’t see the harm. I nod and turn my attention back to the game. The SCU defense takes the field to open the second quarter.

I watch the snap, the pass, the reception and the smack as Baxter flies down the field and flattens the wide receiver. Most people have their eyes on the big screen watching the replay, but I’m looking over at Bax. I see that it takes him longer than usual to get up. He’s hurting, and he’s angry. So very angry.

But Baxter has been angry for years. Sometimes he thinks he’s angry about one thing, but usually, he’s angry about his dad. He’s angry about his brother. He’s angry that his mother left.

Baxter spends so much time curled up on my couch confessing to me how very, very angry he is, and the only way he seems to express any of that anger is out on the football field. Playing football seems to calm him, give him an outlet to focus his anger. Most of the time.

For the rest of the game, I cringe watching him play.