Stone Creek

by Davis, Lainey

  I sigh in relief, and then feel an overwhelming urge to get the hell out of here. Something must be really wrong with me if I don’t even want to stick around here. I catch Finnegan’s eye and 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 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 ph
one 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 you’d jump at the chance to prepare these athletes for competition. Hands on…”

  I bite my lip. He knows I always go to the SCU home games and sit in the family section to support Baxter. Is Justin right, though? Should I be focused on my own career? After all, Baxter will play his best whether I’m there the whole time or not.

  I look at the schedule again and decide that, if I hustle after the meet, I can make it to the stadium before halftime.

  “No problem,” I say. “I was just surprised is all.”

  “Good,” Justins says, and there is no mistaking the sharpness in his tone.

  Across the hall, I see the new quarterback talking with Tim, my injured swimmer. It’s unusual for these particular sports to inter mingle, but before I can think too hard about it, Tim saunters into the room, pulling off his shirt.

  “I’m ready for my daily torture,” he tells me, grinning. “Hook me up to the juice.” I laugh at his description of the treatment, but get him situated on the training table while Julia checks out the notes on his chart.

  “This is all really good work, Olive,” Julia tells me. She looks down at Tim on the table. “You should be competing this weekend, no sweat.”

  He grins and tries to pump his fist without tangling the wires on his back. “Well,” he says, “I hope I’m sweating from working hard.”

  I finish up his treatment, get him all set with the ice and stretches, and I can’t help but smile because I know that I really have been helping him. It feels good to have so much impact on someone’s recovery. Through it all, though, I can’t help but feel uneasy.

  At dinner, I sit with Tia and Elyse and listen to them talk about their plans for after graduation. They’re going to rent an apartment together in the city, hoping they’ll have jobs lined up by May. “I can always wait tables again,” Tia says, telling us about how she worked in a diner growing up. “Speaking of,” she says, “if you really want to get laid, you just need to waltz into a diner on a Friday wearing tight jeans.” Tia shrugs. “The after-bar crowd will be more than happy to cream your donut.”

  “Ugh, gross, girl.” Elyse throws a fry at her roommate. “You can’t get a drunken diner dude for your first time. Especially when you’re trying to fuck a crush out of your system.” She gestures at me with another fry. “Don’t even try to tell me it’s not a crush. You’re totally smitten and I think it’s ridiculous that you don’t just open up about it.”

  I open my mouth to argue, to tell her that theory is ludicrous, but Tia nods. She says, “I actually think this plan is better than the bang-a-stranger-to-get-it-over-with idea.” She and Elyse launch into a detailed theory about how we could rock friends with benefits or even just burn out in a blaze of orgasms leading up to graduation and the pro football draft.

  “Then,” Elyse says, “He’ll go off to Buffalo or wherever the hell and you’ll get a full ride to Berkeley and the distance will be a buffer.”

  I see the merits in what they’re saying, but the idea of losing touch with Baxter horrifies me. It’s not just about physical proximity. He calms me, supports me, grounds me. Is my barometer when I’m afraid or upset.

  “No,” I tell them. “I can’t cross that line with Bax.”

  They look at me, a bit sad, and we finish our meal in silence.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bax

  This is probably the longest I’ve gone without speaking to Olive in 12 years. I saw that she texted me the other night, but I don’t feel like opening it. I have to get my head on straight. A redhead on my lap at the bar didn’t help. Neither did sprinting on the track the next day or tackle practice this afternoon.

  It’s Friday, and the team is quarantined to a hotel before our game. Team bonding is Coach Burns’ reasoning, but really he’s just holding us here so we don’t get our asses in trouble. He’s been around for awhile. He knows what a bunch of athletes in their 20s would rather be doing on a Friday night in a town where we’re revered as gods.

  Poor guy doesn’t know that half the undergrads covet internships at this hotel so they can bag a football player during fall semester. Most guys on the team have gotten a blowie in the hot tub.

  So this would probably be at least entertaining if not tolerable…except that Coach has me bunked up with Kevan Pence, the transfer QB who’s starting for us this weekend since JT has a fucked up hand.

  Smarmy dude spent half the evening in the supply closet and he’s climbing out of the shower now like he wants to tell me all about what went on in there.

  I don’t give a shit, though, and I’m in a pissy mood. “Will you quit making that face like you’re so damn pleased with yourself?”

  He raises an eyebrow at me. “What’s your problem, Morgan?”

  I snort. “You, man. I don’t know you and you don’t know me and neither of us is going to be here long enough for that to matter.”

  “Dude,” he says. “We’ve got a whole season to go. You want to tell me anything specific?”

  He flops onto his back on the bed and stares at me. I roll my eyes and turn off the light, punching my pillows. “Just quit staring at Olive.”

  “The girl from the training room? She your girl? Is that what this is about? Look, man—”

  “She’s off fucking limits,” I grunt, pissed that nobody made this clear to him. Pissed that he can’t take a hint. Just pissed. I saw him smile at her
the other day, and that pissed me off more.

  “You done yelling?”

  “Yeah, if you’re done looking where you shouldn’t be.”

  Kevan turns the light back on and I squint, rolling over halfway to look at him. “Dude, I was not staring at Olive. Morgan, don’t you know that I’m gay?”

  I just blink at him a few times. What the fuck is he even talking about?

  “I. Like. Cock. You don’t have to worry about me getting between you and your dream girl, Morgan. And before you tell me again that she’s your best friend, I think we both know it’s more than that for you.”

  Well this is unexpected. “But I saw you staring at her…”

  “Did you?” He asks, turning the light out again and punching his own pillows. “Or did you see me staring past her at the shirtless swimmer she was stretching?”

  Shit.

  “You’re seriously gay?” This has me all sorts of messed up. I’m a good judge of people. That’s basically all I’ve got going for me, apart from my ability to tackle the shit out of running backs. You don’t grow up in a house with a maniac and not learn how to read a room. Sometimes, that was the only way I avoided getting my ass kicked. I was a thousand per cent certain this guy had the hots for Olive.

  “Super gay. Like just had a cock in my mouth gay.”

  “Come on, man.”

  “Hey, you asked. Now you want to tell me what’s going on with you and Olive?”

  I shrug in the dark, like he can see me. “I told you. She’s my best friend. It’s not like that with her.”

  I hear a bag rustle and I realize this asshole is eating chips in bed while he’s talking to me. “Could have fooled me,” he says. “I know I’m new around here, but a blind man could see that you want her.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not going to ever happen. I need her as a friend more than I need to get my rocks off.”

  He keeps eating the damn potato chips while I think about all the times I thought he’d been staring at Olive’s tits in the training room. She’s always stretching someone out. We’re all wound up tighter than twine on a pork loin. “I’m not sure it’s any better that you’re checking out the other guys on our team,” I tell him.