Page 5 of Strong Side

“Amo você,and always will with everything in me.”

I couldn’t have asked for better parents. They did everything they could, and still do, to give my sister and me the best life we could have. We weren’t rich by any means, but the love we have as a family is overflowing. At times, their relationship makes mewant to vomit, especially when my dad, Joesph, is at my mother’s feet at all times. When she moved to the states for him so they could get married, he took her last name so she could “keep some of her ancestry from Brazil.” They say it was love at first sight, and to this day, they’re still obsessed with each other. They make my standards for relationships pretty much unattainable.

I park in one of the closest spots since I’m the first one here due to lifting before practice instead of after. If I’m pissed off enough, I’ll even hit some cardio after to blow off the extra steam.

My entire workout flies by, and before I know it, I’ve gone through my whole leg day, and I’m making my way toward the gym we’re practicing in. Hopefully, Coach wants to run drills today; I don’t want to sit on the sidelines and watch them scrimmage. I want in on the action.

I head to the locker room to get my pads on and take out my nose ring and earring—it’s my favorite one. An upside-down dangling cross. I find it beyond comical when the ladies at Momma's church glare at me when they realize what it is. Every time I wear it she tells me to stop antagonizing them, and every time, all I do is laugh.

We fly through warm-ups and start to pepper around to loosen up some more. Coach calls out that we are going to be scrimmaging this practice, and I huff out withthe most dramatic eye roll I can muster. Coach looks at me but doesn’t say anything; he knows how I’m feeling.

Jax and Clayton are on one side, scrimmaging one of the junior teams. It’s been a tight game so far and fairly entertaining, I will give them that.

The juniors serve and send a rocket over the net. Jax passes it to the front of the net beautifully, right into Clayton’s waiting hands. Clayton sets it at the perfect height for where Jax is on the court. Jax takes off in his approach, but on that second step he doesn’t land right, and he hits the ground, grabbing his knee before he makes it to his third step.

The ball hits the ground right in front of him. The sound resembles a bomb on the quietest of battlefields.

Theo, our athletic trainer, comes barreling out from the staffing offices and lands on his knees beside Jax, who’s been inconsolable since he hit the ground. But once those first hushed words are passed between Theo and him, he’s instantly calmed.

What the fuck is going on there?

You know what, I don’t even want to know. I have enough to worry about already.

I lock eyes with Clayton across the gym, and for the first time since I’ve met him, I know the two of us are thinking the same thing. “There’s no fucking way.”

4

We’re All In This Together, Unfortunately

Clayton

We made it twenty whole minutes.

Rocky and I had our first doubles practice on Wednesday afternoon after Coach Taylor was informed by Jax’s parents, who called from the hospital, that he has a total ACL and MCL tear and will be out for the rest of the season. We made it twenty minutes before Coach lost his shit on us andkicked us out.

Twenty minutes of Rocky throwing the biggest temper tantrum known to man because, apparently, being forced to partner with me is comparable to being paired up with Lucifer himself. Twenty minutes of the two of us bickering back and forth and arguing about every single thing. Twenty of the longest fucking minutes of my entire life.

It didn’t help that instead of taking it easy on us and having a junior team play the other side of the net, Coach had Prescott McDaniels and Chadwick Augustus playing against us. They were the only other senior doubles team left and, besides Aaron Sanders, are the two douchiest assholes I have ever met in my entire life. And that’s saying a lot considering the life I grew up in. What’s even worse, they’re good. Like really fucking good.

The two seemed to take some perverse satisfaction in watching Rocky and I struggle and fall apart. And for twenty minutes, the two of them played against us like it was the championship game of our senior year.

Finally, after Chad drilled a hit between Rocky and me and we stood still as we watched it land on the gym floor directly between us without moving an inch… for the fifth time… Taylor had had enough.

Not that I blamed him. That was some rookie-level shit.

Neither one of us was up on the net blocking, moving to get a pass, or setting each other up for a hit. And we sure as shit were not communicating.

Definitely not championship material, let alone Team USA.

He explicitly told us to take the rest of the day and Thursday to figure out what we wanted.

“How bad do the two of you want this? How badly do you want to make Team USA? Because if there’s even the smallest chance of the two of you making it, you need to get it the hell together; I don’t care if you like one another off the court or not. On the court, you need to figure out how to work as a team. Because you’re each other’s only option. If that’s something you want, show up to this gym for Friday morning practice ready to work. If not, don’t even bother coming back.”

I don’t have to know Rockwell Campos to know what his answer was going to be. Because it was the exact same as mine. I want this year’s championship. I want to be on Team USA. And I want to feel that gold medal in the palm of my hand.

1 Regardless of how much my life was planned out for me and how uncertain I am about everysingle step of that plan, there is one thing I have never questioned. I am meant to be on that sand. It’s the one place I feel truly at peace. Where every expectation of who I’m supposed to be falls away, and all that’s left is who I am.

Clay Aldrich.

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