Page 8 of The Longest Shot
She stops and turns, her face a picture of indifference. "What?"
I deploy my trademark grin, the one that's never failed me. "Crazy running into you here, right?" I say. "Small world. Or small university—or—" My mouth is a runaway train. "Or medium-sized university, actually, if you think about it. Like, not tiny but not huge. We're like the Goldilocks of universities. Just right."
"I believe we'll be seeing each other at various athletic department functions." Her voice is as sharp as an ice pick. "I trust you'll conduct yourself appropriately."
The subtext lands like a body blow:We are strangers and we will remain strangers, so please do not test this.
"Morgan, I—"I'm sorry. I was a coward. I was eighteen and stupid and I've regretted it every day.
"If you'll excuse me," she says, her tone sharp enough to draw blood. "I have a team to prepare."
She walks away, her heels clicking perfect, measured beats. Each step puts more distance between now and then, between who we were and who we've become. I watch her go, and it's that night all over again, except this time I know she's not coming back.
I stand in the empty hallway, my usual arsenal useless against the fortress she's built. And, for the first time in three years, I'm really thinking about that night and about the question I was too scared to answer. But, more than anything,about the girl who walked away because I couldn't tell her the truth.
That she was the only person who ever made silence feel safe.
And now she's back, wrapped in armor I made her don.
The hallway feels too quiet, too much like the inside of my head when I let myself think about what I've lost. I need noise. I need chaos. I need literally anything that will drown out the voice whispering:You did this. You had something real and you destroyed it because you were scared.
I grab my gear bag and bolt, already sending a message to the team group chat:
O'NEIL'S. TONIGHT. CODE RED.
Schmidt replies immediately:
What level of disaster are we talking?
I reply:
DEFCON 1. Bring the whole team.
Leo's next:
Even the freshmen?
I reply:
Especially the freshmen. They need to learn how to properly self-destruct.
Because if I can't fix this—the way she looked right through me, like I was already dead to her—I can at least make sure I'm too drunk to think about it. That's basically the Fitzgerald family motto:When in doubt, add alcohol and volume.
But even as replies ping back, filling my phone with emojis and promises of shots, I can't shake the image of Galloway's hand on her shoulder and the way she endured it with that terrifying stillness. Like she's been enduring things alone for three years.
Because I taught her that letting people close only leads to disappointment.
four
MORGAN
Never againwas supposedto mean something.
After three years, four months, and sixteen days of turning myself into a machine that runs on spite and isolation. After three years of perfecting the art of not giving a fuck about James Fitzgerald or his disaster-zone energy. After three years of refusing to trust anyone with a penis.
And all it took was exactly five minutes near him for my body to stage a full biochemical mutiny.
The fire door slams behind me, and my head finds the wall. Cold seeps through my skull, but it's not enough to freeze out the memory of his gray eyes going wide with recognition as he spotted me, or his stupid grin—the one that suggests an easy familiarity he offers to everyone, but which once made me feel like I belonged somewhere.
