Page 21 of The Longest Shot
It’s been a week since our invasion, and the forced proximity isn’t limited to the locker room anymore. The burst pipe—that fucking burst pipe that’s somehow become the Franz Ferdinand assassination of our athletic department—has contaminated everything in the men's hockey part of the arena.
The weight room.
The treatment areas.
Even the goddamn vending machines.
Now every square foot of this place has transformed into a battlefield of passive aggression. Equipment gets wiped down with theatrical disgust, like cooties survived into Division I athletics. Even the fucking mirrors have invisible borders now, sight lines carefully maintained to avoid accidental eye contact.
The smell is its own special torture. My guys reek of stale sweat and yesterday's protein shakes, while the women's side carries this clean, sharp scent like they collectively bathed in eucalyptus and moral superiority. It's like there are two distinct territories marked by olfactory warfare.
And today, the battle has asound.
The gym thrums with dueling soundtracks: my team’s obnoxious rap versus the women’s playlist—all female pop all the time, which somehow makes every rep feel like a referendum on masculinity. The bass lines crash into each other, creating sonic warfare that makes my molars ache.
Nash is currently attempting what might generously be called flirting with one of the women’s freshmen by the free weights. She’s looking at him the way someone might look at a door-to-door salesman who won’t take the hint—not angry, just uninterested in whatever spiritual salvation or knife set he’s peddling.
It looks like this round of our rolling battle is over, at least until he flexes, actually fucking flexes mid-sentence, like that will make the difference and get her into bed with him. But she doesn’t even blink. She just turns back to her bicep curls like he’s gym equipment that unfortunately learned human speech.
Jesus, we’re performing for an audience that left the theater.
The cold war Morgan declared with her silence when I'd sprayed her with ice has been waged by her whole team, their disdain for us obvious. And my guys don’t know what to do with being ignored. They’re used to being the main event, and suddenly they’re elevator music… there, but ignored.
So they’ve gotten louder.
More obnoxious.
Testing boundaries like toddlers with kitchen implements.
Stiles is grunting through bench presses like he’s trying to communicate with whales. The weight isn’t even that heavy—I’ve seen him rep out twice that without breaking a sweat—but he’s deliberately creating a soundtrack that would make a tennis player blush.
At this rate, we’ll be chest-beating by Thursday and pissing on the floor to mark territory by Friday. Though, knowing Stiles, he’d probably miss and mark himself.
And through it all, day after day, Morgan’s team moves with disciplined intensity that makes us look exactly like overgrown children. They spot each other with confidence. They rotate through equipment without argument. Hell, there are even spreadsheets with workout plans and spotters listed.
They communicate in head nods and eye rolls, as if they have some elaborate silent language that definitely includes specific gestures for “ignore the Neanderthals”. And even the walk-ons to the women's team, girls who've been at Pine Barren for years and used to party with us, now make a point of ignoring us.
They're a perfect team, led by the Morgue.
She's at the pull-up bar, and I’m trying not to notice the way her shoulders flex with each rep, the controlled power that speaks to hours of dedicated training. Her red ponytail swings with metronomic precision. Her form is perfect, because everything she does is right and efficient and competent.
Then a clanging sound cuts through my reverie, metal shifting against metal, heavy and unstable.
Mills—Morgan’s defensive dynamo who looks ready to check someone through the boards using pure spite—is setting up at the bench press. The bar is loaded heavy. Two plates on each side, maybe more, and I can tell this isn’t a working set.
This is a PR attempt.
Her usual partner, a rangy forward whose name I haven’t learned because she looks at me like I’m radioactive, is nowhere to be seen. Mills scans the room, and I watch her calculate the risk versus reward of needing a spotter versus accepting help from the enemy.
Then Kellerman—sweet, eager, naive, golden-retriever-in-burgeoning-hockey-star-form Kellerman—practically vibrateswith nervous energy. “I can spot you,” he offers, his voice cracking like he’s thirteen again. “If you… I mean, I know how. I won’t?—”
Won’t what? Touch you inappropriately? Drop the bar on your face? Spontaneously combust from female proximity?
Mills hesitates, but practicality wins. She gives him a nod sharp enough to perform surgery. “Don’t touch the bar unless I stall. Just guide it if I call for help.”
Kellerman nods so enthusiastically I worry about whiplash. “Yeah, totally. I got you.”
Famous last words from someone who definitely doesn’t got her.
