Page 93 of The Longest Shot
And through it all, I knew in my marrow that it would end badly.
Because James literally cannot tolerate silence.
It’s his kryptonite, his worst nightmare, his personal seventh circle of hell. And when faced with my Antarctic-level freeze-out—a void he couldn’t joke across, and couldn’t fill with his usual chaos—of course he panicked and defaulted to his emergency-broadcast-system.
The grand gesture.
The public spectacle.
The desperate smoke signal saying “PLEASE FUCKING LOOK AT ME.”
The gala wasn’t malicious. It was him drowning and grabbing for the only flotation device in his arsenal, trying to be a hero and getting my program the resources it needsandgetting me to pay attention to him for the first time in weeks. He was trying to get me backandsave the dayandfill the silence.
Congratulations, genius,my mind mocks me.You triggered his deepest wound and then acted shocked when it bled all over the ballroom’s marble.
The locker room door looms ahead, and I brace for another day in our concrete dungeon, although at least the guys have moved out now. But as I shoulder through the door, I freeze so hard my muscles lock, because it's not just thatsomethingis wrong.
Everythingis wrong.
The smell hits first, fresh paint all over the walls, the scent so sharp and clean that my sinuses tingle. Then I notice the light, steady and even, with no death-rattle flicker. My brain scrambles for explanations like a student who forgot there was a test.
Did Galloway have a stroke and develop human empathy?
Did maintenance finally discover what “maintenance” means?
I step deeper inside, and the changes multiply faster than my ability to process. But it's not just paint and minor electrical work. The benches that used to wobble have been replaced with sturdier ones, which feel solid enough to survive a nuclear blast.
My fingers trail along the smooth wood, and that’s when I spot the stick racks. They're built into the walls with individual slots and—I have to blink to confirm I’m not hallucinating—brass nameplates waiting for engraving, the kind the men's team has had since the Treaty of Versailles.
But the floor stops me cold.
Someone has scrapedyearsof fossilized tape residue off the concrete, a job that maintenance wouldn't take on in a million years. Completing that job would have taken hours of hard scraping on hands and knees, a job that's less like labor and more like penance.
I stand in the middle of the locker room for a full minute, looking around, not quite believing what my eyes are showing me. After so many months of trying to get a program off the ground, drilling new players into a team while simultaneously fighting Galloway for miserly resources, it feels like a dream.
Then I spot a protein bar wrapper, tucked behind a bench like an exhibit in a museum to one person. The label (“MONSTER FUEL”) screams from the package in testosterone-poisoned red letters, and I'm horrified that I'm able to immediately recognize who it belonged to.
“They’re not that bad, Morgue,"James had said as he chewed on one. "They’re just… aggressively mediocre… like reality TV or campus wifi.”
The memory sucker-punches me—him breaking one in half during our study sessions, offering it like he was sharing communion wine instead of compressed cardboard, and, when I'd refused, how he’d immediately broken into a joke about my “bougie digestive system.”
The realization doesn’t dawn.
It fucking detonates.
James did this.
After I’d ghosted him with the thoroughness of someone entering witness protection and he'd responded with a public Hail Mary that ended up with a 100-yard interception return. After his public crucifixion in that room and his one-week suspension since.
James did this.
The door explodes open. Mills storms in with Sarah and Jen, already at volume eleven. “Morgue, you’re not going to believe the bullshit I just heard about?—”
She stops mid-syllable, her mouth forming an O.
“What the actual fuck?” Mills's question is a whisper, even as she spins like she’s entered Narnia.
Sarah’s eyes have gone full Disney princess. “Did we… did someone die and leave us their 401(k)?”
