Page 5 of Forecheck
“My fifth year.”
“Shit,” Rat said. “That’s wild.”
Itwaswild. To know that she and I had been on campus together for an entire year and we’d never crossed paths? Then again, eighteen year old Berkley would’ve wanted nothing to do with twenty-two year old Brent.
I had been a bit of a fuckboy.
In fact, I’d remained a bit of a fuckboy until about a year ago, when I finally decided to stop messing around.
One day, it hit me like a ton of bricks. After a game, the Warriors’ organization invited family and friends of myself and my teammates onto the ice for a family skate type of thing. The only person in my family who lived even remotely close was my brother, but Nate was busy with his own life and medical residency in Ann Arbor.
So I spent the evening hanging out with my other single teammates, but looking around at the guys whose wives and kids had joined us—I experienced an unexpected pang in my chest.
I wanted what they had, and I realized I wasn’t going to get it by endless one night stands and absolutely no emotional connections.
From that moment on, I’d been playing for keeps. Or…trying to. Frankly, no one had caught my eye in a long time. Not like Berkley.
Was this the beginning of the rest of my life?
I shook that thought off. It was way too early to be making those kinds of declarations. For starters, I’d barely spoken to the girl.
“Are you going to follow her?” Rat asked, and I looked up, meeting his eyes, then Grey’s, then Mitch’s.
“I don’t know.”
“You should,” Mitch said, extricating his phone from my hand. “She’s hot. Follow her, work that pretty boy charm, make her fall in love with you, get married, have a bunch of babies, and live happily ever after.”
I rolled my eyes. “One thing at a time, bud.”
Five days later, moments before I was about to step onto the ice in Anaheim, California, for the Warriors’ first game of the season, I finally pressed that follow button on Berkley’s profile.
Always Leave 'Em Wanting More
“Someone remind me whyI wanted to become a lawyer!” I yelled.
I didn’t have an exact audience in mind, but I knew one of my roommates would respond.
Right on cue, Amelia shouted back from downstairs, “Because you’re an overachiever, and you’re too smart to do anything else!”
“I am not an overachiever,” I groused as I once again settled my fingers on my laptop keyboard.
“Yes you are!” Kimber hollered from down the hall. “Predictable, too.”
“I hate you both! I’m glad I’m moving out!”
“Rude!” they yelled in unison.
I chuckled as I returned my attention to my desk, desperately trying to clear the cobwebs where my inspiration for writing normally lived. I had a paper due the next day for my professional responsibility course that wasn’t going to write itself. Unfortunately, I was running out of time, and my motivation was sorely lacking.
Canned laughter from whatever ensemble comedy show Amelia watched floated up the stairs, her real laughter drifting with it, and that certainly wasn’t helping matters.
I grumbled as I got up to shut the door. Truthfully, even on nights like this when they ribbed me and made getting any work done difficult, I would miss them both when I left next week. I was only moving across the city, so it’s not like we’d never see each other again, but they’d been my roommates for six years. Going from the constant chaos to peace and quiet would be an adjustment—but I was more than a little excited about it.
Even the closed door didn’t dim the background noise enough for me to focus, so I rifled through my backpack until my fingers closed around my AirPods case. I put them in and a few quick taps had my favorite playlist filtering into my brain, blocking out everything but the computer in front of me. Over the sounds of OneRepublic singing about chasing stars, a tiny ping alerted me to a notification from one of my social media profiles. Without checking it, I put my phone ondo not disturb, tossed it onto my bed across the room, and got to work.
By ten, nearly three hours later, my paper was finally complete. After giving it one last read through, I submitted it to my professor through her online homework platform and leaned back to stretch.
Each shift of my spine had the joints in my neck, back, and shoulders popping deliciously, and from five feet to my right, my bed beckoned, inviting me into its soft and fluffy embrace. Since I didn’t have any classes tomorrow, it was the perfect opportunity to catch up on some much needed rest.
