Page 99 of Caden & Theo
This is me. Not the before. Not the almost. Just me.
I step back into the gym with my warm-up tee in one hand and my bottle in the other. Conversations dip a fraction. Not silence—just a soft recalibration as eyes flick down, clock the hardware, and come back up. There’s surprise on a few faces. Curiosity on most. Pity on none that I choose to see.
Then someone whistles.
“North!” It’s one of the older guys—Ray Barker, power forward from our day, with the same broad shoulders and a dad bod that wears its history with pride. He grins. “Look at you. Still built like trouble.”
“High-fiber trouble,” I call back. “Powered by cinnamon rolls.”
Laughter bubbles out across the baseline. The tension diffuses another degree. I bounce the ball someone passes to me, feel the give of the floor, the return of the rubber. The first dribble is a handshake. The second, a promise.
I stretch along the sideline. Hamstrings. Quads. Calf. Hip flexors. The residual limb doesn’t stretch the same way, so I work the muscles around it, take my time, feel the heat build. The team manager rolls out a rack of balls, and I take my first shot from the right elbow. Swish. The second hits back iron and drops. The third misses left. I adjust my feet, lift through the core, and the next five sing.
There’s a whistle, and I turn.
Theo is there.
His assistant coach polo is stretched across his chest. There’s a clipboard tucked under one arm and a whistle lanyard wound around his fingers like it belongs there—which, of course, it does. He stops when he sees me in shorts. His eyes fall to my leg for the briefest split second, then come back up. Awareness. Not shock. Not sympathy.
“Hey,” he says, close enough that I catch the clean, warm scent of his laundry soap and something citrus that I remember from forever ago.
“Hey,” I answer.
“You’re playing,” he says, and it’s not a question.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Starting, apparently. Cameron bribed someone with baked goods.”
“That tracks,” he says, a tiny smile tipping one corner of his mouth. “How’s the floor feel?”
I bounce once, look down the painted lane toward the rim that watched me grow up. “Like it remembers me,” I say.
His eyes soften. “Good,” he says quietly. “That’s good.”
A squad of current players wheels by, all elbows and confidence, and one of them gives me a look that’s equal parts awe and appraisal. “You suiting up, Coach?” he asks Theo.
“In your dreams,” Theo says. “I like my knees functional.”
They peel off, laughing.
Theo’s gaze returns to me. “You need anything, you tell me,” he says. It’s exactly what a coach would tell any player on his floor. It still lands like more.
“Water and a time machine,” I say.
He huffs a breath that’s almost a laugh. “I can get you the first one. The second’s above my pay grade.”
We stand there a moment, the past humming softly under the present. He nods toward the rack. “You’ll run the two?”
“Then and always,” I say.
He tips his chin, and for a heartbeat, it’s high school again: his eyes reading a defense before anyone else sees it, my body already moving toward the space he pointed to. We built a thousand games on that look.
“Okay,” he says, business side surfacing. “Old guys versus varsity. Two twelves, running clock. We’ll keep it light.”
“You afraid we’ll embarrass your kids?” I tease.
“I’m afraid you’ll impress them, and I’ll never hear the end of it,” he shoots back.
“Fair.”
