CHAPTER 5: NATE

​The court smelled like sweat, rubber, and unadulterated ambition. The rhythmic, rubbery squeak of sneakers on polished hardwood echoed through the cavernous fieldhouse like rhythmic gunfire as I pushed the first-string team through our half-court offensive sets. Senior year. Team captain. This was my absolute domain. Inside these painted lines, the noise of the outside world didn't have the clearance to enter.

​“Again!” I called out, my voice sharp, commanding, and echoing off the steel rafters. “Blue side, tighter rotation on the perimeter. Marcus, shift left on the screen—yeah, exactly like that. Keep the floor spaced, goddamn it.”

​The players moved around me like planets in a rigidly engineered orbit. I saw every single variable: the lazy, looping cut from the sophomore wing, the microsecond of hesitation in our new center’s footwork, the exact geometric angle where our weak-side defense leaked. I barked out instant corrections, demonstrated the physical mechanics of the bounce-pass myself, then reset the play. When the ball left my fingertips, it found its target with clean, mathematical precision.

​This was the only version of me that made perfect sense. I had chosen basketball when I was ten years old because the world outside my house was loud, chaotic, and entirely unpredictable, but the court had strict, unyielding laws. If you put in the hours, the ball went through the mesh. It was a pure meritocracy of sweat. I loved the game because it demanded absolute presence; you couldn't afford to think about yesterday or worry about tomorrow when a six-foot-six defender was trying to take your teeth out on a drive. On the hardwood, I was entirely in control. Unshakable. Sovereign.

​Practice ran exceptionally long. Coach Miller gave me a curt nod from the sideline as the final whistle blew—a quiet gesture of approval mixed with heavy, unvoiced expectation. The professional scouts would be here in force by next week. Everything I’d worked for over these four grueling years rested entirely on how I performed during this opening stretch. Leadership. Statistics. Winning. Efficiency.

​“Ellison!” Marcus jogged over as the team finally started our cool-down stretching, wiping a layer of grime and sweat from his forehead with the damp bottom of his practice jersey. “You good, man? You were fucking dialed in today, but something about the energy felt… off. Like your head’s locked somewhere else.”

​I grabbed a gray university towel from the rack and slung it around my neck, forcing an easy, practiced smirk onto my face. “I’m fine, Marc. Just hyper-focused. The non-conference opener is looming.”

​Marcus didn’t look even remotely convinced. He studied me the exact way he studied opposing point guards on film—searching for tells, for a hitch in the rhythm, for any structural weakness. “You’ve been acting weird since you moved into that new off-campus place. The roommate situation fucking with your sleep or something?”

​“Nah,” I lied, the word slipping past my teeth with smooth, athletic ease. “It’s temporary. A couple of weeks max until the athletic director untangles the varsity suites. Housing office is a bureaucratic joke.”

​He shrugged, his shoulders dropping, but his sharp eyes lingered on mine a beat too long. “Alright. If you say so, captain. Just make sure whatever the fuck it is stays off the wood. We need you completely locked in this season.”

​I clapped him hard on the shoulder, the physical contact solid and grounding. “Always am.”

​The rest of the team filtered out toward the locker room, their loud laughter and aggressive, good-natured shit-talking echoing down the concrete tunnel. I hung back alone, grabbing a leather ball and shooting a few extra free throws until the cavernous gym felt entirely too quiet. The echoes slowly faded into nothing, leaving behind only the low, electrical hum of the overhead stadium lights and the heavy, rhythmic sound of my own breathing.

​That’s when the fragments started hitting again, punching through my defenses like a fast break.

​Summer heat thick enough to taste. That first weekend before my freshman year. Meeting her in the middle of all the chaos. She had this way of watching everything like she was cataloging it, quiet but sharp.

​I bounced the ball once against the hardwood, hard, the sound hollow, then lined up another shot from the stripe. Swish.

​Late nights bleeding into early mornings. The way she’d argue with me about stupid things—books, music, the right way to eat fries—just to watch me push back. That spark in her eyes when she thought she’d won.

​The ball left my hands again, a perfect arc. Swish.

​Midnight in a Waffle House parking lot. Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. The smell of syrup and grease in the air. Her looking up at me with those olive-green eyes, hair messy from the humid night. I’d called her Poppy that night for the first time—because she looked soft and dangerous all at once, like the flower that could still ruin your day if you weren’t careful.

​“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, the word scraping my throat.

​I grabbed the rebounding ball and drove toward the paint much harder this time, my sneakers squealing against the grain. The memory kept unfolding itself like an old map, entirely indifferent to whether I wanted to see it or not.

​The way she’d actually leaned in first, hesitant for a fraction of a second before the universe turned into something else entirely. Her small fingers curling into the collar of my shirt, pulling me down to her level. The kiss tasting like cheap black coffee, rain, and something entirely unnameable that I knew I'd never find anywhere else. For one singular, terrifying moment, the entire solar system had narrowed down to just the space between her mouth and mine.

​I missed the layup. The ball rattled violently off the back of the iron rim and bounced uselessly into the dark corner of the empty gym.

​I didn’t go after it right away.

​Instead, I stood dead in the center of the paint, my chest heaving, staring at the empty bleachers. Two years. I’d spent two fucking years buried under layers of basketball, college parties, and calculated forward momentum, relentlessly convincing myself that it was just a summer fling. Just a passing moment. Just a girl I needed to purge from my system.

​Apparently, my brain hadn’t gotten the goddamn memo.

​I finally retrieved the ball from the corner and headed down the concrete tunnel toward the locker room. The team had mostly cleared out by now, the air smelling of steam and body wash. Only a couple of the junior guards lingered near the exit, talking stats and weekend plans. I kept my chin down, stripped off my sweat-soaked practice gear, and hit the showers. The scalding water didn’t do a fucking thing to clear my head; the memories just kept coming in sharper, unwanted flashes against the tile.

​How she’d smile when she thought no one was looking. The way she’d quote lines from books I’d never read just to mess with me. Quiet moments where the sharp edges softened and she let me see pieces of her that felt dangerously real. Calling her Poppy in the dark, just to watch her reaction.

​By the time I dressed in clean clothes, the locker room was completely vacant. I sat heavily on the wooden bench in front of my stall, elbows resting on my knees, staring blankly at the drain in the floor. The silence pressed in on my eardrums like water pressure.

​This was supposed to be simple. Crash on a roommate's couch for a couple of weeks. Focus entirely on ball. Get through my senior year untouched by anything that didn't happen on the court.

​I stood up entirely too fast, a sudden, hot wave of anger flaring up behind my ribs. I was angry at the fucking housing department for losing my paperwork. Angry at the universe for this goddamn timing. Angry at myself for still remembering the exact, weightless way her fingers had felt in my hair under that neon sign.

​“Fuck this,” I growled into the empty room.

​Without thinking, I cocked my arm back and punched the metal locker door with everything I had. The heavy impact rang out through the room like a gunshot. A sharp, blinding pain exploded across my knuckles. I hit the steel a second time for good measure, the metal denting beneath my fist.

​“Goddamn it!”

​Dark blood smeared across the gray paint of the locker. My right hand throbbed violently, the skin over the knuckles already swelling and turning a deep, angry purple. I stared at the red streaks on the metal, my breathing ragged and shallow.

​Everything was supposed to be on track. The season. The professional scouts. The future I’d mapped out so carefully since I was a freshman. One stupid administrative housing glitch and now I was bleeding in an empty locker room because memories of some girl refused to stay in the dirt where I'd buried them.

​I wrapped my injured hand roughly with a white towel, cursing under my breath the entire time—the housing office, my shitty luck, the memories that wouldn’t die, and the infuriating way one summer still managed to completely fuck with my focus.

​This was fine.

​I’d get over it. I always did.

​But as I grabbed my duffel bag and headed out into the cooling evening air of the campus, my knuckles stinging with every single step I took, I couldn’t shake the visceral feeling that the carefully built solar system I commanded on the court was starting to wobble on its axis.

​And the disruption had just walked back into my life with a look that could cut glass.

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