Page 53 of After the Snap

“Thank you.”

The tension disappears almost immediately as King complains that Tuck gets corrected politely while she threatens him with communicable diseases, and I barely hear the rest.

She’s the coach’s daughter. That was the one piece of information I needed the first time I saw her in this building for everything between us to become suddenly complicated. I heard a reason to stay away from her. Judging by the way she reacted to Tuck, Calliope heard herself being reduced to someone else’s name.

“Can you leave this with Denise? I want her to send the revised copy to the staff before meetings,” Coach asks, handing her back the folder.

“You mean the revised copy she already sent you?” Calliope sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose just below her glasses. “I’ll handle it.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

Coach kisses the top of Calliope’s head before turning toward Tuck, and the distraction I’ve had since I walked over disappears with him. For the first time since Houston, Calliope and I are standing close enough to talk without her father or one of my teammates filling the space between us.

She adjusts the folder beneath her arm before starting toward the facility, and I fall into step beside her. Neither of us mentions that we’re walking together, but I leave enough room between us that our arms can’t accidentally brush.

Her eyes drop briefly to the space I’ve put between us before returning to my face, but she doesn’t close it. “You look different out there.”

“Different how?”

She pushes her glasses higher with one finger while she considers me. “Less like you’re waiting for someone to tell you that you don’t belong.”

She hasn’t watched me practice before today, but she saw the same thing I’ve been trying not to look at too closely myself.

“Maybe I’m getting tired of waiting.”

“Good. Then maybe stop giving everyone else the deciding vote.”

She doesn’t tell me I’ve earned it because of the throws I made today or because the guys are listening when I speak. She just looks at me like I’m allowed to make that decision for myself.

“Are you always this bossy?”

“You didn’t seem to mind in Houston.”

Calliope’s smile disappears as her eyes dart toward the players ahead of us, and my body chooses that exact moment to remember all the ways I didn’t mind her telling me what she wanted when there wasn’t anyone around to overhear.

“Careful.”

“I meant talking.”

She bites the inside of her cheek, and the familiarity of the gesture does more to me than it should. We’re dangerously close to being the two people we were in Houston, when neither of us knew wanting each other had consequences. Calliope looks away first, adjusting the folder under her arm. Her thumb finds the stone in her ring and turns it once around her finger, drawing my attention to the amethyst as the teasing disappears from her expression.

“It still feels weird having my mom’s ring back.” She turns the ring slowly around her finger. “I got used to reaching for it and finding nothing.”

My fingers brush the bare chain beneath the collar of my jersey before I realize I’ve reached for it. “I got used to it being here.”

I could take the words back, but she already knows I kept it around my neck. What she doesn’t know is how quickly wearing it became part of getting dressed every morning, or how wrong the chain felt the first time I put it on without the weight of her ring hanging from it.

“Why are you still wearing the chain?”

“It felt weird taking it off.”

Her eyes stay on mine for a beat before dropping toward the chain again, and she doesn’t ask me to explain.

“Thank you for keeping it safe,” she says, her thumb moving over the amethyst again.

“You don’t have to thank me.” I look at the ring instead of her because looking at both at the same time feels like asking for trouble. “Besides, it looks better on you anyway.”

The facility door swings shut ahead of us before either of us says anything else. Calliope speeds up as if she can catch it, but it closes less than a foot before she reaches it.