Page 68 of After the Snap

“Which was on the floor.”

I’m still glaring at Easton when Jubal turns from the cabinet and sets a small packet of plain roasted almonds beside my coffee. My irritation disappears as I look from the packet to him. He pulls out the chair beside Easton as if there’s nothing unusual about what he just did, while I try to figure out why he chose those when the cabinet is full of the flavored ones the guys keep inhaling.

“You don’t like the flavored ones.”

“How do you know that?”

Jubal looks at me like the answer is obvious. “You never eat them.”

I’ve never told him I don’t like them. I’ve just passed over the flavored packages whenever someone dumps snacks on the table, digging until I find the plain ones or choosing something else when there aren’t any.

It shouldn’t matter. He’s a quarterback who makes a living paying attention to what everyone around him is doing, so knowing which package I pull out of a basket hardly qualifies as intimate knowledge. Except none of the other players have noticed, and they’ve spent just as much time wandering in and out of this room all week. Jubal noticed because he was looking at me.

Heat crawls up my neck as I reach for the almonds. “Apparently, my snack habits are fascinating.”

“Not particularly.” I narrow my eyes at him as I tear open the package of almonds, and the smile he flashes is almost worse than the almonds.

I know what Jubal looks like when he smiles for everyone else. I’ve seen the polished version appear the second someone points a camera at him, but this one reaches his eyes before he looks toward my laptop.

“What are you working on?” Jubal asks, eyes locking on my laptop.

“I’m trying to decide whether I’m going to take the MCAT again.”

Saying it to Jubal makes the possibility feel more real than it did when I said almost the same thing to Easton. Jubal knows how devastated I was to have failed in the first place, and some part of me still remembers how easy it was to tell him things I hadn’t intended to say out loud. His gaze locks with mine, and for one horrible second, I brace myself for the reassurance I know how to argue with.

Instead, he asks, “Do you want to?”

My fingers stop against the open edge of the almond packet. Jubal doesn’t know what Easton and I were talking about before he walked in, but he knows what the last MCAT did to me. He met me hours after I got the score, when I was terrified enough to admit to a stranger that I had no idea what came next. He saw what losing that future looked like the first time. Even knowing what trying again could hand back to me, he doesn’t ask whether I think I can pass. He asks whether I want to try.

I look at the registration page again, but the number from my last test doesn’t rise first this time. Instead, I see all the years I spent chasing this future before one score made me question whether I could keep wanting the thing at the end of it, and the answer I finally found with Easton hasn’t changed.

Becoming a doctor is still what I want, and the certainty of it scares me because I can’t protect myself by pretending the first failure might have been a reason to choose something else. If I walk away now, it won’t be because I discovered I wanted a different future; it’ll be because I was too afraid to risk failing at the one I still want.

“Yes,” I whisper as my eyes lift to his.

Admitting it feels like putting something breakable into my own hands again. Jubal holds my gaze, and I wait for him to tell me I can do it. I want him to give me the confidence I don’t have, to promise me this time will be different, because he saw what the first failure did to me, and I want him to guarantee I won’t ever have to feel that way again. I almost ask him to say something because I don’t know what to do with all this uncertainty by myself.

“Okay.”

My eyebrows pull together as Jubal reaches for a pretzel, and for half a second, I want to demand more from him. He’s spent the last week noticing which almonds I don’t eat, but apparently telling him I still want the future I thought I’d lost earns me one word.

I swallow down a laugh as I look back at my laptop. The registration button is still waiting exactly where I left it, and knowing I want what could be on the other side doesn’t make another bad score any less possible. My hand settles on the trackpad, and this time when I move the cursor over continue to registration, I click it before I can retreat into another round of questions I’ve already answered.

The page changes before I can reconsider what I’ve done, and the testing dates I spent the last week comparing fill the screen. I find the date that gives me enough time to prepare without letting me put this off indefinitely.

I’ve clicked on this date more than once while telling myself I was only looking, but choosing it as part of an actual registration makes my stomach tighten. When I finally click it, the circle beside the date fills in, turning all the calculations I’ve been making into the first choice that only makes sense if I’m taking this test.

“What are you doing?” Easton asks.

“Checking something,” I grumble, pulling up my calendar and counting the weeks between now and the test for the fourth time.

Nothing has changed since yesterday. I still have enough time to work through the material and adjust where I need to, but my thumb lingers over the calendar anyway. I’m not checking anymore. I’m searching for some detail I might have missed that will make choosing this date feel safer. When I don’t find one, I set my phone face down and move through the registration information until I catch myself rereading my address for the third time. I know where I live, which leaves me staring at the screen with the uncomfortable realization that I’ve found another way not to finish.

Studying doesn’t scare me because I know how to do that part. I can make schedules, work through practice questions, identify what I’m getting wrong, and keep going until I understand it. I can control every hour I put into preparing for this test, but I can’t control what happens after.

My stomach twists as I click to continue, and the final registration page loads with my name, testing center, and date above the confirmation button. I wipe my palm against my jeans before reaching for the trackpad, but my hand stops before I touch it. The last time I did everything I was supposed to do, I still opened a score that wasn’t enough. Registering again means agreeing to put myself back in a position where I could do all that work and end up staring at another number that hurts just as much.

Easton’s chair shifts across from me. “You good?”