Jane
We’d been doing this for about a month. Study sessions after practice, alternating between the coffee shop and campus, each one a strange mix of caffeine, silence, and actual progress. Somewhere between reviewing elasticity equations and quizzing him on case study responses, we’d started to fall into a rhythm. Not quite friends. Not just teammates. Something else. Something I couldn’t name.
Austin was still Austin - loud at practice, lazy until pushed, and allergic to silence. But lately, that had changed. In the car, we were mostly silent now, the hum of the engine filling the space where our jokes used to be. He’d stopped pretending not to care during study sessions. He still showed up. He still tried. But the easy banter was gone. He didn’t joke through every worksheet anymore—no
