Page 7 of Sideline Play

“You didn’t give him anything to manage his pain last night?” I nearly accuse, my tone only softening on the last syllables when Remington’s hand drops under the table to squeeze my knee.

“Oh I tried, but he was very adamant in his choice. Insisted he could make it until surgery tomorrow without intervention.”

Swiveling around in my seat and knocking his hand free of my leg before someone sees, I ask, “Are you insane?” My question is more focused on his openly searing touch than his current course of treatment. “You are aware that it’s not just to make you more comfortable, right? Quality rest ahead of surgery is paramount, but it also helps to manage the swelling in your joint and makes your stunted mobility a bit easier to bear. You’re about to be on an extremely regimented and accelerated recovery program and need to be taking care of yourself. Did you even sleep last night?” I ask, reaching up to remove his hat and push back his hood to better examine him.

One night and already his face is lined with exhaustion. His hazel eyes are wary and accentuated with puffy, purple hued shadows. Even the crepe coloring of his normally plush lips seems to have dimmed overnight, his bottom lip showing signs of moderate dehydration as they look ready to peel and crack.

“Did you?” he quietly counters, glancing towards my oversized tumbler filled with iced coffee.

“I’m not the one going into surgery tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, but you will be the one overseeing my, ‘regimented and accelerated,’ recovery. Meaning, you need to rest too if you’re going to be ready to hit the ground running with me post-op. And enough caffeine to induce cardiac arrest in an elephant is not a viable substitute for sleep. I may bench press more than you weigh on a regular day, but I can barely walk rightnow, so I’ll be absolutely useless in helping if you drop from a heart attack or exhaustion mid-training. Not to mention I don’t particularly relish the butt whooping Roman’ll administer if I let something happen to you. He won’t pull his punches just because I’m a lame horse right now. So let’s consider you taking care of yourself as an extension of taking care of me.”

“Oh please, you’re being as dramatic as he is during a massage. Besides, this is only my second cup.”

“Doesn’t count when there’s at least three cups worth inside your one.

“Grad student,” I enunciate. “I’m used to running on less than adequate sleep. And not that it’s any of your business, but this morning is an extenuating—wait,” I interrupt, turning back to the front. “Did he just say I’m overseeing his rehab?”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Brady mutters as the handful of other students in the room all glance my way, several of them beginning to whisper.

“Yes, he did,” Jennings broadly smiles. “As everyone here is already aware, with my wife’s due date approaching, I’m set to begin my paternity leave any week now. Things were already in motion to begin shuffling you around to intern under the other trainers here as well as to put someone into the position of rehabbing Tate during the postseason and after in the offseason.”

“And by that he means Jones,” Brady snarked.

“Yes, I do,” Jennings answered, unfazed by the rapidly simmering hostility in the room. “Each of you went up for a blind review overseen by the rest of the training staff, the coaches, and a select few of your professors over the last several semesters. Once narrowed down to their top three, Remington and I made the final selection based on academic history, knowledge over his type of injury, skills required, and probability of success. And that’s not only in rehabbing him but in fulfilling the position wewill have opening up come May that you all began auditioning for at the start of the semester.”

That caught everyone’s attention. It hadn’t yet been made public knowledge that the team was actively looking to add to its staff. Rather, Jennings, as the head athletic trainer, wanted to keep the prospect quiet so as best to evaluate everyone without the inherent competition that would come with knowing there was a job with the team waiting for at least one of us upon graduation. My own knowledge of the coming vacancy’s existence was only because of Roman. The retiring trainer was one of only two he allowed his guard fully to fall around and allow to touch his bare skin, Jennings being the other.

“Now in light of the severity of Remington’s injury, our needs have changed. Hence this unforgiving round of Socratic discussion. The demands required upon the trainer’s schedule who would be working with Tate before were easy. Your clinical hours would have remained unchanged with his schedule molding to yours.

“However, now we need someone who can accommodate his full time scheduling needs while keeping up with classwork, exams, and the semester project remotely. And as the head trainer for the Nighthawks, the decision was ultimately mine and Remington’s. It’s his career on the line, meaning he needs to have explicit trust in whomever he is working with.”

“And that is unequivocally Scarlet,” Remington closes out. “No one else in this room holds the same investment with the Nighthawks’ success and the continuation of my career as she does.”

Reclining back in his chair, obnoxiously clicking his pen, Brady laughs under his breath, “Oh, sothat’swhose dick you sit on.” My hand snaps out and grabs Remington at the thigh to stop him from reacting.

“So with that in mind,” Jennings says, his back to the room while he draws an outline from tomorrow’s surgery to the report date for next year’s Spring Training. “Scarlet, how would you proceed with Tate’s recovery plan for the first ten weeks following his surgery?”

FIVE

REMINGTON

“Your rangeof motion is much better than expected. We won’t really be able to gauge until after tomorrow, but I think we were a bit conservative on the estimate of how much recovery time you’ll need,” Jennings says, patting my back. “You’ve done a good job keeping yourself in top shape while still maintaining an appropriate handicap for your hip.”

Circling around the table where we just finished my session with the pathetically loose resistance bands, he comes up behind Scarlet, who has been his shadow for the entire session and asks, “Any other questions?”

Biting on her nail as she flips through her copious notes, she begins shaking her head no, strands of hair escaping the messy bow wrapped pile on top of her head. She blows one up and out of her face, her nose scrunching in annoyance as it lands right back over her eye, and I know I’m far more fucked than I even thought. Something so mundane shouldn’t be this endearing or tempting. And as she swipes the strands back into place before turning her notebook around to point at something she’s written, temptation becomes an even more fitting description for the innocuous act.

I can’t help but think about combing my fingers through her hair. Twining her thick ends around my fingers. Pulling just enough to see her lips part as her eyes turn hooded. Visualizing what she would look like between my knees, that ribbon binding her wrists, and my hand cupping the back of her head as her glossy lips glide down my cock. Her cheeks colored pink and those expressive, dark blue eyes glancing up at me in search of praise and reassurance, her artfully smudged makeup ruined.

Shifting on the table as my dick begins to harden, I’m startled by Jennings saying, “Tate, you with us?”

“What? Yeah of course.”

“You sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

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