Page 37 of Out of Bounds

For a long moment, I thought Ryan was going to tell me to fuck off. Instead, his eyes flickered over to mine before taking their post, staring out at the darkness again.

"We have photos taken by the guy at Clear Lens." The anger stilled as the human calendar booted up. If there was anything Ryan was good at, it was knowing how to cross everything off a list. "We have a lunch with the student center for the ceremony in November. And football practice at six. But that’s a given."

I paused. "Six…at night? Evening?"

"No."

I took a long look at the clock that blinked on his dashboard. "Is that a joke?"

"Why would I joke about that?"

"Aboutpractice?"

Some part of me prayed he was keeping up a bit, but the bemused smile on his face said otherwise.

I shook my head. "You were just at a frat party. You just beat the shit out of a guy. Shouldn’t that count?"

"If we’re winning the Birchwood Bowl, we—"

"Did you forget what sleep is? Did that slip out of your brain with one too many football hits?"

"I sleep enough."

"When?" My question hung in the air. "Ryan, you do know you can rest. Right?"

The back-and-forth conversation rang out like shots in the air. Both of us weren’t exactly singing daisies, and I was just drunk enough to keep going. But that question stamped itself differently from the rest.

Ryan gazed at me. Those dark honey eyes softened.

"I sleep enough to build muscle."

"That’s not what I mean," I told him, stubborn. "You know that."

"Kassie, I can’t cancel practice."

"Why not?"

"I can’t."

"Give me one good reason."

"If I did, I’d have to tell Adam face to face." He sighed. "And I’m not interested in that right now."

I frowned. "You can’t call him?"

"No."

"SOS him? Morse code with flashlights? You don’t have messy group chats?"

"We—no, I can’t because he doesn’t check them." Ryan rubbed his jaw. "If practice times change, he doesn’t check the texts fast enough and I don’t know how to use the apps to notify him or whatever. I’d have to tell him before—"

"Why?"

"Why?" Ryan repeated, confused. "I’m team captain."

"He’s an adult. You’re an adult. Are you telling me you’ve got to hunt down these twenty-year-olds like toddlers at a daycare?That’swhat being a team captain is?"

Ryan ran his tongue over his teeth, and I was suddenly aware of the complete idiocy of the situation. He was a professional athlete, less than a year from going pro. And there was me, an animation student with a half-working tablet charger and enough credit card debt to make me ignore my emails.

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