Page 2 of Untouchable Player

The more I look at the picture, the more I convince myself it isn’t him. I haven’t looked at his body hard enough to know if it really is so recognisably his.

Talking to him, even just to find out, is obviously out of the question, so I log out of the app and put my phone down.

Jesse

When my mom found out I got into an Ivy League college I’m sure she was picturing pretty brownstone buildings with big fancy gates like Yale or Harvard, and this school has those too. But not the building for the College of Life Sciences where I take my Sport’s Nutrition classes. It looks more like a doctor’s office, with tiny square windows and iron railings. I don’t care what it looks like, but I could see how disappointed she was when I gave her a tour.

I get off the bus and lug my bag to my professor’s office for our meeting. I haven’t told anyone about it. My captain would only stress me out if he knew I’d ended the year with a D in my major, and I’d planned on making it up this semester before anyone found out.

My stomach flips as I wait outside Professor Williams’ office. What if she’s kicking me off the course? I’ll never be able to get onto another major now and I’ll lose my scholarship and my place on the team.

More importantly, my dad will fucking kill me.

Professor Williams opens the door and she can’t hide the little sigh when she sees me.

I follow her into the room crammed wall-to-wall with books. The desk covered in stacks of papers and framed photos of her family. Her book on sport’s nutrition is face-out on one of the bookshelves and still intimidates the shit out of me every time I see it.

I sit in the soft white chair opposite prof’s desk and put my bag down on the floor.

“Do you have hockey practise today?” she asks, looking at my bag.

I nod.

She once asked me if I have to carry all my equipment around with me and if it’s heavy, and I thought that was kind of nice, that she at least pretended to care.

Prof steeples her hands on the desk and looks at me and I look away. There’s something about this woman that makes me feel like she can see right through me. Like she knows about the crusty socks under my bed I keep meaning to clean out, and the plate I forgot about on the windowsill where the pizza went so mouldy it melded itself to the plastic.

“Jesse, I wanted to talk about your plans for the future.”

I take a deep breath. I do not want to talk about this.

“What is it you want?” she asks, and when I don’t answer right away, “where do you see yourself in five years?”

I don’t even know where I see myself in five minutes. What the fuck am I supposed to say?

I shrug and she sighs, letting her hands rest on the desk.

“You minor in sport’s training, isn’t that right?”

I nod.

“Your professor tells me you’re good at it and you enjoy it.”

Something changes on her face because she looks hopeful. Did I smile?

“Sure, it’s… fun.”

“Maybe you’d like to go into training or coaching or something?”

“I’ve got a little sister, Sam, she’s thirteen, I taught her how to play hockey, and she’s really good.”

Prof raises her eyebrows and I tell myself it isn’t patronising. She’s nice. She cares. She’s trying to help.

“What can we do to get there Jesse? Have you scheduled a meeting with our careers advisors yet?”

I shake my head.

“This is your senior year, the sooner you start planning for your future, the better the position you’ll be in when you graduate.”

---