Page 3 of Possession

I guess if my boss insists, I have no choice.

I have just enough time to grab my bag before my friends are dragging me out of the building and into the autumn night.

I hardly ever go out during the week, and I drink alcohol even less often than that. I’ve got too much riding on my grades, and if I’m honest, I’m worried I’ll turn out like my parents. Bitter, angry, struggling with alcoholism.

Baxter always said at least my drunk parents had an excuse to scream and yell. His dad’s just ornery. Broken inside. I shake away these thoughts and order a spritzer.

The trainers are already settled into a corner booth, passing around shots of whiskey, toasting geeky things like rotator cuffs and “springy groins.”

“Another spritzer?” Julia raises an eyebrow at me. She knows I don’t really drink. She’s in graduate school for sports medicine and rehabilitation, but we’ve been friends for a few years. Not the sort of friends who open up about my parents on a bender dragging me through the front yard by the ponytail. Only Bax knows those parts of my past.

I smile and take a sip as Justin drapes an arm around my shoulder. “To ice and stim and no blown ACLs,” he says, raising his glass.

I stare at his arm, trying to figure out what it means that he put it around me. I stiffen, and he pulls it back into his lap.

“Come on, Olive,” Julia says, holding a glass of brown liquid toward me. “The boss is toasting. We’re about to be neck deep in football stench. You gotta drink at least one shot with us.” She grins.

She’s probably right. I remind myself how lucky I am to have this opportunity and gain this experience. Justin probably is including me because he thinks I’m doing a good job, right? I shrug and accept Julia’s glass, clinking it with Justin’s. I feel the warm drink burn as it slides down my throat. I shake my head and slam the glass back on the table.

Justin stares at me for a long while and I see Julia notice. She slides closer to Gabe—they’ve become sort of a thing this semester—and winks at me. I sip at my spritzer. I know my boss is not too much older than me—he got hired at SCU athletics right after he finished his masters.

But I don’t want to cross any boundaries that might impact my work. He’s a good trainer and I have a lot to learn from him, especially if I want a funded position in graduate school. He reaches to tuck a lock of my blonde hair behind my ear, and I turn to face him, eyes wide. First of all, only Bax has touched me like that—but Bax and I are just friends. Maybe this is just how guys show they care about the women in their lives?

It feels off and I don’t like it.

I cough and excuse myself to go get another non-alcoholic drink. In line at the bar, all I can think about is how angry Baxter would get if he saw. He’s always worried someone is going to take advantage of me, whatever that means.

I let the whiskey settle into my blood while I try to figure out what I should do next. While I imagine what it would be like to want someone other than Baxter for a change. Just when had my hair begun to stand on end at the brush of Baxter’s skin against mine? And how do I explain the very different feeling I got when my boss touched me back there?

Coming back to the booth, I slide into easy conversation with the others. Justin doesn’t give me any more lingering glances and doesn’t touch me again, so I tell myself I probably overreacted. He’s probably getting excited about the game this weekend. As I relax, I find myself talking about research plans with Julia and Gabe. They’re both focusing on knee research, which is good business for people who work with football players.

I tell them how I’ve always been fascinated by the shoulder. It’s such a delicate joint, connected to so many muscles. I do not tell them my first foray into shoulder trauma was when Bax injured his dodging a blow from his father.

That night, in the forsythia hideout, I helped massage his joint, stretch his arm, soothe him. That’s when I started checking sports medicine books out from the library and learning all that I could about how all the body’s wonderful parts worked together.

Out loud in the bar, though, I just tell them how I started shadowing and interviewing athletic trainers in high school when I was tagging along after Baxter Morgan, just like now.

Before I realize it, the bar tender is calling last drinks. “Shit,” I say. “It’s late.” Julia and Gabe slink off together, his thumb creeping down the waistband of her jeans. I sigh, sort of dreading walking home alone in the dark.

“Let’s get you home then,” Justin says, slapping a few bills on the table. I nod and smile as he picks up my coat, standing behind me while I shrug into it. He’s looking out for me. This is fine. “You live in McPherson, right? I’m parked not far from there.”

We walk close together, but not quite touching, and he asks me about the coming week. “We’ve had a pretty uneventful pre-season with practices,” he says. I nod.

“I didn’t like the look of JT’s thumb this week, though.” I know Baxter agrees with him—the starting quarterback will be missing this weekend’s game. The second string QB is a transfer student named Kevan. I’ve always thought he seemed nice and polite, but Baxter says Kevan stares at me. I don’t mention any of this to Justin, but I do ask him what they’re doing about JT’s thumb.

As we walk, we talk through the football roster and Justin asks me how I’ve enjoyed the slower pace in the training room this summer. I did a six-week turn working with the soccer team when I got my scholarship extended to summer semester.

“Those guys are all pulled hamstrings and strained quads,” I say, laughing. “Easy as pie.” As we approach my building, joking together, I see a hulking figure leaning against the door of my dorm. As we approach, he stalks over to us, and I see that it’s Baxter. He looks livid. I feel relieved.

Justin nods in Bax’s direction. “That you, Morgan?”

Bax doesn’t register that Justin spoke to him. “Where the hell have you been?” He practically snarls at me. “I’ve been calling you for hours! Hours, Olive.”

“Oh crap,” I tell him. I turn my phone off when I’m at work and I must have forgotten to turn it back on when we went to the bar. I click the power button and it starts vibrating in my hand with text after text, and voicemails all from Bax. I know this is a big deal because he probably thought I was in trouble. Growing up, I oftenwasin trouble. My parents often passed out drunk and forget to bring me home. Bax always managed to find me. He must have been searching for me all over campus when I didn’t answer my phone.

“Easy there, big guy,” Justin reaches out to pat Bax on the shoulder. “She was with me.” This does not elicit the desired effect. Baxter’s nostrils flare and he looks, if possible, even more angry.

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” he says.

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