Page 26 of Playing for the Hat Trick
When I get home, I get an email.
Subject: PT Transfer Pending
Message: Following today’s disruption and consistent non-compliance, your case is being reevaluated. Please prepare for reassignment or potential dismissal from the program. Updates will follow.
– R.
I stare at it.
One part relief, two parts humiliation. Three parts . . . what the fuck?
This isn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to blow it. I didn’t want to end up flagged. And I sure as hell didn’t want to be the guy who gets passed around like a cursed item for which no one wants responsibility.
I shouldn’t be surprised, though. At least I didn’t spend too many weeks—or months—pretending something good would happen. Dr. Park was wrong. If I had had a timeline, I would’ve succeeded, but with this . . . there wasn’t even a three-strikes-you’re-out. They technically just told me to stand by while they figure out how to say,Get the fuck out.
Chapter Ten
Scottie
When Everyone Else Fails, You Get Assigned the Wreckage
There are only three reasons Reese brings me smoothies.
One: She needs me to cover her group class because someone on her team has COVID, strep, or—last month—a mysterious rash none of us want to discuss again.
Two: She’s secured a sponsor donation that requires me to be the face of it—on camera, on a turf mat, appearing competent and charismatic while explaining something in thirty seconds or less.
The competent part is doable, but I’m not very good at cutting things short, it’s almost impossible to do.
And three?
She’s about to ask me to do something I absolutely don’t want to do. Today, she brings two smoothies.
Both eco-cups land on my desk with a suspiciously chirpy thud. The green one’s probably kale, pineapple, and something gritty like ground flaxseed, because Reese believes in “gut health.” The second’s pink, thick, and flecked with something ominously berry-adjacent. I stare at it as if it might start talking.
“You only bring two smoothies when you’re about to ruin my day,” I mutter, gluing my eyes back on the screen. “So someone either rage-quit mid-lunge, or someone’s accidentally knocked someone up in the broom closet—how many times have I told you people to use protection and not sleep with each other? Or there’s a third I might not like at all: Jason Tate has burned something.”
Reese doesn’t blink. Just keeps gliding like she’s on a goddamn wellness retreat. “No one’s pregnant.”
“That you know of.”
She slides into the chair across from me, crossing her legs like she’s here for brunch and not a therapy ambush. “They’re mango-strawberry with collagen and adaptogens. For your stress.”
I squint at her. “You know I don’t trust adaptogens in this kind of situation. They’re like emotional glitter—useless, impossible to clean up, and probably hiding in a marketing scam somewhere.”
“You trust black coffee and malice.”
“Exactly. Bitterness preps the nervous system better than lavender powder ever will.”
I take the smoothies anyway. Not because I’m gullible—because I’m weak. It’s mango strawberry. She knows my weakness.
But I don’t sip. Not yet. Because she didn’t correct the part about Jason Tate.
I set the cup down like a trap and fold my arms. “Want me to guess, or are we skipping to the part where you say, ‘hear me out,’ and I start slow-breathing through my eye twitch?”
She doesn’t speak.
She just pulls a file from her oversized Mary Poppins bag and drops it on my desk like it might explode. I don’t like what I see, not one bit. Red stamp. Temporary Hold. Jason Tate.
