Page 37 of The Longest Shot
I don't have answers.
But I do have silence, for the first time in years, heavy and suffocating and exactly what I deserve. Outside, campus life continues—laughter, music, the normal sounds of people who haven't just had their entire identity exposed—but suddenly I feel cut adrift from it.
As if I've been playing the wrong position my whole fucking life.
fifteen
MORGAN
I won,so why do I still feel like shit?
The morning air has teeth, nipping at exposed skin between my jacket collar, even as my footsteps create a military cadence on brick, precise and controlled like I've trained myself to be. As I walk, each breath forms a small cloud that dissipates instantly, like every connection I've successfully avoided.
This is control.
This is loneliness.
Last night, I performed surgery on James's psyche without anesthesia. I peeled back every layer, exposed every pathetic coping mechanism, every desperate joke he's ever wielded as armor. And that final moment—I learned my lesson about that three summers ago—was the kill-shot.
The look on his face.God, that look. It was like watching someone realize they'd been breathing wrong their whole life. His mouth had opened, then closed, and for once in his goddamn life, James had nothing to say.
And the silence—that beautiful, terrible silence—had stretched between us like a canyon neither of us could cross. I'd watched his eyes cycle through confusion, recognition, then something worse than anger: understanding.
He'd finally seen what I saw three years ago, that he was exactly the coward I'd always known him to be. As I think about it, my spine straightens into the posture my Mother drilled into me.
Own your emotions, Morgan, she'd always said.Own your space.
And as I walk across campus towards the coffee shop, I try my best to do so.
Despite the cold, Pine Barren University ordered its weather from the same catalog where it gets its promotional materials, with an absurdly perfect fall morning complete with golden sunlight filtering through leaves that look individually painted.
Students are sprawled across the quad in groups, enjoying the sunlight. Some are studying, others are just hanging, but everyone is here to be with others. And here I am, the lone wolf, striding on my own, no doubt giving off my usual 'fuck-off-and-don't-dare-approach-me' vibe.
A couple passes me, joined at the hip like they're competing in a three-legged race nobody asked them to enter. She wears his basketball jersey, cute and casually possessive at the same time, and his hand claims her back pocket with the desperation of someone afraid she'll fly away if he lets go.
"A breakfast burrito has eggs," she insists, mock outrage brightening her voice. "Eggs are literally the most breakfast food ever invented."
"But they're wrapped in a tortilla," he counters, pulling her closer when she pretends to escape. "That makes them lunch. It's science."
Fools…my mind tries to sound convincing as they drift out of earshot.They're drunk on intimacy, but in three weeks, one of them will ghost the other after a pregnancy scare or to depart on a study abroad program or just because Tuesday rolled around and they got bored.
As I try to convince myself I'm right where I am, doing exactly what I want, the liberal arts building rises ahead, all Gothic pretension and unnecessary gargoyles. I round the corner, cataloging today's battle: equipment inventory where I'll discover what else the men's team has "borrowed"—
Then Devils colors stop me cold.
My body reacts before my brain processes the threat, and pure instinct drives me back into a stone archway's shadow. Because, right there, James and a few of the hockey boys are sitting on the low wall bordering the philosophy building's pretentious meditation garden.
They're all talking, but someone has replaced James with a deflated version of himself. Those shoulders that usually sprawl across space have collapsed inward. His perpetually moving hands—always drumming, or conducting invisible orchestras—rest still in his lap. He stares at nothing, present but not really.
Satisfaction shoots through me.There's what you really are without your circus act,I think.
Because this is accountability, a visual depiction of what happens when someone finally refuses to laugh at your deflections, and who doesn't accept your bullshit that's shoveled down on others from a position of privilege. And if he has to sit in it for a while, well… it'll be good for him.
He might need to learn how to function without emotional training wheels.
Part of me wants to stride right past them—pasthim—but my legs stay frozen. Because here, in the shadows, watching, I'm finally able to confirm my hypothesis: that underneath the manic energy and entertainment, there's a frightened child who never learned to speak without making it a punchline.
But there's also data that doesn't compute.
