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And I go to my bag, and I break my own rule, and I look at my phone.

There’s a text. I know who it’s from before I turn the screen over, which is a problem I’m choosing to have later.

Theo

you at practice

No punctuation. No capital. Theo texts like every keystroke costs him a shift at the rink, which — fair. I drop onto the bleachers next to my bag, towel around my neck, and thumb back one-handed, and I’m smiling before I’ve even decided to, which I notice, and shelve for later, which is getting to be a crowded shelf.

Where else would I be at 5pm on a Tuesday. Some of us have Nationals.

Theo

thought cheer was a fall thing

Football’s a fall thing. Competition is a spring thing. We contain multitudes, Mercer⁠—

I stop. Delete his name. I don’t call him that anymore, apparently, not even in a text he’ll never see me draft — which is a small, quietly alarming development I’m also setting aside for later. I retype.

We contain multitudes. What do you want?

Theo

library still on for tonight. 11.

Obviously. I booked it. I always book it.

Theo

then why’d you ask

I didn’t ask, you asked, learn to read your own texts.

Three dots. They appear, disappear, appear. Theo composing more than four words is a geological event, and I watch it happen with my whole chest, which — again, later, obviously.

Theo

whats got you losing at your own sport

And I don’t know why I tell him. That’s the part I’ll turn over tonight. I could deflect — I deflect for a living, I could deflect this into next week. Instead I look across the gym at the mat, and I tell him the true thing. One-handed. To a boy I can’t stand.

Transition into the pyramid keeps dying. I hit the toss clean, hit the skill clean, and then the load’s a half-count tight and I land late and blow it up. Ethan swears it’s me. Third time today. It’s fine. I’ll fix it.

The dots again. Longer this time.

Theo

its not you

You’ve never watched me stunt in your life.

Theo

dont have to. you said it clean twice then it dies at the load. thats not you missing. thats the input firing before the last thing finished. you land late because the count tells you to go before your body’s done the skill. move the trigger, not the flyer.

I read it twice.

I read it a third time, on a bleacher in a gym that smells like rosin and effort, and something goes still and warm behind my ribs. Because that’s — that’s right. That’s exactly right. It’s the thing I’ve felt in my own body for three days and couldn’t put words to, because Ethan’s the captain and the captain says the count is fine. Move the trigger, not the flyer. He builds worlds nobody’s allowed to look at, and he just took my stunt apart from across town without watching a single rep — treated my sport like a system with an honest answer in it, not a thing a decorative girl does with pom-poms.