The first thing Aaron did was move slowly.
He pulled the sheet back centimeter by centimeter until he could get his legs out without the mattress making any sound. Zoe was still facing away from him, her curly hair spread over the pillow, her breathing slow. She hadn't moved.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a few seconds looking at the floor. He breathed slowly. Then he started looking for his clothes.
The room was small. A window with the blinds down, a desk with books piled in no particular order, a chair with clothes on top that had been sitting there for several days. Aaron's clothes were on the floor, all of them, in various places on the floor and with no geographical concentration that made them easy to find.
His socks were next to the foot of the bed. His pants were by the door, as if they had gotten there with some momentum. One shoe was under the chair. The other was under the bed, which required Aaron to kneel on the floor and stick his arm all the way in without breathing too loudly.
The shirt was the problem. He searched for it with his eyes, scanning the floor in silence. It wasn't next to the pants. It wasn't next to the shoes. He checked under the bed again, and nothing either. He lifted the clothes off the chair just in case. Nothing.
Zoe moved.
Aaron froze.
Zoe made the sound of someone who is waking up, a slight adjustment of position, and then opened her eyes. She sat up slightly, leaning on her elbow. She looked at the room, looked at Aaron, looked at the shoes Aaron was still holding in his hand, and something in her expression shifted toward something that wasn't quite a smile, but looked a lot like one.
"Usually it's the girl who disappears the next morning," she said in the voice of someone who had just woken up. "Not the guy."
Aaron didn't respond right away.
"I don't usually do this kind of thing," he finally said.
"Disappearing the next morning, or last night in general?"
Aaron thought about how to answer that. It was a fair question. It was also awkward.
"Both," he said.
Zoe nodded as if that were explanation enough.
"And where were you going?" she asked.
"To practice."
"What time was practice?"
Aaron looked at the phone in his pants pocket. It was ten seventeen. Practice had been going on for an hour and fifteen minutes.
"At nine."
Zoe processed that for a moment.
"With the workout we had last night, that should be enough," she said.
And as she said that, her eyes ran down Aaron's torso in a way that left no ambiguity whatsoever. Aaron didn't answer. He couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't be worse than silence, so he turned to look for his shirt with more urgency than before.
The scan of the floor produced no new results. He checked under the bed again, and nothing either.
He heard movement behind him.
Zoe had gotten out of bed.
Aaron registered it first with his peripheral vision and then couldn't help turning around for a brief instant. Zoe bent down by the edge of the bed to pick something up off the floor—an old t-shirt she used for sleeping—and in that moment Aaron had a clear view of Zoe's backside, and his mind, which up to that point had been focused on finding his shirt and leaving, paused involuntarily. He remembered things. Quite a few. In more detail than he needed at that moment.
He shook his head and went back to searching.
The shirt was under the desk. There was no logical way to explain how it had gotten there, but there it was. He picked it up, shook it out, and put it on. He started buttoning it up without looking in Zoe's direction, who had already put on her t-shirt and was sitting on the edge of the bed with her feet on the floor, her hair still messy, watching him with no visible rush.
"Are you always in such a hurry, or is this something special for today?" Zoe asked.
"Practice already started."
"I know that already."
Aaron finished the last button.
"Are you going to talk to me again someday, or was this a one-time event?" Zoe said.
"I don't know," Aaron said. It was the most honest answer he had.
Zoe evaluated him for a moment. She didn't push. She didn't add anything.
"Fair answer," she finally said.
Aaron grabbed his phone, keys, and campus ID. He had everything he had brought to the party the night before, which wasn't much because he hadn't planned on staying, nor planned the garden, nor planned the conversation with Zoe, nor anything that came after that conversation.
"Hey," Zoe said when Aaron was already at the door.
Aaron turned around.
"Good luck with Calipari."
"How do you know who Calipari is?"
"We're in Lexington. Everyone knows who Calipari is."
Aaron looked at her for a moment longer. Zoe met his gaze without any rush. Aaron nodded once and left.
The hallway of the student residence was empty. Most students were likely resting or had gone out early in the morning.
He walked back to campus with his hands in his pockets. The cold morning air hit his face and helped with the hangover better than anything else he could have tried. There weren't many people on the streets at that hour on a Sunday. Sunday mornings had that texture of days when no one has any urgent obligations, and Aaron walked through them with his head down, thinking about the math he already knew how it was going to turn out. Practice had been going on for an hour and twenty minutes. Showing up now meant walking into the gym with everyone watching, with Calipari watching from the sideline, with the foul board already set up and the question of where he had been floating in the air without anyone saying it out loud. That was worse than not going. So he didn't go.
He reached his room, closed the door, and lay down on the bed without taking off his shoes. The room was exactly as he had left it the night before the party: his gym bag next to his bed, his phone charger on the nightstand, his folded practice t-shirt on the chair. The one he hadn't used today. He let his breath out slowly and stared at the ceiling for several minutes, listening to the noise of the building, footsteps in the hallway, a door closing on some floor above.
He thought about what he was going to say to Calipari. The only real option was to show up the next day before practice started, walk into the office, and say what he had to say without making anything up. The truth was that he had missed because he had woken up in the room of a girl he had met the night before in the garden of a party, and that wasn't the kind of explanation any coach needs to hear. Nor was it the kind of lie that holds up when Andrew Harrison has seen you at that party and the whole team already knows before Monday's practice begins. So the truth was what it was, unvarnished and without trying to make it sound better than it was.
He thought about Zoe telling him that last night's workout should be enough, and about how her eyes had run down his torso. He shook his head. Then he thought about Calipari's office, the closed door, the chair in front of the desk. That was considerably more effective at clearing away any other thoughts, and he fell asleep.
When the door opened, Aaron didn't know how much time had passed. The light was different, more direct. Past noon. He had slept for more than two hours.
Julius walked in with his gym bag over his shoulder, his clothes still damp from the final drills of practice. He saw Aaron lying on the bed, still in yesterday's clothes. He stopped in the middle of the room. He looked at Aaron's gym bag on the floor, exactly where he had left it before going to the party last night. He looked at Aaron. He looked at the bag. He looked back at Aaron.
"Where were you?" he said.
"Here."
"You weren't here this morning."
"This morning I was somewhere else."
Julius set the bag on the floor without taking his eyes off Aaron. He remained standing in the middle of the room. There was a moment of silence.
"Were you with someone?"
Aaron didn't answer.
Julius looked at him for a moment and something changed in his expression. It was the face of someone processing new information and updating what he thought he knew.
"From the party?"
Aaron stared at the ceiling.
Julius let out something between a laugh and a sound of disbelief. He stood looking at him for a few seconds, recalibrating the information he had on Aaron Reed.
"I can't believe it. Aaron Reed missed Sunday practice because he was with a girl."
"Don't say it like that."
"How should I say it?"
Aaron didn't have a better answer.
"Was she pretty?" Julius asked.
Aaron stared at the ceiling.
"Alright," Julius said. "That's also an answer."
Julius sat on the edge of his bed. He crossed his arms. There was a silence that lasted long enough for both of them to understand that the tone had shifted.
"Hey," he said in a tone different from the last thirty seconds. "For the record, I told you to come to the party." He said it without irony.
"I know."
"What's her name?"
Aaron didn't answer.
Julius waited a few seconds before continuing.
"The girl."
He still didn't answer.
"Doesn't matter," Julius said. "You just confirmed it for me anyway."
Aaron closed his eyes.
Julius got up from the bed, went to the small fridge they had in a corner of the room, and pulled out two bottles of water without asking if Aaron wanted one. He tossed him one. Aaron caught it in midair and drank half of it in one gulp. Julius did the same and then leaned against the desk with the bottle in his hand. Neither of them said anything for a moment. The silence was comfortable in the way silences are comfortable between people who know each other well enough not to need to fill it. Outside the room, someone in the hallway was talking on the phone at an unnecessarily loud volume, their voice drifting away.
"Calipari asked about you before we started," Julius said after a moment. "Antigua made a note that you weren't there. Andrew said he saw you at the party last night."
"How's Calipari?"
Julius paused. Long enough.
"Furious."
Aaron didn't answer. There was nothing to answer to that. He kept staring at the ceiling.
It wasn't a word Julius used lightly. Coach Calipari was direct, he was demanding, he could be stern when the situation required it, and Aaron had seen those versions of his coach enough to know that none of them were the one awaiting him tomorrow. Furious was another category. The kind that doesn't pass in one night and the next day turns into a conversation in the office with the door closed, the kind no one on the team wanted to have. Including Aaron. Especially Aaron after a Sunday like this.
He thought about how he would have to show up early, before Monday's practice started, without waiting for Calipari to send for him because that would be even worse. Walking into the office of his own free will before the situation demanded it was the bare minimum he could do, and the bare minimum was where he had to start.
"I'm in trouble," Aaron said. It wasn't a question.
Julius said nothing. Aaron knew him well enough to know that silence was a confirmation.
The afternoon passed slowly. Julius put something on the TV that neither of them really followed, eyes on the screen and attention elsewhere. At some point, they ordered food. Julius talked for a while about Wednesday's game, about the rotations Calipari had been testing in practice that morning, about a player from another conference he thought was overrated. Aaron answered just enough to keep the conversation going and no more. Julius understood at some point that it was best to stop talking and dropped it, which was one of the things Aaron valued about Julius even if he never said it out loud.
Before going to sleep, Aaron pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked his messages. Four messages from Julius from that morning, all before ten. A message from Andrew that simply said: hey, with no further context or text. And a message from an unsaved number that said: Hope you weren't late for practice. Aaron read it twice. He didn't answer right away because he couldn't find anything to say that wouldn't require explaining more than he wanted to explain that night. He saved it in his contacts under the name Zoe, plugged in the charger, and left the phone on the nightstand.
Once that was done, Aaron turned off the light. Tomorrow was Monday. Calipari's office opened at eight, and Aaron was going to be there at seven fifty, before Calipari had to send for him, with what needed to be said and without trying to make it sound better than it was. Just go. Say it. Take whatever came next without trying to negotiate it before it happened. It was the only thing he could do tonight. The rest was tomorrow, and tomorrow would come soon enough.
He didn't think about Hannah.
Or he tried not to.
It was the hardest part of the night.
The hardest part since Tuesday.
Authors thought
I'm thinking that Aaron will focus entirely on training, worrying his friends, who tell him he should find ways to take his mind off things or meet new people—which is why he starts getting to know Zoe better. What do you think?
What did you think of today's chapter? Give me your opinions and thoughts.
For football fans, check out my other fanfic, *The Golden Standard*, and discover the story of Wyatt Sterling.
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