#tk: interaction

There's a text on his phone on Monday. Good game! it says, days after the fact, which means that his dad probably didn't even watch the game from home in Minnesota, probably just saw a clip on TV or something online that reminded him to act like he cared about TK when he wasn't around, like he remembered he existed.

TK scored his second goal in Class I Exy and all he gets is Good game! He's not sure if his dad even knows he scored at all.

It's not like TK thought that he'd come, no matter what he said over the summer about visiting TK in Palmetto. That was his dad—all talk, no follow-through. At least not when it came to anything to do with TK: he tries not to pay attention to his step-sisters on social media, but it's hard not to notice the way they feel like a real family. The way that TK's family used to be.

But everyone's gone back home and Parents Weekend is over now. It's just the Foxes, 2-1 on their season, staring down another week of practices. The way it's supposed to be.

He puts his phone back in his pocket without replying to the text for now. He knows he probably will at some point, even if it's just a half-hearted thanks! to say that he did, even though he's not sure why it matters to him. For now, at least, he can pretend that it doesn't.

He hikes his gear bag up his shoulder as he heads into the court for practice, holding the door from the parking lot open for the Fox behind him. "Ready for another week? At least things are back to normal now."

He didn’t get a lot of practicing in over the summer. Not with—everything. 

He’s maybe wishing that he did, somehow. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and he doesn’t know what kind of one he’s making. The gym’s pretty easy, but on the court he feels a step behind, trying to shake off the rust from a summer spent worrying about things so much bigger and realer than Exy, trying to learn a new system and new drills on a new court in a new league. 

It just another thing that never seems quite fair. Like he’s never been able to give as much of himself to Exy as he wants, because life keeps getting in the way. Like he’ll never know how good he could have been.

But it’s not like Wymack’s going to send him back to California now, so he’s being hard on himself. Whatever happened, whatever choices he made or had life made for him, he’s here now. He’s going to play Class I, he’s going to make plays and score goals and do it all with Mateo at his side. 

He just has to get through summer training first.

The court feels huge, bigger than anything he’s ever played on before. It’s hard to believe that in just a few weeks there will be fans in the stands—whether they’re fans of the Foxes or not—camera crews broadcasting them for people to watch. It buoys him as he sucks down water, bracing himself through the burn in his muscles, the shaky feeling in his legs like they’re not quite sure if they want to hold him upright after yet another session on the court. If he were any less proud, he’d be on the floor.

“This is brutal,” he says, like saying it out loud is owning it, making it into something self-deprecating instead of something that’s just embarrassing. “Tell me it isn’t always like this.”

It's been weeks. Weeks of practicing. Weeks of adjusting. And now it's finally here—TK's first real game as a Fox.

This time last year, he couldn't have imagined it. He didn't think about the future that much at all, then. When he did, it seemed to collapse too quickly under the weight of all the unknowns. And, even if he could get past that, it was hard for him to imagine anything outside of California, especially when he'd fought so hard to stay there. And, even when he saw the end coming, it always seemed like tempting fate to imagine his future without his mother in it.

He knew he'd have to face it eventually, so what was the point of imagining it? Of inviting that pain in sooner?

She isn't here now. She won't be watching this game, or any of the rest TK will play in his life, no matter how many more of them there are. And although he wishes he didn't, he wonders if his father will watch. If Eduardo Montes will, for Mateo. Somehow, he doubts it—for both of them.

That's fine, though. They don't need them to. When gametime comes, he'll be caught up in the lights and the crowd and the adrenaline—and maybe the nerves, too—and TK won't be thinking about his father at all.

The adrenaline hasn't set in yet—the game's still hours away. But the nerves already have. The scrimmage might have been a practice run, but tonight will be real.

"And we've still got a whole day of classes after this?" He asks, wry and rhetorical. "I don't think I'm gonna make it."

"No," he says. Because, contrary to popular belief, he does know how to say it. Because Mateo got a high school diploma, so how hard can getting a college one be? "I'm going to make sure you write them."

TK doesn't know what life will hold for him after Palmetto. If he thought about it too hard, it'd worry him, but seeing as he just got here, he's trying not to. Exy has felt like a far-away dream for a long time, something he ruined when he was still just a kid back when he decided to quit. The Foxes are giving him a second shot, but it's hard to believe that it'll be enough to turn it into—a career, a life.

Other than that? He doesn't know. He doesn't know what he's going to major in, but he knows that once he figures it out, he'll take it seriously. When it comes to his future, he wants options—because he knows what happens when you run out of those.

There are things he wants. He wants to keep Mateo in his life forever. He wants a house, one that he can take care of and be as proud of as his mother was of theirs, one that he can always make the payments on so it's never taken away from him. But the things that he wants feel so big, or so far-off in the future that he doesn't know how to make them happen.

So for now, he's trying to be more like Mateo. To not worry as much about the future, because Mateo doesn't.

The empty beds in their room seem to loom large. Palmetto was supposed to be TK and Mateo, and it's somehow turned into TK, Mateo, and Kai. TK hadn't known what to do with Kai when they were on opposite sides of the court, and he definitely doesn't now that they're on the same one and in the same dorm room. It's hard to look at Kai and not see Katie. It's hard to look at Kai and see loss there so clearly—when TK already has enough loss of his own to deal with.

He frowns. If he had his way, he'd probably just ignore Kai. But that's never really been Mateo's style. "It's weird. But he's just one person. I'm not going to let him ruin my whole college experience—" he says, putting enough emphasis on the words to make them a joke, like he's not giving up on that whole best four years of your life bit "—and you shouldn't either."