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“She’ll never hate you, but maybe you should let her go.”

I shake my head. I make so many decisions that hurt everyone around me. Behind the plate, I’m solid. I know exactly what pitch to call, exactly where to position my glove. But off the field? I’m lost. “You don’t understand. I can’t. I’ve tried.”

“Have you ever thought maybe you’re not what she needs?”

“Yes. And I know I’m not.” I swallow again, my throat impossibly tight. “I’ve tried. So many times. But I can’t let her go.”

“Listen, Jaxon. Camdyn only wants you. She’s turned down so many guys who’ve tried to date her. She only texts you, and I don’t understand how you can’t see how loyal she is.”

That pisses me off. I know Camdyn better than anyone. Better than Callie, better than her teammates, better than anyone at UW. “Holy fuck, Callie,” I snap, annoyed she keeps acting like I’m doing this shit on purpose. “I see it.”

“Then what’s the problem?” she whisper-shouts, looking around to see if anyone is watching us. They’re not.

“I can’t explain it in a way that’ll make sense. The pressure for me is different than for her.”

“Jaxon, I get it. I think. None of it makes sense. And to me, her friends, it looks like you’re using her for sex.”

“We’re not?—”

“Babes, I’m her best friend. I know you guys were hooking up all summer until a couple weeks ago.”

She’s not wrong about the hooking up. Honestly, I knew Callie knew. She walked in on us about a month ago and got a brief glimpse of my dick. Thankfully she hasn’t mentioned it since then.

She tosses her pencil at my face. “So yeah, stop hurting her.”

The pencil hits my chin and bounces off the laminate table and onto the linoleum floor.

Like most classrooms in Mackenzie Hall, it’s all function, no charm—fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, whiteboards spanning three walls, and rows of tables in a semicircle facing the projector screen.

The windows along the east wall would usually offer a view of Drumheller Fountain, but today they’re streaked with rain, making the morning feel even more gray.

I lean over, pick up the pencil and hand it to her. “I’m not using her, Callie. I have every intention of being with her forever. I see myself marrying her, having babies, a family, all that. I can’t give that to her right now. That kind of commitment and baseball—it’s too much right now.”

Around us, other students filter in, shaking off umbrellas and pulling out laptops.

The low hum of pre-class chatter fills the room, but it feels distant, like everything exists outside the bubble of this conversation.

Professor Blaine is writing “Supply and Demand Equilibrium” on the whiteboard, but the words might as well be in another language right now.

She gives me an expression I don’t understand. I can’t tell if she gets it, or is just more annoyed with me. The ceiling fan whirs above us, rustling the Husky Baseball schedule posted on the bulletin board near the door. “But you can with Inez?”

Yeah, she’s more annoyed. “It’s not like that with her. Inez doesn’t want anything from me besides hanging out occasionally.”

“And Fortnite dates?”

My eyes widen. The guy two seats over glances our way, probably wondering why we’re having this intense conversation right before a lecture on microeconomics. “How’d you hear about that?”

“Jameson.”

That fucker. I didn’t tell him anything.

There’s a pain in my chest. Camdyn is the last person I wanted to find out about me gaming with Inez.

“Fuck.” I think about all the times Camdyn would sit in my dorm room, curled up in my gaming chair because she said she found it therapeutic hearing me ramble on about The Show or any other game I was playing.

She’d work on her kinesiology homework, occasionally looking up to celebrate my home runs or console me after strikeouts.

“Mhm.” Callie throws the pencil at me again, this time catching the attention of a few more classmates.

The girl in front of us turns around, then quickly faces forward again when she catches the tension in the air.

“But what makes you think Camdyn wants to pressure you into marriage right now? She knows you guys have school and ball. She’s not trying to have your freaking babies right now.

She’s going through all the same things you are, if not more, my guy.

And let me remind you, you messed up the World Series game for her last year and she still forgave you.

If you would have done that to me, I would have murdered you and never talked to you again. ”

The “having your babies” part makes my heart beat faster than before.

The fluorescent lights suddenly feel too bright, the room too warm.

Nobody knows Camdyn got pregnant last year during the season.

She didn’t even tell Callie about it. The memory hits me hard—the fear in her eyes when she told me, the way her hand shook holding the test, how small she looked in that hospital bed after. ..

I’m quick to avoid the subject, my eyes fixed on the PowerPoint title slide now projected on the screen: “Chapter 7: Market Structures and Competitive Strategy.” If only relationships came with such clear-cut frameworks and formulas. “If you murdered me?—”

“Bitch, I’m not finished.” She tries to take the pencil I picked up again, her voice dropping as more students file in and take their seats around us. The clock above the door shows 9:27—three minutes until class starts, but time feels frozen.

I throw the pencil across the room, watching it skid across the floor and disappear under someone’s backpack. “You’re done with that.”

Even without the pencil to throw at me, her words dig deep.

The whir of laptop fans and shuffle of notebooks being opened can’t drown out the truth in what she’s saying.

“Think about what this looks like. It looks like you’re using her because you know she’ll always be there for you.

Put yourself in her shoes. Would you wait for her if she was doing the same thing? ”

I think about what Callie asks. I have put myself in her shoes—over and over.

I can’t imagine being as forgiving as she’s been to me.

I wouldn’t have waited around for her if she had told me she was talking to other people.

My pride would have stopped me. Just like my pride as a player stops me from sitting out games when I'm hurt or asking for help when I'm drowning in coursework.

Professor Blaine clears her throat, tapping her marker against the whiteboard. “If we could all settle in…” Her voice usually commands attention, but right now it’s background noise to the storm in my head.

I feel guilty. I feel wrecked by the pain I’m causing Camdyn, over and over. I thought I was ready to talk to other girls, but I wasn’t prepared for how much it'd hurt seeing Camdyn in pain because of me. And I'm not lying, I didn’t want to let her go.

Opening my laptop, I stare at the screen without seeing it. The guy next to me is pulling up the lecture slides, but all I can focus on is the baseball schedule I have set as my background—every game, every practice, every road trip meticulously planned out. Everything in its place except my heart.

I get told daily what an idiot I am for not being with Camdyn by pretty much everyone I know. By Jameson.

I’m sure you think it too, and believe me, I know I’m being stupid.

Camdyn is everything you could ever want in a girl.

Smart, funny, beautiful, sexy... I could go on for days about all the things I love about her.

Behind closed doors Camdyn is nothing like the reserved, clouted, introverted recluse her teammates know her to be.

When her guard is down and she feels relaxed enough to show you who she is, she’s alive with giggles, silly, loving, and I love every minute of the way she makes me feel.

It’s as if her love is its own entity and it draws you in.

Professor Blaine starts her lecture, her voice echoing off the classroom walls. “Today we’re discussing market equilibrium and how external forces can disrupt established patterns..."

The irony isn’t lost on me. External forces disrupting established patterns—sounds exactly like what I’m doing to Camdyn and me.

So yeah, my decision to not be with her doesn’t make sense to anyone.

Even me. I can’t explain it any more than I can make myself do the right thing.

I want to be with her, but then again, I’m twenty years old.

I’ve only ever been with Camdyn. My friends have all experienced other relationships and yeah, they’re the same ones telling me how stupid I am for letting her go, but they aren't in my shoes. They weren’t nineteen, in college, a week before playoffs when they found out their girlfriend was pregnant.

I saw the lives we’d planned crash and burn all because we’d made a mistake.

I didn’t want that for us and after she miscarried, it got me thinking.

The sound of markers squeaking against the whiteboard fills the room as Professor Blaine draws supply and demand curves. My eyes follow the lines automatically, but my mind is somewhere else entirely.

Neither one of us had experienced anything outside of Jax & Cam. How would we know we were meant to be if we’d never been in another relationship?

I’m not saying my decision to end it was the best because let’s face it, it wasn’t. I’d be happier right now if it had been, wouldn’t I? Instead of sitting here in this stuffy classroom, pretending to care about economic theories while my heart feels like it’s being squeezed in a vice.

I guess it’s one of those decisions where you can’t make the right one until you’ve made all the wrong ones.

That’s what my dad tells me. And he raised my sister through her teen years. Pretty sure he’s seen some wild mistakes outta her.