‘Oh, girl, it sure looks like something, and I’m afraid the entire internet seems to think so.’ There’s a heavy pause before she speaks again. ‘You gotta talk to him, dude. This is going to blow back on him, too.’

‘On him?’

‘May … you gotta understand. Whatever you’re feeling right now – pissed, confused – that’s probably also what he’s feeling. And as much as you don’t like the guy, it’s not fair to leave him to deal with that PR mess on his own. Y’all have to decide how you’ll take care of this.’

Jordan and her big mouth. Sadly, she’s as wise as she is yap-happy. I groan, tossing the phone in a pocket of my jacket and popping in an earbud while I walk to my next class. ‘He’s got PR people. This is gonna be my mess to clean up, not his.’

‘They’ll clean up the mess,’ says Jordan with a sigh, ‘but they definitely won’t clean up whatever feelings were obviously running loose in that video, May.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘I am not kidding.’ I can practically see my friend’s interventionist expression, eyes wide and brows raised in I-told-you-so, lips pursed. ‘We’ll debrief at practice. See you later, girl.’

‘See you.’ As I queue up my spring playlist, I try to tell myself this will blow over just like everything does in this flat, stormy state. Unfortunately, every attempted reassurance only makes me realize just how wrong I am, and how right Jordan is. We definitely need to talk.

The first words out of Colt’s mouth when I run into him before the game are, ‘Coach told me about your season.’

To be honest, that’s not what I expected to hear. I stop dead in my tracks in the hall of the dingy locker room built outside the field.

He clears his throat awkwardly and shifts the cones he’s holding to set out for warm-up from arm to arm. ‘She told me about last season. Your place on the team. The scholarship. Her looking to get you a spot on the MLL. All that stuff.’

I make a mental note to terrorize my coach about this later. For now, it’s damage control. The things that happened during my junior season were more than just a bad run. I’d rather it didn’t make the rounds. I’d really rather this guy had never found out. And as for the MLL … what Coach wants is one thing. What I want, I don’t even know. ‘How much did she tell you?’ I ask through gritted teeth.

‘Only that.’ He looks confused but plods on. ‘The thing is … May, I’m willing to do whatever you want to do about this.’ He gestures between the two of us. This. ‘Your career is the priority here. You know?’