Her eyes blaze with frustration and determination and her gaze drops to my lips for so long my dick starts to twitch, but then she pushes backward, away from me, until her head hits the mat. I slowly rise from my position, subtly adjusting myself in the process and watch in awe as she powers through the rest of our straight-leg raises and quadriceps sets without complaint.

About an hour later, after we’re done with our session, we sit down in my office to recap our plan for her recovery. I try to concentrate on the notes I need to send to her coach, surgeon, and training staff but my focus keeps drifting to the way she keeps shifting her hands in her lap. The therapy sessions are somewhat easy, but we at least have something to distract us from the weird situation we’re in. It’s what comes after—the talking—where we can’t seem to find our balance. We used to be able to have entire conversations without words, and now we have no idea how to talk to each other. What a gut punch.

The bright side is that this is the first session where she hasn’t asked afterward how long treatment is going to take. My answer hasn’t changed since she first reached out to me, and I think she’s finally accepted that as badass as she is, she can’t rush her recovery. To get her back on the field safely and at the level she was at before, it’s going to take about a year.

A year of seeing her every single day after having been denied the pleasure for thirteen years straight. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around that. If we’re going to survive this year we’re going to have to break this tension. Eventually, we have to talk about what happened between us all those years ago, but we’re not ready for that. For now, we can at least try to bridge this gap between us. She was my best friend before she was the love of my life, and I’d like to get that back if nothing else.

“So, how are you?”

She stops fidgeting with her hands and looks up at me. “Oh, um, I’m okay. I feel like I can put a little more weight on my leg so that’s good.”

I drop my hand off my mouse and scoot my chair out so I can rest my arms on my knees. “That’s great, but I didn’t ask how your knee was. I asked how you are.”

“So, is this a psychological therapy session now? Because I gotta tell you, I did that already.”

“Such a smartass,” I say under my breath. “You’re stuck with me for a year. Unless you’d like to find someone else. I can refer you to my boy Ollie if you’d like, but I’d prefer to keep working with you myself. I thought maybe we could be friendly during this, but if you’d rather we keep strictly professional and not talk outside of our sessions, say the word.”