I woke up the next morning with an ache in my neck and my leg was asleep. It was only when I opened my crusty eyes and recognized the ugly floral brocade under my cheek that I realized I was still on the couch. A moment later, I looked down my shoulder and saw that my legs were tangled up in Banks's, who was still asleep with his head resting on the opposite arm of the couch.

I didn't even remember falling asleep. We were talking about tattoos and then we started talking about the show and he was right, it was pretty funny.

"How adorable," Walker crooned as he came around the corner and saw the position we were laying in together. "Long night then?"

I groaned at the weight of my head as I slowly pried my legs away from Banks to sit up and gulp down the rest of the water in my cup from last night. "What are you wearing?" I asked him in a quiet voice after realizing that Walker was adorning a long green vest that dropped to his knees with brown leather cuffs that covered his entire forearms. Matching brown leather boots and tight green pants with a long plastic knife holstered at his waist.

"Some of the guys are getting together for an informal LARP session," he explained, pointing to the fake pointed ears that poked out from his tufts of ginger curls. "I'm an elf named Albwin."

Careful not to wake Banks, I stood to my wobbly feet and started toward the stairs to go to the bathroom and then hide in my attic bedroom for the rest of the weekend. "I thought your LARP name was Moogellan."

"That's my warlock name," he corrected me.

I blinked cluelessly at him. "I thought it was a cow."

"A cow?" he raised his eyebrows at me. "You thought I was role playing as a cow?"

I shrugged. "Moo-gellan."

"You're an idiot."

With a long yawn, I waved him off and stepped toward the stairs just as Banks started stirring on the couch. I wanted to get out of there before he woke up and realized where he was or remembered how we fell asleep last night. "Whatever. Go save your kingdom, Albwin."

"They don't call me Alb-win for nothing!" he said before I heard the front door open and close.

Soccer tryouts were next month. I had barely picked up a ball in over two years. I missed the sport with every bone in my body and I needed to make this team. It was only the club level, but it was something.

I had to down two Gatorades to find enough energy to get out of the house, parking my car by the practice fields with a large duffel bag of practice cones and a couple of soccer balls. The back and forth with teammates was one of the best parts of the sport for me, maneuvering with your line toward the goal, all the push and pull.

But solo drills were all I had for the day, so I had to take it.

I blasted music in my ear buds, trying not to look at the scar along the inside of my right knee as I stretched. The doctor gave me the okay to play again and it hadn't hurt in over six months. Everything was fine.

After sprints, I set up the cones for some dribbling exercises. Something swelled inside my chest the second my cleats touched the ball. It was supposed to feel like coming home after a long time away. Something familiar that I'd been longing for ever since I was told I couldn't play.

I was eager to get out onto the field until I was actually out there and then suddenly, all I could feel was a deep dread broiling through my lower stomach.

It was like being back at my high school field, the crowd cheering loud and vicious for us since we were playing against our rival school. Every cell of my body was electric, fueled by the cheers from the crowd and the fiery way my line was playing together on the field. We were moving like different nerves of a single brain all night.

And then it was just me with the ball, right in front of an open corner of the net. The other guy came out of nowhere, too late to stop me from shooting the ball into the net, but his trajectory was already making its path toward me.

I made the goal, and that was the last thing I saw before I felt the pain and then the next thing I knew, I was looking up at the bright lights that lit the field.

The crowd had started to cheer for the goal, but it slowly dissipated into a gasping silence when they realized I wasn't getting up. Everybody in the bleachers heard the scream that emanated from my chest when the pain in my knee really hit and it only got louder when I remembered the scouts watching from sidelines. I knew it was over. That I was done.

My hands were trembling now as I stared down at the ball. I stepped away from it before I could suffocate in the panic, running more sprints instead of the drills I had planned.

How could I run tryouts if I was too afraid to kick the fucking ball?

Ollie, Banks, and Kenji were all in the living room when I tore through the front door. With way more force than necessary, I shoved my duffel back of workout equipment into the corner of the room and took off into the kitchen before any of them could greet me.

After that humiliating show at the practice field, I was in a terrible mood and coming to terms that I'd never be able to play soccer again. The sport I used to love, that used to be my entire life, ripped away from me. Not just the professional leagues, but I wouldn't even be able to make the club team. I couldn't even kick the damn ball.

"You went to the fields?" Ollie called through the house as I fixed myself a sandwich. "What happened?"

"Absolutely nothing happened," I answered him honestly, because that was exactly the truth. I ran some sprints, stood in front of the ball until I couldn't breathe, and then ran more sprints and repeated the process until it felt like I was going to puke. A whole lot of nothing.

"Hey, don't beat yourself up about it, man," he said, coming into the kitchen as the volume of the TV was lowered to a whisper so that the other two could hear the conversation. Nosy fucks. "You still have a couple of weeks before tryouts, you'll get your mojo back."

Shaking my head, I didn't turn to look at him as I tossed the turkey onto bread and then the lettuce and mayo. "It was fucking pathetic. I'll have to cancel my tryout slot, there's no way I can-"

"Don't do that," he interrupted me. "One bad practice doesn't mean shit."

Could it really be considered a practice if I didn't even touch the ball? I didn't correct Ollie's assumption. The truth sounded way more humiliating.

I moved passed him toward the stairs without responding and he knew better than to chase after me. Instead, he stood by the bottom of the stairs and called after me, "I'm telling Quinn to call!"

The turkey sandwich sat untouched on the corner of my desk as I crumpled onto my bed and once I knew I was completely alone, I cried. Which I did not do a lot. They were hot tears of frustration because why the fuck couldn't I just kick the ball?

Quinn's call never came, so I assumed she was busy with whatever it was that she did on weekends, but half an hour later there was a knock on my door and my sister's voice calling out, "Lee, it's me. Open up before I go all SWAT on your ass."

"It's open," I said without getting up. I didn't even bother drying my eyes, because there was no point in hiding anything from Quinn. She'd seen me cry over much stupider things than this before. But when the door did open, Banks was on the other side too, hovering behind my sister's shoulder. I guess somebody had to show her where my room was.

He looked concerned when he saw my wet eyes and the second our gazes met, I looked away until Quinn shut the door between us.

"Wow, okay. You weren't kidding. This place is suffocating," she said as she looked around at the cramped room and then lowered herself onto the edge of the bed. Her familiar brown eyes looked at me with some sympathy as she asked, "What's going on?"

With a dramatic sniffle, I explained the entire morning to her and how I completely choked. I was about to start crying again when she dropped a box of donuts onto the bed from our favorite bakery. They're closer to her apartment across town, so I never get them and I can't cry if my face is stuffed with chocolate cake donuts, right?

"Don't cancel your tryouts yet," she insisted after I gave her the story. "You have some time to work through this. It's all in your head, maybe therapy could help."

"I don't have time for therapy," I reminded her. "I only have a month."

"You'll figure it out," she promised me without any real evidence. "You've loved this sport since you could walk, even when I would play with you and kick the ball so hard it would knock you over. You loved it. Want me to go with you next time? I'm free on Tuesday, maybe some moral support could help."

Having a melt down again but this time with an audience sounded terrible, but Quinn knew me better than anybody else and if anybody could get me out of my head, it was her. So I nodded and said, "Okay. Sure."

She smiled, patting me on the shoulder. "We've got this. Now, about this room? We've got some work to do."

And by 'we', she meant that she'd sit on the bed and watch me push the furniture around by myself according to her orders. As if my body wasn't sore enough from all the sprints earlier.

"So who was that guy?" she wondered curiously. "The one who showed me upstairs?"

"Banks, Ollie's cousin. He's our fifth roommate," I answered through a bite of the last donut.

"He's really cute," she said with a wide grin. "How old is he?"

"Twenty-one. You're not allowed to date my roommates, Quinn. That's weird," I said with a scowl.

She shrugged and said, "Too young for me anyway, but I am jealous that you get to stare at that face every day."

"I don't stare at him at all," I said, blinking at her slowly, but then I thought about last night how I stared at his tattoo like a weirdo. But that wasn't him, it was just the octopus on his bicep. Still, it wasn't completely honest to say that I wasn't staring at him.

"But you have the option," Quinn explained with a long sigh as she stood from the bed and nudged me toward the door. "Come on, let's go show your friends that you're alive. They're worried."

"You just want to stare at my roommate, you creep," I accused her, but still followed her out of the room that admittedly did look much better with the new layout.

She flashed me a knowing grin as she stepped down the stairs. I led her into the living room where now all four of the other guys were sitting around the TV, Walker sitting on the edge of the coffee table still wearing his green elf outfit.

"How do you have five people living here and only sitting room for three?" Quinn asked in a strong mom-like tone. Even though she was only four years older than me, she always felt the need to protect me like a mother bird. "And what the hell is that?"

She pointed into the dining room where we had the beer pong table set up to act as a makeshift dining table with upside down milk crates (courtesy of Banks and his job at the smoothie station) as seats.

Kenji shrugged helplessly at her and said, "We're working with what we have."

"Good to see you too, Quinn," Ollie added with a sarcastic laugh.

"Okay, change of plans," she announced. "I'm taking you to the thrift store to put some real furniture in this house. Just because you're in college doesn't mean you need to live like monkeys. Whose truck is that parked out front?"

"That's mine," Banks said.

"Perfect." She didn't even try to hide the smile from her lips. "Then you'll drive?"

I opened my mouth to tell him that he didn't need to do that, but he was already standing from the couch and saying, "Sure."

I dragged myself along because going on a shopping trip would help get my mind off of the disaster on the field earlier, and Quinn knew that. I was in the hands of an expert now, I had to trust her methods.

But it didn't stop me from mouthing the word 'creep' to her when Banks wasn't looking.