Chapter 2: First Date Jitters
The inside of the elevator was a mirrored box, and Will couldn’t escape himself. His reflection, fractured into a dozen panicked copies, showed a guy in khaki shorts and a dark grey t-shirt that clung a little too tightly in the Austin humidity. The legs were the thing. The carbon fiber gleamed under the synthetic skin tone, a sleek, engineered starkness against the casual summer fabric. He’d stared at them in his apartment for twenty minutes, wiping sweaty palms on his thighs, before forcing himself out the door. The walk to the rideshare had felt like crossing a parade ground under inspection.
The elevator dinged, its tone absurdly cheerful, and the doors sighed open onto noise and golden evening light.
The rooftop bar was a sprawl of polished concrete and potted succulents, buzzing with the easy laughter of a city easing into Saturday. String lights shaped like filament bulbs glowed warmly against the deepening indigo sky. The smell hit him first: grilled meat, citrus, the bite of juniper from gin, and underneath it all, the sweet, languid scent of night-blooming jasmine wafting from a hidden garden below. For a second, the sensory overload was a welcome distraction from the drum solo in his chest.
Then he saw her.
Cassy was leaning against the bar, chatting with the bartender. She wore a simple black dress that left her shoulders bare, and the fading sun caught the warm tones in her skin and the highlights in her dark, loose hair. She laughed at something, throwing her head back slightly, and the motion was so unselfconsciously joyful it made Will’s breath catch. He was a statue of nerves, rooted to the spot just outside the elevator bank.
She turned, as if sensing him. Her eyes found his instantly, and her smile didn’t waver. It deepened. She looked him over, a slow, appreciative sweep that traveled from his face, down his torso, to his legs, and back up again. There was no hidden flinch, no rapid glance-away. Her gaze was frank, interested.
She pushed off the bar and walked toward him. The noise of the bar seemed to fade into a dull hum. He was acutely aware of every person who might be looking, every potential stare burning into his exposed prosthetics. But Cassy’s eyes held his, and they were sparkling.
She stopped right in front of him, close enough for him to catch a hint of her perfume—something clean and green, like cucumber and mint. Her eyes dipped to his legs again, then back to his face.
“Hey,” she said, her voice a low, intimate counterpoint to the bar’s chatter.
“Hey,” he managed, the word scraping out of a dry throat.
She leaned in a fraction closer. Her whisper was for him alone, a secret passed in plain sight. “The carbon fiber looks badass, McCord.”
All the air left his lungs in a quiet, shocked rush. The careful scripts in his mind—the explanations, the deflections, the sardonic yeah, they’re my robot legs—dissolved into meaningless ash. She hadn’t said they looked “great” or “cool.” She’d used a word with edges, with precision. Badass. It acknowledged the reality of them, their artificiality, and claimed it as a strength. Not an object of pity, but of respect.
The anxiety that had coiled in his gut for days didn’t vanish, but it transformed. It melted, ran through his veins, and reignited as something else: a sharp, electric current of attraction. He felt seen, in a way he hadn’t dared to hope for.
“Thanks,” he said, and this time his voice was steadier. “I, uh, figured if I was going on a rescue mission, I should wear the appropriate armor.”
Cassy’s laugh was a bright, genuine sound. “Smart. Our targets are already secured at that table in the corner, looking deeply uncomfortable.” She nodded toward a small high-top where a guy in a too-tight polo was talking animatedly to a girl who was clearly Cassy’s roommate, based on her pleading help me eyes aimed in their direction.
“The one with the ‘great personality’?” Will asked, following her gaze.
“The very same. His name is Chad. Or maybe Brett. I’ve deliberately forgotten.”
“So what’s the plan, commander?”
She slipped her arm through his, her touch firm and natural. The contact sent another jolt through him. “We endure one polite drink. We make merciful small talk. Then we execute a strategic extraction citing a prior engagement involving urgent… research.”
“Research?”
“On the optimal consumption of barbecue in this city. My treat, remember?” She guided him toward the bar. “What’s your poison? Liquid courage of choice?”
They got their drinks—a local IPA for him, a tequila soda with lime for her—and navigated the minefield of introductions. Chad-or-Brett was, indeed, a finance bro with a loud laugh and an opinion on every Austin taco spot that was, according to him, wrong. Will found himself falling into an old, comfortable pattern: the quiet observer, the dry commenter. He let Cassy lead the conversational dance, her politeness a masterclass in deflection. He watched her, the way her eyes would flick to his occasionally, sharing a silent joke at Chad/Brett’s expense. It felt conspiratorial. Intimate.
After twenty minutes that felt like an hour, Cassy’s phone buzzed theatrically. She frowned at it with impressive fake concern. “Oh, shoot. My lab partner is having a meltdown over the Mueller report analysis. We have to go run data.” She stood, downing the last of her drink. “So sorry, you two. This was great!”
The extraction was smooth. In the elevator going down, the doors closing on the rooftop noise, they both burst into simultaneous, relieved laughter.
“His take on queso was a crime against humanity,” Cassy wheezed, leaning against the mirrored wall.
“He said ‘fusion cuisine’ like it was a medical diagnosis,” Will added, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders.
The laughter settled into easy quiet. Cassy looked at him, her face softened in the elevator’s muted light. “So. Research. I know a place. It’s not fancy. Plastic red cups for sweet tea. But they have brisket that will make you question your life choices.”
“That’s the only kind of research I respect.”
The barbecue joint was a no-frills hall with fluorescent lights and sticky laminate tables. The air was thick with the holy perfume of smoked oak and rendered fat. They ate with their hands, talking between messy, glorious bites. They talked about middle school football plays and the absurdity of student government. He told her about a kid on his team, Javier, who had a cannon for an arm but couldn’t remember the plays to save his life. She told him about her three-year plan for law school, her eyes alight with a fierce, determined energy that was mesmerizing.
The ghost of Savannah, the memory of the perfunctory, joyless encounter in her dorm room, retreated. This was different. This was a conversation. This was Cassy licking rib sauce from her thumb and arguing passionately about the merits of pedestrianizing Sixth Street.
They walked after, aimlessly, through the buzzing streets. The neon signs painted them in shifting colors: blue, then pink, then green. The jasmine scent from earlier had deepened, sweetening the warm night air.
“Can I ask you something?” Cassy said, her voice casual. They were crossing a bridge, the dark water of the river below reflecting the city lights.
“Sure.”
“The coaching. Why middle school? You could probably coach at a high school. Your knowledge is way beyond that level.”
He looked out at the water, collecting his thoughts. “High school is… it’s politics. It’s stats. It’s recruitment letters before the kids have their driver’s licenses.” He shrugged. “Middle school, it’s still just… the game. The stupid, glorious love of running a route perfectly, of making a tackle that makes you feel invincible for three seconds. They haven’t learned to be cynical yet. They just love it.” He paused. “I guess I need to be around that. To remember what it felt like.”
He felt her hand slip into his. Her fingers were warm and slightly sticky from barbecue sauce. The touch was so simple, so direct, it made his heart stutter.
“I think that’s perfect,” she said softly.
They walked in silence for a block, hands linked, the sounds of the city a soundtrack to the quiet revolution happening inside him. He was holding a girl’s hand. In public. With his legs showing. And no one was staring. Or if they were, he didn’t notice, didn’t care.
Outside her apartment building, a cozy Spanish-style duplex with fairy lights twined in a potted olive tree, they stopped. The buzz of the evening condensed into this moment, hovering between the street and her door.
“This is me,” she said, turning to face him. Her eyes searched his in the dim glow from the fairy lights.
“I had a really good time, Cassy,” he said. The words felt insufficient, but they were true.
“Me too.” She bit her lower lip, a flicker of uncharacteristic hesitation crossing her face. “Do you… want to come up? For a drink? Or just… to not have the night end on a sidewalk?”
The invitation hung in the jasmine-scented air between them, a tangible thing. Will’s body reacted before his mind could, a flush of heat that had nothing to do with the Texas night. He wanted to. God, he wanted to say yes. To follow her up those stairs into whatever came next, to prolong the first real connection he’d felt in years. Her hand was still in his, a warm, steady anchor.
But the memory was a cold splash. The sterile smell of Savannah’s room, the hollow feeling after. It merged with the older, darker memory of twisting metal and silence. Intimacy was a cliff edge. Going upstairs wasn’t just about a drink; it was a door, and behind it lay the terrifying prospect of being fully seen, of his body being known in its new, complicated reality. The fear was a physical clamp around his lungs.
“I…” he started, his voice strangled. He forced a smile, trying to make it look easy. “I should probably head back. Early practice tomorrow. Those twelve-year-old monsters wait for no one.” The excuse was weak, transparent. He felt her hand loosen in his, not a rejection, but a release.
Cassy’s expression softened, understanding flickering in her eyes. She didn’t look offended. She looked… patient. “Right. The future NFL draft picks need you.” She squeezed his hand once before letting go. “I had an amazing time, Will.”
“Me too.” The words felt inadequate. He took a stumbling step backward. “I’ll… text you?”
“You better.” She smiled, a real one, though it held a faint trace of concern. “Get home safe.”
The ride back was a blur of neon streaks and his own frantic heartbeat echoing in his ears. He’d choked. He’d had a perfect night with a girl who saw his carbon fiber legs and called them ‘badass,’ and he’d run. The apartment welcomed him with its familiar, silent emptiness. It felt like a judgment.
He went straight to the fridge. The bottle of vodka was half-full, a relic from his previous panic. He didn’t bother with a glass this time. The first long pull was fire, a cleansing burn. The second was quieter. The third began to blur the sharp, serrated edges of his self-loathing.
He sank onto the couch, the bottle cradled against his chest. The alcohol was a warm, spreading numbness, but it couldn’t drown out the images. Cassy’s laugh. The feel of her hand. The terrifying, beautiful prospect of her touch moving from his hand to his knee, to the complex junction of socket and residual limb. Would her confidence falter then? Would she see the scars, the reality of the seams where his body ended and the machine began, and finally feel the pity he dreaded?
He took another drink. The room tipped. He thought of her question: Why middle school? He’d given her the noble answer. The truth, swimming up through the vodka, was uglier. Middle schoolers were shorter. They didn’t look down on him. He could still feel tall, feel in control, feel like a coach and not a patient.
“Pathetic,” he slurred to the empty room. His phone buzzed on the coffee table. A text. Probably her. He couldn’t look. Seeing her name would make it real, that he’d had it and walked away.
He drank until the bottle was empty. The numbness was complete now, a thick wool blanket over his thoughts. He didn’t think of Cassy anymore. He thought of the squeak of cleats on grass, a sound that used to be his heartbeat. He thought of the unfeeling pressure of the prosthetic sockets, a constant, pinching reminder. He thought of the last thing he’d ever felt with his own legs: the brutal, crushing impact of the steering column.
The phantom pain ignited, a searing cramp in muscles that didn’t exist. He groaned, fumbling for the release valves on his legs, his fingers thick and clumsy. He got them off, letting the sophisticated carbon fiber clatter to the floor, looking suddenly like discarded robot parts. He stared at the stumps, encased in their silicone liners. They were just… there. Vulnerable. Ugly.
A dry, heaving sob wracked him. He didn’t cry. He just folded in on himself there on the couch, head in his hands, surrounded by the ghosts of what he’d lost and the terrifying prospect of what he might be too broken to ever grasp. The empty bottle rolled from his lap and thudded softly onto the rug. The last thing he registered was the cruel, mocking vibration of his phone against the table, a connection buzzing into the void he’d chosen, before the dark, drunk silence swallowed him whole.
The sun was a knife through his temples. Will woke on the couch, mouth tasting of ash and regret, the empty vodka bottle a silent accuser on the floor. His phone lay dark beside him. He’d missed her text, and seven others, the final one reading: Just checking you got home. Talk tomorrow?
He didn’t reply that day. The shame was a physical weight, sour and leaden in his gut.
Monday’s lecture felt different. The same dusty hall, the same monotone professor, but the space between their chairs hummed with the ghost of his failure. He kept his eyes fixed on his notebook, scribbling nonsense about plate tectonics. He felt her arrive, a shift in the air, a subtle scent of green apple shampoo.
She slid into the seat next to him. “You look like shit, McCord,” she whispered, her tone matter-of-fact, not cruel.
A startled laugh escaped him, tight and pained. “Rough weekend.”
“Practice that brutal?”
“Something like that.” He finally glanced at her. She was smiling, just a little, her eyes holding no condemnation, only a patient curiosity. The world righted itself, just a degree. She handed him a single stick of gum. “Here. For the academic trench warfare.”
The simplicity of the gesture disarmed him. There was no interrogation. No what happened? She just opened her textbook and pointed to a diagram. “Okay, explain this subduction zone to me like I’m five. I was distracted Friday.”
They fell into a new rhythm over the next couple of weeks. It was all forward motion, no glancing back. In class, she was reliably, platonically nice. She saved him a seat. She shared her notes when he zoned out. She argued with him about political theory with a fierceness that made him forget his own head.
Their dates were friendly, a deliberate framing she established with a casual ease. “I’m starving. Let’s get tacos,” she’d say after a lecture, and it wasn’t a question. Or, “I have to read fifty pages of Federalist Papers tonight and I’ll fall asleep. Distract me at the coffee shop.”
They were always activities. Shared focus points.
They sat side-by-side in a booth at a greasy spoon, dissecting a disastrous midterm while eating pancakes for dinner. They took her dog, a speckled mutt named Filibuster, to Auditorium Shores, throwing a slobbery tennis ball as the sun set over the water. They spent an entire Sunday afternoon in the sterile cool of the Blanton Museum, making up increasingly absurd backstories for austere portraits.
The conversations were easy, sprawling. She told him about her huge, loud family in San Antonio, her tías who always pinched her cheeks. He found himself describing the precise sound a perfectly thrown football makes when it hits a receiver’s hands, a tight, satisfying thwack. He talked about Javier, his middle school quarterback, who’d finally remembered a play.
He never mentioned the night on the couch with the bottle. She never asked.
He wore shorts more often. The first few times, his skin crawled with imagined stares. But with Cassy striding beside him, pointing out a weird cloud or launching into a rant about city council, the exposure began to feel less like a vulnerability and more like a simple fact of physics. Less armor, more just… what he had.
One Thursday, she texted: Crisis. My prof moved up the deadline on the Poli Sci nightmare paper. Coming to you for a writing intervention. I bring bribery in the form of queso.
He was sitting at his cluttered desk when she knocked. His apartment was clean-ish, for once. The empty bottle was long gone.
She bustled in, a bag of chips and a still-warm container in her hands. “Okay, your job is to tell me if my thesis makes any sense whatsoever. I traded my soul for this queso from the truck on 24th.” She set up on his couch, papers spreading around her like a paper explosion.
He read over her shoulder, suggesting a sharper verb here, a stronger transition there. His English major knowledge felt useful, not abstract. She listened, nodded, scowled at her own sentences. “You’re good at this,” she said, not looking up from her laptop.
“It’s easier with someone else’s words.”
Hours bled away. The queso was gone, replaced by empty water glasses. The quiet was comfortable, filled only by the clack of keys and the low murmur of the window unit. It felt profoundly, startlingly normal. Like they’d done this a hundred times.
She finished a paragraph with a triumphant stab of the period key. “Done! Well, a draft. I owe you my first-born child.” She stretched, her back cracking softly. Then she looked around, really looking, for the first time. Her gaze landed on the pair of prosthetic legs standing in the corner by his bed, their complex silhouettes stark against the beige wall.
He froze, mid-sip of water. He’d gotten used to having them off around her at the coffee shop, under the table. But this was different. This was his space. Their intimate, naked reality on display.
Cassy didn’t look away. Her expression wasn’t one of shock or pity. It was the same focused curiosity she’d shown for her paper. “Can I ask,” she said slowly, “what they’re like? To walk on?”
The question was so direct, so devoid of syrup, it bypassed his defenses. He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Uh. They’re… fine. Good, even. The left one has a microprocessor knee. It’s kind of smart, learns your gait.”
“That’s incredible.”
“It’s just physics and programming.”
“So are satellites.” She nodded toward them. “Do they have names?”
He barked a laugh. “No. God, no.”
“Just wondering.” She smiled, turning back to her laptop to start packing up. “I should let you get to sleep. You’ve got those future champions to wrangle tomorrow.”
She left with a quick, one-armed hug at the door, her laptop bag slung over her shoulder. After she was gone, the apartment didn’t feel empty. It felt quiet. He looked at the legs in the corner. For the first time, they didn’t look like monuments to a loss. They just looked like… equipment. Tools he used.
He sat back down at his desk. His own essay was due. He opened the document, the cursor blinking on a blank page. He thought about subduction zones, about one tectonic plate being forced beneath another under immense pressure. About how that pressure could create new mountains. He looked at his phone, at her last text from earlier that day: Qeso emergency. Prepare for jargon.
He started to type. The words came easier than they had in months. Outside, the cicadas began their electric song, and the Texas night hung heavy and warm, full of a future that was, for the first time in a very long time, simply tomorrow.