Noah
Ethan doesn't answer right away, and the pause tells me more than whatever he ends up saying.
"Some booster made a comment about you at the alumni dinner," he says finally, sitting down across from me, not quite meeting my eyes at first. "I shut it down. It wasn't a big deal."
"Deshawn made it sound like a bigger deal than that."
"Deshawn exaggerates."
"What'd the guy say?"
Ethan hesitates again, and I can tell he's debating how much to actually tell me, weighing honesty against sparing my feelings, and something about watching him work through that decision makes my chest go tight in a way I don't fully understand yet.
"Called you my football friend the program's babysitting," he says finally. "I told him you're not being babysat, that you work as hard as anyone in that room,
