The Quiet Room
The Seat He Never Left

Three Weeks Ago

August 25, 2026 · Part 6 of 10 · 2 min

Noelle told him the rest standing in the kitchen, voice hushed like the walls might repeat it. Dez had found Callum's number through a cousin on some app, sent that single text weeks ago just to see if the kid would answer, then never followed up when Callum hadn't.

"I begged him to leave it alone," Noelle said. "You've got a father. You didn't need this on top of playoffs."

*You've got a father.* The word landed different now than it ever had.

Callum barely slept. At practice Monday he ran routes on autopilot, dropped two passes he never dropped, until Prentiss blew the whistle and just stared at him.

"Where's your head, Ochoa?"

"Here, Coach." It wasn't.

Marquez caught him at his locker after. "You've been weird since Friday. Something happen with your girl?"

"No girl." Callum shoved his cleats in his bag harder than necessary. "Family stuff."

"Your dad?" Marquez's eyebrows went up. "Warren? Man's the most solid dude I know. What'd he do?"

*Nothing,* Callum almost said. *That's the whole problem. He did nothing but show up, two hundred eleven times, for a kid that isn't his, and I don't know what to do with that.*

He said instead, "It's complicated," and let Marquez drop it.

That night, alone in his room, he pulled up the thread with the unknown number — Dez, apparently, though the name still felt like it belonged to a stranger, because it did. The cursor blinked under *Good luck tonight, kid* for a long time before Callum made himself type something back.

*This is Callum. I know who you are.*

His thumb hovered over send. Two hundred and eleven games. A notebook with a football sticker. A man who taught him to throw by moving his arm for him. None of that had a single thing to do with the man on the other end of this message.

He sent it anyway.

The reply came back almost instantly, like Dez had been holding his phone the whole three weeks waiting.

*Can we meet? Before the championship. Just once.*

Continue the story Part 7: Same As Always →

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