The whiskey in the short glass cup filled with ice cubes sat untouched on the counter top of the downstairs lounge in the Fox Tower which acted as a dormitory separate from the PSU campus. The ice taking up half the alcohol filled glass was now melting while you sat there on the leather seat bar stool staring down into the glass, your left hand resting in your lap and your right on the table an inch off from where the glass was like it was taunting you but it were also a sin if you went to pick it up like you had so many times. It'd never been an issue before. You would have gladly downed it if it weren't for what your coach had said. What Wymack had said, the only man in your life that had truly stepped up in a fatherly position, which he hadn't asked nor planned for.

It was only a few nights ago in which had told you you were endangering yourself when you were dead drunk on his couch on the brink of alcohol poisoning if he had not swiped the bottle of gin out of your hand and returned it to his liquor cabinet. He had told it to you bluntly that he would have no choice but to remove you from the team if you didn't stop. It had sent you into a silent panic. The team was all you had, it was the only reason you ended up in college and with what you had now.

It weighed down on you like a sort of regret. Or maybe it was grief for what needed to be left. For what you couldn't have anymore.

You heard the creak of the wooden steps leading down into the lounge and you felt the presence of the man behind you only seconds later. "Haven't drank any?" He asked rhetorically moved slightly and pulled a stool out from under the bar and sat beside you, pulling out his back of cigarettes and lighting one.

"I can't." You whisper hoarsely, desperately wanting to just knock the glass out of the way and down the bottle instead.

"You can. I've seen it before. But your making choices for yourself and not an addiction." He stated bluntly, with the usual tough-love attitude he gave all the young adults on the team.