"I know how badly you've just been wanting to do something dangerous. And being someone's backpack is a pretty big deal…” she trails off and I glance at her with feigned disdain in my eyes, knowing what she’s trying to hint at.
But also, I can’t deny the butterfly feeling that starts up in my stomach at the mention of his name. It’s like just talking about him makes me nervous.
“When’s the last time you talked toZachypooanyway?”
“Ew. Please do not call him that,” I smack her arm gently and she giggles. “And we texted yesterday morning.”
“Yeah? How did that go?” She gives me a quick glance before turning back to the road.
“I mean, it was fine, but to be honest I think he was flirting with me.” I feel my heartbeat start to quicken when I recall the messages. Ryen pulls up to a stop sign and holds her hand out to me, curling her fingers in agive megesture
“Let me see.” She requests for my phone.
“What? No, you’re driving.” I point out, looking around to see that we’re the only ones on the street right now, stopped at a stop sign, but still.
“Hurry up. We’ve got time,” she says as she checks her rear view to see if anyone is coming up behind her, and when the coast is clear, I reluctantly hand her my phone with a deep sigh.
I close my eyes and throw my head back into the seat while she scrolls through the messages. Silence fills the cab as seconds tick by before she says, “Yeah, girl. That man is totally flirting with you. And you too, Cadie! Girl, you kept up with him for sure!”
I feel a proud grin start to curl on my lips at her compliment.
“I don’t know,” I say as I turn my head to look out the window, not wanting to take too much credit because I really don’t know what I’m doing with Zach. And then my smile falls when I think about the reaction Bray had when I had mentioned talking to him for a brief moment. Could that really be something that he’d be upset about? Is Zach right or is he just attempting to be cautious? “He alsoliked one of my IG photos,” I mention, remembering the notification I saw after we stopped texting.
I look out the window and imagine what it would be like to ride with him on the back of his bike. Would he even let me do that? What would it feel like to wrap my arms around him and lean into his back while the wind kicks past us? Before I can let my thoughts dig any deeper into forbidden territory,Ryen’s reflection fades into view and I can see that she’s typing something on my phone.
“Hey!” I shout as I reach over and snatch it out of her hand frantically. “What the-” I look at what she typed out.
Hey, I’m bored.
“Ryen…” I look at her with horror in my eyes. Embarrassment floods me when I realize that she sent this to Zach.
She has an incredibly guilty but innocent look painting her features, as if she did nothing wrong but she also doesn’t regret it if she did. She watches me as I hard-press on the message bubble.
“Don’t unsend it!” she begs as she reaches out to stop me from deleting it.
“This is not something I would say at all,” I complain, waving the phone around. “He’s going to think I’m lame or something.” I drop the phone in my lap as I huff out an annoyed breath.
“Okay, but hear me out. What if it only opens up room for different conversations?” She explains, unconvincingly so, so I pick the phone back up and hard-press the message again.
“Wait, wait. Just see how he responds. No harm.” She shrugs her shoulders nonchalantly before relaxing her features. And so do I, reluctantly letting go of the message bubble and deciding to stuff my phone away as quickly as possible so I don’t have to think about what he might say if he decides to respond to the message at all.
Suddenly, a horn blares around us and that’s when we notice a car sitting behind us at the stop sign.
“Shoot, my bad,” she huffs as she hits the gas and waves to the person behind us in her rear view mirror. That’s the closest to an apology anyone has ever really gotten out of Ry to be honest.
“You are insufferable.” I insult her politely as she speeds off down the road, but she just smiles at me, her devious, troublesome little smile, and turns the knob to the radio backup,I Write Sins Not Tragediesby Panic! At The Disco bounces through the speakers.
“I’m helpful,” she shouts over the music as she rolls our windows down, letting the wind breeze by around us. “Now, let's go help your lame ass brother with his homework so we can move on to more important things.”
8
Zachariah
It's game day, the second of the season. Our last game went better than we expected; I played my damn heart out. But despite the fact that I have been putting in the work, showing up every day and the Timber Wolves have been undefeated for two years, I still don’t have any offers yet. I’m actually only one of the few in our school who have expressed serious plans for football in the future, doing everything needed to walk that path, but for some reason it's not giving me the outcome I expected by now and something about the fact that I still have no offers makes me feel on edge.
I mean, I’ve been chatting with college coaches and scouts all summer. Hell, I’ve been in conversations with some of the best college coaches since sophomore year, even. But I don’t have a single wind of interest my way. I’m not doing something right and I don’t know what it is. It scares me. I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. And if I don’t have football, I don’t know what I have. I have nothing.
When CPS took me from my birth mom all those years ago, they wrote down in the reports that I only requested to take one thing with me. A little blueNerffootball. In all honesty, I truly believe I picked it up at the store one day, being three and all, and my mom didn’t blink an eye as we walked out of the store with the unpaid merchandise; mine and hers. I can’t really remember that far back to prove that claim but for some reason the story just sounds right. Either way, my love for the sport began at a really young age. I wasn’t able to play until the summer after fourth grade, where Brayden and I got put into flag football together. He had already been playing for a year or two before me, but it was my first time and I knew from the moment they handed me my first set of flags, I’d never want to do anything else with my life.
