“That’s a yucky boy thing, though, Brynn,” I whine, and she laughs, turning away.
I hate when they do that, because then I have to go after her. My legs are starting to feel like jello and my feet are sore from balancing on blades the entire time. “Brynn, come on, that’s a boy hike, give us a nice one.”
She shakes her head. “Absolutely not. Eloise, I’m going to send you the address so you can meet us there.”
She nods, and I feel her eyes on us as I follow Brynn down the tunnel towards the locker room. When I turn back, I can see her, shoulders slightly caved in. She shakes her head and starts to walk towards us, stopping when she sees me watching her.
She gives a small wave as I turn around quickly and hustle to get into the showers. My skin prickles, and gets all hot and itchy at the idea of spending time with her. We just buried the hatchet.Did we? Maybe. I can work with her, and that should be enough.
The smile Brynn gave us was not promising at all.
Dare I say, an even worse promise than Grouse Grind.
Ten
Eloise
I’m coming out of the locker room after practice, trying to figure out how much pain I’m going to be in for Grouse Grind when Taylor corners me in the hallway. She looks like she’s been pacing out here for the last couple of minutes, her forehead scrunched in worry and her thumb in her mouth as she chews on the skin around the nail.
“Hey, Eloise,” she says, coming up to me. Her eyes look haunted as she looks around us in a way that I can only describe as worried someone is looking for us, oratus.
Hurt lances through me in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before. She doesn’t want to be seen with me?Fine.
“What’s up, Taylor?”
She blinks, taken aback by the flat tone.
It’s not like she’s told me several times over at this point that she doesn’t want to be near me. Or that there's been occasions where she’s desperately lookedboth ways to make sure that no one can see us beside each other or,gasp,talking to each other.
That would ruin her reputation as the mean girl.
“We need to get along for Coach,” Taylor says.
“And the good of the team,” I say. She begrudgingly agrees.
I can see her jaw clench.
“And Brynn. She’s going to be insufferable if we don’t get along.”
I place a hand on my chest, gasping loudly. Taylor jolts at the noise, ducking to make sure no one sees her.
It’s a difficult ask considering she’s 5’10” and I’m 5’9”, but sure, no one is going to see you if you hide. But there’s also no one in the hallway, so she’s fine. “Brynn would be insufferable? Oh, the horror.”
Her eyes narrow, and I have to bite back a smile as she tries her best to look intimidating. “Anyway, we need to look like we’re getting along for Grouse Grind.”
I shrug. “What do you want to do?”
She’s gnawing on her bottom lip like it’s a chew toy. “Do you want to practice together? That would get Brynn and Coach off our backs and we could do with the experience playing together,” I suggest, but she shakes her head.
“No, we don’t want to do that.”
I try so hard not to roll my eyes, I think that they may pop out of my head. “What do you want to do then?”
“We just pretend.”
I think my jaw has dropped at the thought. “We pretend?”
“Yeah, of course,” she shrugs. My eye twitches. “We pretend to get along and they don’t catch onto us.”
