Me on the ground, trying hard to get up, and the football team from high school all standing around me. Olly with them. They were all jeering down at me. One of them, the linebacker, was drawing his foot back for the first kick.
And I remembered what it felt like afterward, when I was laying on the floor waiting for someone to find me, hoping that they would get to me before it was too late to go to the hospital.
In the end, I’d only had one broken rib. But it had felt like a lot worse.
“You okay?” Ace asked with a frown. “You went somewhere dark.”
“Yeah,” I told him, trying to flash him a brave smile. “Just thinking about what scares me. So, Ace. What scares you?”
And I tried my hardest to be polite and listen to the answer – instead of picturing Olly’s face, full of scorn, as another kick landed in my side.
Olly
I had so much energy to burn I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Tryouts had been a raging success. I knew from the way that Coach slapped me on the back as we were leaving the field. He was impressed with me.
I’d done it.
Somehow, I managed to put everything out of my head for three hours and really focus. Nothing mattered except the drills. Nothing mattered except the ball.
“Aren’t you getting changed?” one of my soon-to-be teammates asked me. I was grabbing my stuff out of my locker and shoving it into my bag.
“No,” I told him with a grin. I was on an endorphin high. “I’m going for a run back to my dorm. It’s not far from here.”
“Alright,” he chuckled at me. A few of the other guys did as well. They must have thought I was mad to go for a run after three hours of training. But I wasn’t tired. Far from it.
I was on top of the world.
I nodded to Coach as I set off on my run. I held my bag over one shoulder and a bottle of water in the other. The cold evening air felt good on my hot skin.
Nothing at all was in my head as I ran. It was pure, clean. No worries or anxieties. No wondering about what I was going to do. No thoughts of Keaton.
Not until I ran right up to the door of our room and went inside.
Keaton looked up at me from his bed. He immediately creased his brow at the sight of me and then hurriedly looked away.
“What?” I asked reflexively. Then I remembered what he’d said on the first day we moved in. About how he was going to be stuck with someone who didn’t know how to wash. I probably smelled bad. After three hours of physical exertion and an extra run, that was to be expected. “I’m about to go for a shower.”
“Okay,” Keaton said. He focused back on the book that was sitting on his knee. It was like he was deliberately avoiding looking at me.
He’d been like this all week. Not looking at me. Answering me with one word at a time. Never engaging me in conversation unless I said something first.
I was sick of it.
Things had happened between us. I knew that. But he couldn’t hold it against me forever. Not while we had to share the same space.
“You know,” I said, grabbing my towel but not leaving just yet. “This year is going to go really slow if you refuse to talk to me.”
Keaton blinked and looked up. “I’m not refusing to talk to you.”
“Alright, avoiding me, then,” I said. I sighed with frustration. Keaton was so much smarter than me. I’d always known that. Unfortunately, it meant I was never going to get anywhere if he kept picking me up on my words. He knew the right ones and I didn’t.
Keaton sighed back. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We won’t be sharing for long, anyway. The Dean said he’s going to give us details of a new room assignment as soon as he gets them.”
There was that feeling again. Like a sucker punch to the stomach. I knew Keaton had a good reason to hate me.
I just didn’t like the fact that he was going to push me away and run before I had a chance to fix it.
