I glanced at Nola, who was already looking at me. I for sure was not going to back out, let alone first. Her eyes narrowed as if we were thinking the same thing, and even though I wanted to convey calm, cool, and collected, the pain in my lip was telling me I was biting down too hard.
“Nope, I’msogood.” I smiled.
Nola nodded, her full lips moving from scrunched to relaxed. “I’m good.”
“Ugh, thank God!” Nina clapped her hands and turned to a passage way down the middle. “Then let’s do this!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nola
Seven years ago
U19 Tournament
In my rare moment of team camaraderie, I had seemed to become…friends with Farrah and Brittney. Farrah, I think, tolerated my presence—or was simply indifferent—because her face didn’t light up the way Brittney’s did when she saw me. Like an easily overstimulated dog, smiling wide, tail wagging. She could flip to frustration or anger quickly, and then she was onto the next thing, her attention never staying on anything long.
It was honestly scary and endearing at the same time.
On the night before knock out rounds began, Brittney had me play ref as she took on Katie and Lucy in a two versus one, something I definitely didn’t remember advising, and yet she’d actually outscored them. Watching her play felt like the closest to watching my own highlight reels my parents recorded over the years. Brittney was fast and agile on her toes, helping her pivot directions on offenseanddefense, her aggression washungry as she plowed through screens to get under the net, and she was hitting about two-thirds of her three pointers.
She wasn’t just good. She was nearly as good as me.
I thought maybe her performance was a fluke, fueled by rage and determination to prove our teammates wrong. But she quickly shut me up in our first game in the group of sixteen. Even though she wasn’t starting three, she still hit a double double, contributed twenty points, and ten rebounds off the bench. Quickly making sure Coach had her starting with me in the next round.
After that game, I moved my stuff into her and Farrah’s room, more as a request from her and not a diss to my former roommates—even though they were assholes—and I might as well have said we got matching tattoos.
“Does your face hurt from smiling all the time?” I asked, coming back from a vending machine run. Something I usually did alone and in the quiet but Farrah was the only one actually asleep before 10pm and Brittney was still up watching YouTube videos.
“Does your voice creak every time you speak for the first time?”
“I’m not an asshole or anything.” I replied defensively.Why was I explaining myself?
“Never said you were.” Brittney shrugged like she couldn’t care less, and it only made me want to saymore.
“You were definitely thinking about it that first day on the shuttle.” I knew I never owed anyone an explanation, my dad was the best teacher at that, but Brittney was kind. It was weird how much she oozed openness. The same energy she radiated kind of made me want to give the same back.
“I mean, you weren’t radiating friendship and team bonding that’s for sure.”
“I get motion sickness,” I whispered right as we approached our door. I was getting an itchy feeling to not go in, to keep the conversation going, to actually speak to someone who I knew nothing about other than her obnoxious smile and chaotic energy.
Brittney must have felt my inability to move because she faced me, back against the wall, and slid down to the hallway carpet, a smile on her annoying, pretty face.
I also ignored the way my throat went dry at the sight of me towering over her.
I slid down next to her and played with the stud in my earlobe.
“Let’s run that back please.” Brittney faced her body toward mine and I did the same. Is that what sleepovers felt like? Confiding in the dark and talking nonsense? I’d let her braid my hair if she asked, God knows I was over the same ponytail I’d always worn for games.
“I get motion sickness on buses so I have to sit alone. I’m afraid I’ll…you know…”
“Have you done it before?” Brittney grimaced.
I nodded. “Thank God I made it to a bag, but it was a close call. That’s how my best friend and I became close.”
“Oh, so you bought her friendship,” she stated with a straight face.
“What? No I didn’t.” My face burned with her judgement.
