Kick Start

Chapter Nine

Lauren sat in the locker room, shirtless, toying with her jersey and tracing the number glued onto the familiar material.

00.

It had been her number for as long as she could remember, just like Normani's had always been 17 and Ally's had been 12 and Dinah's 99.

Camila's was 1; a little voice in the back of her head nagged her, as if the fact that 0 and 1 were next to each other meant something.

But the placement of numbers in numerical order meant very little, just like the kiss she had shared with Camila meant very little.

“Fuck,” the long-haired girl moaned, shoving her face into her jersey and smelling the comforting scent of laundry detergent and always-present hint of grass.

She didn’t want to think about kissing Camila anymore, even if it had been on her mind more often than not as of late, but it was distracting and she had other things to worry about, like the game they were about to play in three hours maybe, or how it was by far the biggest game of the season, or maybe about the essay she needed to edit, or what she was going to fucking do with her life.

But all she kept thinking about was kissing Camila, and that was absolutely ridiculous.

What was she becoming?

A love sick, distracted, unfocused, silly fool of a little girl was what she was becoming, and all because of one stupid kiss with one insignificant girl who she didn’t even care about (a complete lie).

She just wanted to go back to the way things were before- before Camila that is- when all she focused on was school and soccersoccersoccersoccer.

“LoLo?” a deep voice called out, and it was wrong because this was a girl's locker room and that voice was most certainly a guys, but she sighed in relief all the same.

“Huh,” she grunted noncommittally, trying to make it seem as if she weren’t just driving herself crazy.

She extracted her face from her jersey to see Luis making his way around the lockers and toward where she was sitting.

He sat down next to her, the metal cold against their skin, and leaned against her shoulder.

She smiled lightly, grateful for his comforting presence.

“How ya holding up, Tiger?” he questioned, his face shifting against her shoulder so that he could look up at her with wide eyes.

Everything would have been easier, she thought, had they worked out.

“S’okay,” she mumbled, not meeting his gaze and knowing that he would know she wasn’t really okay at all.

“Are you nervous?”

And yes, she wanted to scream, of course she was nervous, but no…not really because…well, because of a fucking girl, and how could she say that?

She’d sound absolutely ridiculous.

So Lauren settle for, “Course I am, LuLu. I’m not a robot, silly.”

Luis squealed- how unmanlylike- and Lauren laughed with him, more because she loved how he laughed than anything.

It reminded her how easy it was with him, how fun and carefree it was, and she missed hanging out with him a lot.

“Hey, I’m- erm- I’m sorry I haven’t been around much lately…things have been really busy.”

“Oh, babe,” Luis cooed, and he held her hand in his, squeezing it gently. “I know you’ve been busy and have a lot on your mind…just remember, if you need to talk about anything- and I mean anything, even if you think it’s silly- you can, okay?”