Perfectly imperfect |Mattia Polibio|

Part 18

Celeste pov

There was a game today, so after lunch all lessons were cancelled. I always managed to sit on the front bleacher unnoticed and watch Mattia play.

I saw him walk out onto the field with the rest of our school team. As they did the cheerleading team started to cheer.

I saw Jasmine leading and I smiled at how pretty she looked, all dressed up in her cheerleader getup. She seemed like a really supportive girlfriend as well and it made me happy that Mattia found someone like that.

I'm surprised he doesn't talk about her often when I'm tutoring him. I thought he'd take every chance I gave him to talk about her but he didn't really.

The game started and I watched the ball being passed around. As much as max talks about it I wasn't exactly that familiar with all of it. I knew about the rules and stuff because I had to teach them him when he was growing up.

Since dad wasn't here he missed certain things about soccer, so I thought I'd read up about a few things and tell them to him.

Everything else, like soccer players and certain teams I was completely lost on.

I focussed on the game, and saw that one of the other teams players tripped up Mattia when he had the ball.

I heard the whistle blow, " yellow card," I mumbled, and surely enough the player did get a yellow card.

As crazy as it sounds, I didn't just come here to watch Mattia play. I mainly came to get familiar with the game so I could talk to max about football, and understand some of the things he mentions. Mattia being on the field was just a bonus.

They carried on playing. The whistle blew at half time and both teams were tied at 2 points.

The boys on our team ran up to our schools football coach. As they were, the girls on the cheerleading team were cheering in the background. Getting the crowd on our school bleachers to cheer along with them.

I noticed Mattia look around the bleachers and I wondered what he was looking for.

His eyes landed on something in my direction. A smile came on his face and he waved.

Now I know damn well he wasn't waving at me, so I wasn't going to embarrass myself by waving back.

I turned around to see who he was waving at but no one was waving back at him, or even looking at him for that matter. I turned back to look at him, to see him laughing slightly. 

He looked down at the ground shaking his head slightly, and then looked back in my direction with a wider smile on his face.

It made me think maybe he was waving at me, and now I felt embarrassed because it seemed rude that I didn't wave back.

I stopped myself from thinking more about it, because I knew I was just going to make myself feel worse.

The game carried on after. I understand now why football players and crowds get so aggressive during matches. There's so much dirty play involved and it honestly irritated me as well.

I saw mattia racing to the other end of the pitch with the football. He shot the ball towards the goal, and a huge smile came on my face when I saw it hit the back of the net. The boys on our team started cheering for him, and the crowd went wild too.

He'd never overreact when he'd score. If anything he'd look rather proud, like it's something that was expected to happen. That was a toxic thing of his I guess, but it only ever occurred when he was on the field.

The game went on for a little longer and the whistle blew signalling the end of the game. The score was 4-2 to our team.

Everyone from our school that was sitting on the bleachers cheered crazily. Both teams shook hands with each other and after a while everyone on the bleachers started to leave. I thought it was best if I did too.