I Hate Football Players 3 | 18+

Chapter 15: Logan

The first morning of class, I woke up restless and irritable.

Every time Ellie rolled over in her sleep last night, which was quite a lot, her air mattress scrunched and groaned on the hardwood floors. At one point I was surprised she hadn't popped it with how much she tossed around. While those noises had been my motivation when I insisted she not have any guy in the apartment, I felt bad that's how she slept.

Of course I'd feel better if she slept next to me in bed.

For more reasons than one.

Our conversation through dinner had also kept me awake while it replayed over in my mind after Ellie had gone to sleep. I wanted to be fully honest with her but my pride and, for the first time with Ellie, uncertainty held back the truth. I wanted to fess up but wasn't sure how she'd take the news that I'd learned how to cook from her videos and instructional blogs. I'd had some disasters for sure but I'd gotten the hang of some basic recipes. I was definitely better than Mom and impressed her when I'd cooked for her after Brody's games.

Another area of my self-improvements, which I also wasn't ready to admit, was also Ellie-inspired in that I solidified my most important personal relationships. After I went to college, Mom still worked a clerical job in a doctor's office, but switched to one closer to Santa Cruz. Before my spring semester freshman year started, she'd sold her townhouse, downsized to a two-bedroom condo, and tossed out half her belongings. Like when she'd first chased Dad from Sudbury, Ontario to Santa Cruz, that city's houses were still out of her price range but she moved further out from the beach in nearby Scotts Valley.

His junior year, once he drove, my younger brother Brody transferred from Santa Cruz to Scotts Valley. He still split his time between both houses but the arrangement was much better for him. Selfishly, when I drove back there every Friday and watched his football games, I'd appreciated sitting in Scotts Valley's stands and not Santa Cruz's since that was Ellie's alma mater.

The night before my first class at UW though, the fact I'd miss Brody's games this year hit me with obvious disappointment. Even with a direct flight, one-way travel was about six hours, so by the time Huskies' practice ended I didn't have enough time to make his games. Mom promised she'd FaceTime me during them but I wasn't convinced she wouldn't forget, put her phone away, and gave me a view of her butt pocket the entire game.

Ellie herself also distracted me from sleeping. I knew some things about her had changed but the fact she got flustered when I flirted with her definitely hadn't. And I intended to use her blush barometer to my full advantage. I felt slightly bad that I'd teased her about the marital status mix-up but surprised both of us when I'd leaned over and gently kissed her good night.

While Ellie just gasped in surprise and laid there in silent shock, I'd had a different reaction. Disappointment rose inside me at how her forehead wasn't where I actually wanted to kiss her. The contact resurfaced the first conversation I'd had with the Prakashes, where I confessed why I lived across the hall, alone in married student housing. For two years, they'd encouraged me to chase my 'sōl sahacaruḍu,' as both Saswhin and his wife Nallini called Ellie my soulmate.

After a few hours of restless sleep, loud banging sounds in the kitchen woke me up. I groaned and dragged myself around the small bedroom until I was dressed. While I brushed my teeth in our closet-sized bathroom, the smell of a hot breakfast hit me.

"You're right," Ellie called out to me from inside the kitchen. She held a gallon of milk in one hand and wore an oven mitt on the other. She put the milk in the fridge, shut it, then opened the stove.

"This does bug me." She smiled and took out, of all things, a tray full of bacon strips that sizzled like they called my name. The smell hit me instantly and my stomach growled in agreement.