Swish

Timeout - Eli

The sharp shrill of the coach's whistle pulled me out of my panicking over V not answering my texts all day and while it was time for a break, my head was nowhere near ready to tell my hands to stop dribbling the ball. 

"Hey, you good?"

I nodded to Wilt, his brown eyes sharpening at my obvious lie, but he didn't push it.  

"Pat said you two had a fight earlier.  What's up with that?"

I groaned, desperate to forget our 'conversation' from earlier after Virginia had left my room.  

Instead of speaking like two adults, Patrick had taken his time accusing me of things I had not done and would never do, taking some kind of cue from Maddie that I was interested in her for some reason that was beyond me. 

Back and forth, the two of us exchanged verbal assaults while I attempted to diffuse the situation, which only made things worse as he tried to say that I was 'stealing his girl', but he refused to listen to me.  I guessed my bad past with multiple girls didn't do me any favors, but it wasn't like I'd defined anything with V, so it wasn't like I could have said that we were dating and he had no reason to worry.  The truth was, I wanted her to be my girlfriend more than I wanted to beat our rival team the next day, but it wasn't like I could just come out and ask her that while everything was going on in her home life.  

I didn't want to overwhelm her anymore than she already was, not to mention the fact that I was scared that she didn't want the same things I did.  It was obvious she wanted to get out of this school after next semester, and I still didn't know if I'd be going pro, or staying behind to finish out my college degree, in Florida.  Somewhere she definitely didn't want to be. 

"We'll be okay, he's just messed up about Maddie right now," I told Wilt, watching his eyes widen as I missed my third shot from the free throw line.  At this rate, Matthew would be wiping the floor with my ass, but maybe that was what I deserved. 

"You sure you're good?  What's going on with Vir-"

"Hey boys!  We just got a new shipment of Gatorades for the vending machines, but I snuck a few for you.  Eli, your favorite is the yellow, right?"

Maddie's remembrance of my favorite flavor of sports drink was surprisingly creepy, as she hadn't come off that way before, when she was still dating Patrick.  Now that she wasn't?  Well, I did say creepy...

"Thanks," I said gruffly, still staring ahead at the basketball goal like it held all the secrets to life as I knew it. 

She didn't move, so I took it upon myself to distance myself from her and Wilt, making my way over to the cushioned fold up chairs on the sidelines.  Phone in hand, all my messages to V hadn't been delivered, like her phone was out of service. 

A quick phone call to her number confirmed that her phone wasn't working, which was better than if she had just been ignoring me all day, but an unsettling feeling settled in my gut.  It already sucked that I wasn't able to cheer her on for her audition earlier in the day, because if I skipped classes my teachers would report me, and I'd already missed practice earlier in the morning. 

I hated the fact that our schedules were so different and so hard to coordinate with each other because of.  It didn't help that I was constantly in the gym, pushing my body to its limits just to shut off the damn noise in my brain.

It was time for V's shift, yet the owner strolled in and took up her post.  Something...wasn't right. 

And then I got the text.  Her father was back, and taking her to dinner with the rest of her family.