Willa

Chapter Nineteen: College for me... A labour for you

The first day of college for me was the last week of April. Calliope and I walk into the campus together, side by side, just as it would be for the next three years. We would work our way to the top of the team rankings in months, leaving it known to all local teams on the roster that we were the new girls to be watching on the court. Calliope and I had a great advantage in the fact we had been playing alongside each other for nine months... time to study each others techniques, abilities, and game play. We moved fluidly together. I was the only other person who knew Calliopes dance and the way it would play out. Our coach placed us together most frequently because together we could destroy an entire side of defence with Calliope as point guard and me as shooting guard, shooting, dribbling and passing effortlessly with a quickness they never expected. We were lucky in that we could read each other so well and act before a ball was even passed, stealing them quite effortlessly, sometimes from between a girls legs, before she even knew it was gone.

***
"Knock knock" came Calliopes voice as she entered my dorm "you ready to head back home for the weekend" she asks.

I nod as I write the last line of my homework, sports science was melting my brain, but in a good way. It was good to be studying and keeping my mind occupied. I grab my backpack and lock the door as we head down the hall to the car. "We have been here a week and we are already headed home... is that a record do you think" I ask.

She sighs "most probably, but we only live a few hours away so it's not as if we are that lame"

"True... and it's only because we are going to help Emma pack up and say our goodbyes" i add.

"You are going to miss her" Calliope says as we get into the car. 

I pull on my belt "I will" I confess "I feel a bit sick about having to actually say goodbye"

My heart beats a little faster at the thought.

Emma and I had tried our best to keep each other casual, but at best we were frequent avoiders of the truth, and that was that we frequently just avoided talking at all and instead went straight to bed at every opportunity. I didn't know what Emma felt about leaving, because she didn't talk about it and I wouldn't bring it up either. I think me being away a week before she would leave kind of made it worse, since it gave me time to think about her and not be under her or devoured by her. I must admit I worried I had got too used to her presence in my life, and possibly also the way she had become a distraction over my missing of Alberta. I really did like Emma, and I think she really liked me too... but I had lost far too many people of late to get too attached to another, it felt safer to keep it as casual as possible.

"Me too... I've known Em most of my life" Calliope confesses "and we were pretty close until you came here and stole her from me... I barely see either of you, now that you and her are together"

"We aren't together" I reply hastily.

"Sure" Calliope whistles out of her nose "keep telling yourselves that" she adds.

"She wears your jersey Willa... like you are her high school boyfriend" she says with a cock of her eyebrow "tell me she doesn't like you and I won't believe you... and you have her t shirt... that one she loves. I saw you wearing it to bed the other night" she says giving me a knowing look. "You are both deluded" she adds looking at her cell phone and typing away as we drive away from the college.

That was true. I was wearing her t shirt last week, she had left it at my house a week previously before I had left for college. I admit, it smelt like her, and I liked that, because she smelt wonderful and that scent of her, it had become something I could quite get used to, and it brought me such peace to inhale that damned  t shirt sometimes. Emma had inched her way inside of me, taking a souvenir to take with her on her travels, a slither of me, and I, without knowing had taken a larger portion of her, a piece of her heart, perhaps too much for such a short time... but I wouldn't know that not until much later in life when we would by chance run into each other again, a whole world away from now.