the choice • charlie conway

chapter eight

charlie

It probably wasn't a good idea to admit to Sadie that I was ditching her.

Even though it's been almost a year, I still get nervous around her. We come from completely different lifestyles. I mean, I live in an apartment in Minneapolis and she lives in a huge house nestled in the nicest part of Edina.

Long story short, I always feel like I need to impress her. And instead of doing that, I just run away from her. Not a very good way to solve my problems, but it's just the way I am.

But even after we fight, it still makes me smile when I see her wearing my clothes in school. Whenever she wears them, she always sends me Snapchats of what she pairs each item with.

I know she gets stares and is constantly being talked about by jealous girls who want a chance with me whenever she wears my clothes, and just in general. They can all keep dreaming though, because I only love her.

Right before I leave the dorm this morning, I make sure that Adam is in his suit this time. I then quickly fix my own tie before the three of us walk across campus to the school building.

I drag Adam and Guy to the dining hall to grab some cereal bars before we headed to class. Guy insists that we need to get fruit too, in order to be really ready for our game by "ingesting natural sugar." His words, not mine.

Because we stayed behind to eat our fruit, I end up being late to first period. Having English first period really isn't exciting, especially when the teacher is one of those women who think they're cool because they had or have all of the athletes in their classes.

Although I don't usually pull out the athlete charm, I had to this time with Mrs. Laughton.

When I walk into class, she's in the middle of a speech. I put my hands up, and start spitting out the best excuse I can think of, which isn't exactly a lie to begin with. "I'm sorry, I was at the dining hall. You know it's game day, and I had to eat a good breakfast."

"Button your suit and sit down Conway." Although her arms are crossed, you can see the playful expression on her face.

I feel my face turn red as I hear all my classmates laugh. I quickly button my suit and sit down, then try to pay as much attention to her lecture as I can.

I have to be quite honest, I'm not exactly the best in school. I mean, I'm good at math, but that's about it. I can't write a good essay to save my life, and I hate listening to lectures. Maybe that's why I hate English so much.

I wish I have more to say about my day, but it was honestly pretty boring, other than the girls soccer game. Their game was at three-thirty, so we actually got to watch the full thing since our game is at six.

Speaking of which, when Adam found out who we are playing tonight, it's safe to say he blew up.

"Who was going to tell me we're playing Hill-Murray tonight?" he asks with a tone full of disgust as he slams the locker room door open.

"Well hello to you too cutie." Dean jokes, but that only gets him a middle finger stuck up at him in response.

"Seriously." he starts again. "Who was going to tell me?"

I sigh and throw on my jersey before turning around and looking at my furious friend. "Banksie, if you actually checked the schedule, you would've known that. Besides, what do you have against them anyway?"

He runs a hand through his disheveled hair and rubs his temples before taking a deep breath. "Larson is on that team."

The way he said Larson's name was filled with so much disgust and hatred, that if you don't know what happened between them, which most of our team doesn't, you'd think that Larson killed Adam's dog or something.