Home Field Advantage

Chapter 4

The weekend came and went. The consistency of it was spent either in the batting cages, murdering my arm, or at the gym, murdering my legs.

I tried not to push myself too much but it's been hard keeping up with Liam now. It's been a while since I've had a proper workout.

I start practicing again after school and I already know I'm going to be behind. I don't expect to start in our next game, I just don't want to bring the team down. So if dealing with Liam's devil workout is what I need to do to get back in the groove of things, then so be it.

Not only have I been dealing with the torture chamber locals refer to as "the gym", my work hours have been all over the place.

I've been working at Vertigo's for a few months now. Vertigo's is this pretty fancy restaurant on the cusp of Spring and Jackson county. It's been pretty good so far, except for the fact that they've been over hiring so I'm not working as many hours as I'd like. Meaning I'm not getting paid as much as I'd like.

I usually work the evening shift anyways, it gives me more time for practice, and nobody really bothers me. I like it.
I work tonight too. I don't know how I'm gonna survive this season, I'm gonna have to drink a Celsius every hour just to get my stamina up, and my will to live.

~~~

By second period I already wanted to go home.

I was fighting my sleep all throughout Mrs.Collins lecture about data analysis and I'm pretty such she was this close to making everyone in that class an accessory to my murder.
I haven't been sleeping well ever since I was taken off my pain killers. Those shits used to knock me out hard. I guess I sorta depended on them to help me sleep, now I'm going through some sort of withdrawals.

I drag myself to my locker to get my book for my next class. I put in the combination, open it and shuffle through my stuff looking for my French textbook.
I hear something slam against the locker next to me. Startled, I turned quickly to my left and am met with Erik's stupid, grinning face.

"Why do you have to do that?" I ask softly, victimizing myself.
"God you're so easy to scare. You're so jumpy, like a fucking cat" he replied.
I roll my eyes.

"Hey I never got a chance to talk to you after the party on Friday." He said
"Yeah because you completely ghosted me all weekend." I interrupted
"I was hibernating," he continues "anyways you completely ditched me after the Stallions crashed the party."

I gulped.
"And?" I ask.
"Were you with him?"

My heart skipped a beat.

"What?"
"When you left, were you with him?" He repeated.

He can't be talking about Noel can he? I mean I was with him even after he told me to stay away but he can't possibly be talking about the 2 minutes we were talking in the kitchen.
Okay, 3 minutes and 48 seconds but who's counting?

"With who?" I ask.
"Do play dumb Leo." He said

I feel my skin prickle. What? Why am I so worried about if he saw me with Noel? We were just talking, barely even.

"With Andrew." He explained finally.

I sigh of relief and then replay his question in my head.