Her Eyes

16. Dodgeball

Alexa's POV

It had taken me a while to get to sleep last night with the look on Leah's face when she saw Alessia coming out of my room whirling round my mind. I was aware that I'd unintentionally hurt her and I wanted to make it right.

I had woken up feeling fresher today, with a clearer head as both my headache had gone and I knew what I wanted.. Leah. My plan was to show Leah how I felt and I had come to the conclusion that I should try to distance myself from Alessia a little as it was only fair to her to not to lead her on if she did like me.

It was another hot July day today and as we head out onto the training pitches we all made comments about the heat to the media guy filming us. I'd started to get used to being filmed all the time, although I wasn't quite used to having a fanbase yet.. I'd even seen a fan page shipping me and Beth the other day?!

We were all spraying ourselves with suncream and I was stood to one side in my own thoughts. I loved the smell of suncream it reminded me of summer days on Brighton beach with my family as a kid.

I was brought back to reality when I heard the girls laughing, Lucy was joking around and spraying way too much cream onto Kiera saying she needed it with her complexion.
"Oi Luce, come here" shouted Kiera, chasing her around trying to get her back. Ugh they were cute, I want that.

Leah hadn't looked at me at all this morning and I'd noticed that she looked a bit deflated today and was staying very close to Kiera. I needed to try and find some time alone with her to explain, but that was quite hard when we're always around 25 other girls.

We were all brought into a huddle and split into teams for the mini games we were going to play in training. I was put in Alessia's team and not Leah's and as I saw her put on a blue bib I realised my plan was not going well so far.

"Dream team baby" Georgia shouted in her northern accent whilst chest bumping me.

"Are you good?" she asked quietly as a follow up after seeing how distracted I was

"Yeah fine just miss my family a bit" I lied, well only slightly, I did miss my family but I'm not sure I was ready to discuss whatever was going on with the two blondes.

We started a drill where we had to dribble around posts in a relay race, the team that finished first won, simply really. Except we are all super competitive so we were screaming at our teammates as soon as the race began. Our team won by literally a second and Tooney was jokingly shouting "VAR VAR!"
Alessia brought me into a hug as we all jumped around celebrating but I pulled away quite quickly, remembering what I'd told myself about leading her on.

The second game was then explained to us; we would be paired up with someone from an opposing team and would stand facing them playing rock paper scissors and whoever won would then turn in either direction and try to reach the sideline before the other person caught them. I was first paired up with Mary and I lost dramatically but her reaction times were ridiculously quick with her being a goalie.

I was then paired up with.. Leah, who looked less than pleased to be paired up with me and stared at her boots as she walked towards me. Finally, our eyes met as we stood about a foot away from each other, I tried to convey how I felt just through the look I gave her. For a second I could see her expression soften.

"Leah, about yesterd-" I started to say before she snapped back into game mode and talked over me

"Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!"

Three times in a row we both showed the same gesture with our hands and we laughed, it took some of the tension out of the situation.
The fourth time, Leah won and dived to the left towards the line, I was faster and managed to catch her just before the line, wrapping my arms around her.

"Ha!" I cheered

"Fair play rookie" she said, stepping out of my embrace, it was quite a cold, awkward response.

I tried not to dwell on it as we lined up to play dodgeball. This wasn't a cute, funny version of dodgeball that we were playing.. it was competitive and aggressive. As soon as the game began there were shouts of "YOU'RE OUT YOU'RE OUT.. REFF!" and I realised quickly that you do not want to be on the end of one of Lucy's balls.

Leah lobbed a ball at me and just missed my calf so I teased her "you'll have to do better than that" and winked at her which did make her crack a smile. I felt like I'd already won the game just from that.

Whilst I was still looking at her.. SMACK a ball hit right into my side and I looked around shocked..

"Ooh distracted Oakes?" taunted Rachel who had just hit me with the ball

I faked dying onto the floor earning a laugh from the girls. The red team won overall, much to the protest of some of the girls but we all head to the ice baths to cool down feeling good.

Tooney was feeling mischievous as always and started splashing people with the ice cold water in the pools. It became a bit of a water fight between teams, I joined in and splashed Alessia.

Georgia joked "Who's team are you on Alexa?!"

I laughed but turned and caught eyes with Leah "yours" I mouthed at her. I think she understood that I was trying to get across it was her I was into as she couldn't look away and I could see her face relax into a slight smile. We're still not back to normal but I'm getting there.

Authors note

Heyy sorry for the infrequent updates - I've got plans for the upcoming chapters so should hopefully be more regular 🫡