you're on your own, kid

Chapter 12 - Guts to Spill

We were now in the group stages of the Champions League, and we were drawn to come up against Lyon, Juventus, and Servette. It would be difficult; we knew that. Everyone was calling it the group of death, and it was. It really, truly was.

After a quick international break with the Dutch team, and continuing qualification for the Euros the following July, we were back in Wolfsburg. I always missed my team while we were gone. It meant more than I ever realized, being with these girls and being with my team.

"I'm back!" I exclaimed as I walked through my front door, my suitcase lugging behind me.

"Hey!" Lena called back, from the other room. It was unusual for her not to come out, so once I put my bag in my room, I walked into hers, to see her sitting in front of her computer, with her headphones locked to her head.

"What are you doing?"

"I found a new game." She didn't look as she spoke, her eyes focused on the screen in front of her.

"Of course you did."

"Shh, let me play." Her eyes were fixated on the moving screen, its characters moving as her fingers tapped away.

"'How was camp, Mila?' 'Oh my god, thanks Lena for asking! Camp was great!' 'How-" I started to say, mocking a conversation.

"I will die soon!" she interrupted. I took one look at her before clicking the computer off. The screen went black, and her eyes soon caught up to mine, with a sarcastic rage burning inside her. "Oh, you're going to regret that," she said, standing up and starting to move off her seat. I backed out of the room, before running behind our couch.

She came out, looking at me with a smirk on her face.

"It was a joke," I said to her, matching her speed as she slowly walked towards me, and I slowly moved back.

"But, I nearly won."

"Didn't you just say you were about to die?" I laughed back. She ran at me, and I dodged around the edge of the couch. I stood on one side of our kitchen island, and she stood on the other.

"Bakker, you're going to wish you hadn't run!" She came at me, and even though I was fast, there was nowhere to go. I crashed onto her bed, and she pinned my arms down, beside my head. I closed my eyes, squishing my face together. "You're cute when you're scared." She quickly tickled my sides, and after a few moments of squirming, she let go, soon lying beside me.

"You know I am ticklish!" I exclaimed, throwing a pillow from behind me onto her face.

"And you know that I like my video games!" she replied. I laughed softly, before pushing her off the bed.

"Now, we are even." She looked at me from the ground, before moving her head onto the ground. I was about to walk out of the room when Lena soon spoke.

"I've never noticed that," she said, sitting up.

"Noticed what?" I asked.

"When you smile, you have dimples." She looked at me, and I was trying so desperately hard not to smile once more.

"You know what they say about dimples? They come with the angels. So, Lena Oberdorf, you're in a room with an angel." She cringed, and so too did I.

"You're the angel?" Lena questioned. "What does that make me? The devil?"

"No. Not the devil." There was more I wanted to say. There were so many words coming right to my mouth but with no guts to spill them out. She wasn't the devil. She was the tempter of the angel.

"You're so weird."

"Takes one to know one." I walked out of the room, closing the door behind me, only to lean against it and take a few deep breaths. The energy was something so different. It was getting harder and harder to control my thoughts and emotions.