Invisible String [T.S-E.S BOOK ONE]

29

October 29th, 2013

"Should we have waited this long?" Eleanor asked as she trailed behind her girlfriend at the mall, keeping a respectable distance between them so they wouldn't be found out.

Taylor shot a glare at her girlfriend. They were on a mission and the athlete was being no help.

"I will kill you." She pointed at her girlfriend, not taking the sarcastic tone.

Eleanor chuckled, but didn't let up. "I'm just saying, three days before Halloween is cutting it a bit close."

There were many reasons why they waited that long to get their Halloween costumes and all of those reasons happened to be because of Eleanor. She was in and out of friendlies all month and they weren't even sure about their plans for the night in question until a few days earlier...while she was in Connecticut.

Taylor had to restrain herself. While it was nice to see El coming back to her old self, she forgot how much she could be. Before Eleanor, Taylor was a self proclaimed dog hater, but now she had the most golden retriever girlfriend possible who brought along her own goofy dog. Not that she didn't like it, Eleanor was her mess. But damn did she piss her off sometimes.

"You just got back from Texas and you're going to be in San Francisco and Ohio until we meet in DC for Halloween, when were we supposed to go shopping?" Taylor rolled her eyes. "We're not even going out!"

Eleanor gasped. "Yes we literally are!"

"To meet your teammates." Taylor sighed, but she wasn't really all that annoyed, they just enjoyed ribbing each other.

The National Team was meeting up in DC for Halloween to give out candy to the kids from the local girls' soccer programs. It was going to be a sweet moment for the team to show their support for their community and Eleanor was beyond excited.

Since becoming sober, it was hard for Eleanor to find a lot of enjoyment out of things. She was fighting a constant battle within herself which drained all of her energy. But today was a good day. She was determined to make it a good week.

Taylor reached back, playfully pushing Eleanor's shoulder and bringing her back to reality.

"You're a buzzkill." Eleanor grinned down at her girlfriend. There was a half an inch difference between them, but Eleanor liked acting as tall as possible when Taylor wasn't wearing heels.

"You're annoying." Taylor challenged.

Overcome by her first happy and carefree moment in the past month, Eleanor let her mouth go before her mind. "Careful, don't disrupt my mania."

The mood suddenly turned serious and both stopped walking to stare at each other. Eleanor couldn't make eye contact. Did she seriously have to ruin their moment?

"Nell." Taylor spoke into the silence, trying to get Eleanor to look at her.

Eleanor shook her head. She should've just kept her mouth shut. Taylor didn't need to worry about the intricacies of Eleanor's situation, that wasn't what she signed up for.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that." She tried to brush it off. She just wanted to go back to how it was before she said that.

Taylor was trying her best, but she needed Eleanor to talk to her.

"No, it's fine." Taylor assured her clearly upset girlfriend. "We need to be able to talk about it."

Eleanor subconsciously took a step back, as if she was afraid that Taylor was—or was going to be—upset with her. "I'm not ready."