All The Good Things

Chapter 15 - "You've experienced a good amount of betrayal?"

Ash was wiping down tables at the Busy Bean when she heard someone call her name. She turned around and found Zach. It had been a few days since they had played darts and she hadn't seen him since. She walked over to his table and saw his coffee cup was empty.

"You want another latte? I've been working on my 3D foam cat," she said.

"Is that what you call the blob I saw you making earlier?" he asked.

"Well, I guess you'll never know cause I'm definitely not making one for you after you insulted it," she responded indignantly.

"I was walking through the quad..." he started

"Good for you," she interrupted him.

"...and I saw students..." He kept talking like he hadn't heard her.

"I've seen those before too."

"And they were handing out flyers..."

"That's well within the campus rules."

He stopped and looked at her. "Are you going to let me finish?"

"Are you going to apologize for making fun of my foam art?" she countered.

He sat back in his chair and scowled at her. She crossed her arms as well and stared him down. She refused to give in. After a minute, Zach placed a flyer on the edge of his table in front of her, then picked up his book and disappeared behind it.

She looked at the flyer. It was for a friendly game of Frisbee Football that was happening that afternoon on the school's soccer field. She looked back at Zach but he was hiding behind his book. Was he suggesting this as their next attempt at discovering what fun was?

She could ask him, but he hadn't apologized for insulting her foam art. She could admit to herself that her cat did indeed look more like a blob than a cat, but admitting that to Zach felt like some form of loss, even though she wasn't sure what she was technically losing.

Her pride kept her from finding out more of what Zach was thinking, but it didn't keep her from showing up to the soccer field that afternoon. She hadn't been good at Darts, and trying to learn from Zach had been too frustrating to be considered fun, but it had been different, and different was at least interesting.

The Frisbee Football group was easy to spot once she arrived at the soccer field and as she walked across the green, she indexed the people who had showed up for the game. She quickly picked out the people she thought would most likely be the best players. She might be awful at Frisbee Football, but she had the skills to make sure she ended up on the winning team.

She came to a stop at the back of the group. She picked a spot in the middle, unsure how they would be dividing the group into teams, and continued to study the students around her, curious why they had decided to come play Frisbee.

She wasn't surprised when a few minutes later, Zach appeared by her side.

"Hey," he greeted her.

"Hey," she returned.

But they didn't have time to say more when the leader of the game called for everyone's attention.

"Alright, we are going to split up into two teams," the leader said, speaking loudly for his voice to be carried over the large group. "Let's split a line down the middle. The left is Team A, the right is Team B."

Without thinking, Ash stepped right to join Team B and Zach moved perfectly in sync with her.

"Why Team B?" he asked.

"The guy in the green sweatshirt, the guy in the backward gray baseball hat, and the girl in the purple shirt," she said, listing the three students she had pegged as the best players.