Call It What You Want To

Chapter 19: Taya

Christmas Vacation zoomed by, and before anyone knew it we were back in school getting our second semester schedules. Not too much changed for me other than the fact that I had AP English right before lunch and Strength and Conditioning was now first thing in the morning. Coach A and Coach Hannah both said it was so that we had a longer cool down time before our after school training sessions, but Sergeant was joking that they just loved to torture us with early morning workouts

In the last two weeks, Kyler and I had been doing our best to come up with a plan to talk to her mom and spent every day that we could together. I was a little upset that I didn't get to see her for a New Year's Eve kiss, but from what I understood Kyler's mom had pulled her into a video that she couldn't get out of because it was a sponsorship deal. I haven't even met Kyler's mom, but I already had a feeling that this conversation was going to be a challenge from the little I knew about her, whenever we finally would decide to tell her.

A part of me just wanted to do it and get it over with so that Kyler and I could really be ourselves no matter where we were, but I knew that it was a lot more complicated than that for her. It just sucked that we were now officially dating and actual girlfriends, but we still had to somewhat remain a secret.

We weren't a secret from Dylynn though. My best friend had come over the day after Christmas, shortly after Kyler went back home, and said that she knew something was gonna happen. "I 100% called it, and now Andre owes me fifteen bucks cause he thought you two wouldn't get together till New Year," she smirked.

"You were placing bets on my relationship?" I laughed.

"Ahh! It's so cute that you're finally calling it a relationship!"

Other than Dylynn being super excited about Kyler and I dating, she was also doing the best she could to help us come up with a plan to talk to Ky's mom. Ky and I knew what we wanted to say for the most part, the biggest issue was timing and figuring out when to say it. "What about after the meet or something?" I suggested at lunch before Kyler promised that we'd figure it out soon. Kyler had made the move from eating in her car to eating with me and a few of the powerlifting people at lunch when we had the same lunch period for our last semester.

Last semester.

Holy shit.

I was only about sixteen weeks away from graduating.

Sixteen weeks away from having to actually know what I was gonna do after high school. Well, I know what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go, but was I actually gonna do it? New York City had been calling my name since I learned about John Jay College of Criminal Justice since I was thirteen and first got obsessed with crime shows. Thirteen was before Mila though, and it was before powerlifting, Dylynn, Kyler, and everything else that I had come to love about middle of nowhere Greyhaven. If I left now, I'd be gone before Mila was a year and a half old.

Would she remember me?

Would she get mad at me as she got older that I wasn't there?

Would my parents get mad at me because I wasn't there to help?

Was it selfish to leave?

As much as there was to love, there was a lot to hate about Greyhaven. The painful memories of freshman year were a majority of the reason, but living in a small town my whole life made me always dream of the big city.

Living out my Law & Order dreams in a big city like New York seemed way more appealing than dinking around in Greyhaven for the rest of my life, making the occasional DUI arrest with the same old dude cops that had been there since I was a baby.