Faulty Trust || Katie McCabe

18

"So I'll meet you at yours, and then you said Lia will drive us to the airport?" Elaina's voice rang out in my ear as I sat in the passenger seat of Leah's car. Her head whipped in my direction for a moment as she couldn't entirely hear Elaina but obviously heard Wally's name. I muffled a laugh at the way merely saying Wally's name caught her attention.

"Yes, that's the plan." Before I could say any more, she interrupted me for the fifth time this call. I closed my eyes, pressing my lips into a thin line; Elaina was a dear friend of mine, but sometimes she doesn't know when to shut up.

"Are you using Nora's skis again? Or are you going to snowboard with Seb's old board? I thought about her words for a moment because I actually didn't know. I'd learnt to ski in Switzerland, but I'd grown a liking to snowboarding when Sebastian, Elaina's cousin, tagged along on our trip one year. He taught me how to snowboard all weekend and even showed me how to board slide one of the boxes in the park.

My Liverpool manager wasn't too pleased to find out I was hitting park features, let alone snowboarding in the first place. He said, and I quote: "It's the middle of the season; if you get injured, I'm not going to be pleased." From then on I just failed to ever mention my Norway trips around him.

For the last couple of years, Elaina and I had made a yearly weekend trip to her grandparent's family cabin in Olderdalen, Norway, where they all took part in backcountry skiing and snowboarding. It acted as a nice getaway from everything football-related in my life, and it was a time I knew I'd get to spend with Elaina to make up for all the time I couldn't. "I'm actually not sure," I finally answered her after zoning back in.

"That's fine; I was just wondering. Nora might be tagging along, so I just wanted to know in case she didn't plan on bringing any skis with her."

Elaina's and I's conversation continued up until Leah pulled into the car park at the golf course and shut off the engine. I ended my call with Elaina and turned to see Leah already staring at me with her eyebrow raised. "What?" I questioned with a slight grin.

"What's Lia doing for you guys?" She asked, getting straight to the point.

"Wouldn't you like to know," I teased. Leah didn't have a response, and I cocked my head at the way something seemed to be bugging her quite a bit. "What's up?"

"Nothing," she mumbled before getting out of the car and heading to the back to collect our clubs. I followed without a word, wondering to myself what that was all about. I didn't push her, though, and simply walked alongside her in silence as we made our way to the driving range.

We weren't playing any holes today, simply just hitting a few balls for fun at the range. It honestly reminded me of when Finnigan and I would do the same thing on my off days. Both Leah and I had taken our off day after the Man City game over the weekend, which we won 3-0, to hang out at the range.

A few minutes had passed, and I went to switch clubs. I paused watching Leah for a moment; if you didn't know her, you'd think nothing was wrong, that she just had a RBF. Yet if you looked deeper and you truly knew her, you'd see that her frown was deeper than usual and her brows were furrowed just a little bit more. Something was up, and I decided my mission was to figure out what it was.

Grabbing my 7 iron I used it to pick up another ball and took a practice swing before finally hitting the ball. I crossed my legs and leaned slightly on my club as I watched the ball sail down the range and bounce a few times before getting lost in the many other white golf balls.

"Hey, Le," I began without looking at her. "You reckon I could make a hole in one over on the left side from here?" When I hear her scoff, I finally look over with a lazy grin.