Roll the Dice

seventeen. i've never been in love before

[Dedicated to Em--I swear this is all due to strange timing because I have a card of dedications and your name is next on the list--who is a Wattpad writing queen and so amazing. Em, your answers on ask are absolutely hilarious (and your spoilers are fantastic), and you never fail to brighten my day either with a new update or a witty response on ask. Rock on. (Why is this message so long?)]

I'd never before felt so dramatically displaced as I did now—but life was all about new experiences, and here I was. And there Dom was, somewhere in that huddle of sweaty (and very hot) teenage boys. As I crossed my arms over my chest, awkwardly swiveling around on the sidelines, I had a sudden urge to wipe a bead of sweat off my face and to get the fuck out.

Why was I basically the only teenage female here?

Sometime during my survey of the benches on which I was supposed to sit, I accidentally made eye contact with a kid, who tilted his head and rolled his eyes at me. Huh—I pursed my lips as my eyes passed over the spot on the bench where he was sitting. Oh no, he was definitely my last resort when it came to seating during this confusion of a soccer match.

Actually, if I remembered correctly, Dom had informed me sometime over text that this was, in fact, not an official soccer match, but something more along the lines of a scrimmage.

And of course, because I couldn't look him in the eye straight after our almost-awkwardly-intense-yet-romantic-encounter from our run days ago, I couldn't gather the nerve I needed to tell him that it was all just semantics.

Well, semantics about soccer that now confused the hell out of me.

Huffing a little, I clenched my arms around my chest a little more and looked to more of the benches. Apparently, my luck was completely out because the benches were either completely occupied by overly enthusiastic subs or by a couple of gaming enthusiasts (with their eyes and hands rooted on their phones) who looked like they would much rather be inside with air conditioning than watch such a mundane thing such as soccer.

So I was stuck with an immature little twit until the end of the game.

I let out the longest sigh I could conjure and reluctantly marched over to the kid, plopping my sorry ass down. And as I sat there, trying my best not to make any physical contact with the little dude, I wondered once again why in the world I was here.

It wasn't like Dom and I were anything more than friends, right? Granted, throughout the three years that I had (vaguely) known him, he'd never really bothered with girls. (At least he didn't have to do much of the pursuing in a relationship because we girls all went after the boys' soccer team—they were hot.) However, with this soccer whatever, he'd bothered to take time (in actuality, about five seconds) to ask me to watch him play (like I didn't already know he was more than good). What was I supposed to gleam from that?

Finally, the huddle of boys broke apart, and each one took their positions on the field. Admittedly, it was rather difficult to figure out which one was Dom since everyone had glorious bodies, but soon enough, I picked out Dom's dark head somewhere toward the middle of the field.

He was a forward—if I was correct.

Every time, I always surprised myself with exactly how little I knew about Dom. What sort of a person was I? Was everything that I felt for him all these years from nothing more than a shallow infatuation? God, was I too consumed with his pretty face to even bother to know the real him under everything else?

I rubbed my forehead with a knuckle, closing my eyes as I leaned my elbow on my knee. This so wasn't the right time to have a deep thinking session about feelings. This was exactly the right time for me to surreptitiously perv out and watch the players' bodies a little too closely, and that was exactly what I was going to do.