Playing Pretend

Can I borrow your tights?

"Hey baby."

The voice creeps up behind me as I'm slumped the fence lining St Leo's. Waiting, a little impatiently,  for August so I can get the hell out of here and pretend like today didn't happen. Josh wraps two strong arms around my waist and pulls me against his chest with a small thump. Sighing I'm quick to pry myself out his grasp. I wasn't particularly in a loving mood.

His eyebrow disappears underneath his blonde curls, "What, you're not happy to see me?"

A pang of guilt pulls in my chest as I watch his face flash with hurt. Josh had one of those faces that looked charming 24/7, with big chocolate eyes and a sculpted nose littered with freckles. And I had grown to realise that whenever he frowned I seemed to always frown, too.

My conversation with August in the kitchen this morning rings in my ears, I don't have a boyfriend.

And I didn't, as much as Josh tried to change that. It wasn't that I wasn't attracted to him, because let me tell you, I most definitely was. Beautiful golden ringlets that hung around his face like a halo while he towered over one with his impressive height.

There wasn't anything wrong with him, but the little niggling feeling that whispered at the back of my mind every time he kissed me or wrapped his arms around me.

 It was probably nothing. In fact I was sure it was nothing, but I couldn't tell Josh that I couldn't officially be his girlfriend because of a bad feeling - so somehow I had sort of ended up with a boyfriend without the title but everything that came along with it.

The whole thing made my head hurt, really.

"No, no. It's not that." I try and smile, pushing him playfully in the arm. "I've just had a long day."

"Ugh, tell me about it. Kane didn't show up for training today, so coach made us do about fifty laps of the oval as punishment." He snorts, rising his fingers in an air quote. "He calls it the buddy system. How bullshit is that, right?"

I'm nodding but don't really know why. "Yeah, that sounds pretty unfair."

Josh was the captain of St Leo's soccer team and as a result lived on planet soccer about 22 hours of the day, leaving me on planet bored-out-of-my-brains most of the time. I went to his games and cheered along on the sidelines, but if someone asked what a red card was I couldn't tell them.

Santa's credit card, maybe?

He keeps going, on a testosterone fuelled role, "And like, I just don't see why I have to go to normal classes. If they want me to bring home the gold this year at nationals I don't have time for trigonematry."

"Trigonometry."  I correct him without meaning to.

He shrugs and takes my chin between his fingers with a smile. "I always forget how clever you are."

I go to respond that it didn't exactly take a genius to know how to pronounce trigonometry right when I finally spot August in the crowd, walking down the stairs towards Josh and I. Forgetting my protests and oblivious to August's existence (because I, err, hadn't exactly mentioned it) Josh wraps an arm around me and squishes my small body by his side, causing August's eyes to widen with interest.

My eyes squeeze shut. Oh, here we go.

"Hey Josh?"

He blinks down at me, "Yeah babe?"

"Yeah, whatever." I'd told him not to call me babe a thousand times but I was running out of time. "Something really weird happened to me this weekend."