Another book of Basketball Imagines

Ben Simmons 2

January 5, 2016

I got off the plane and go outside to try and find a cab or shuttle to take me to the LSU campus. I was only staying to visit Lorraine for about 4 days so I did not feel the need to stay in a hotel when I could just stay with my best friend in her dorm room while her roommate is out for the holidays.

I was okay with this arrangement, as long as I didn't run into Ben. After he and I got into that fight, then he got me confused at the airport by kissing me, I just didn't know anymore. Yes I still love him, but I wasn't ready to handle rejection. He may have said he loved me too, but I was still afraid that he would change his mind. After the necklace he sent me for Christmas, I wanted to believe that he meant what he said, but with the way things usually went for me, I lost the hope that anything would ever happen between he and I.

I was finally able to call a cab after standing outside for about 3 minutes. My driver was a woman in her mid-thirties with blue eyes in desperate need of doing her eyebrows. "Where to sweetie?" She asks as I get inside with my gym and book bag.

"The LSU Campus please?" I say as I close the door behind me.

"A little early for you to come back no?" She asks as she pulls away from the airport and starts driving.

"Oh I'm just visiting." I say as I take my phone out and plug in my ear buds.

"Visiting a friend?"

"Uh, yeah, my best friend." I unlock my phone and start looking for a song I was in the mood for.

"A little late for that too, no?"

"Well, I'll get what I can." I decide to put on Stressed Out by Twenty-One Pilots.

"Are you sure it's not for a boy?" she asks.

I nearly choke on the air. "What?"

"Well, I don't mean to pry, but you look very nervous, almost like you're hiding from someone." She says, looking at me through the rearview mirror.

I chuckle, "Well, no. I'm not coming here to visit a boy. I'm here to visit my best girlfriend before I go to college."

"It still seems like you're hiding and afraid. I know it's none of my business, but talking about it seems like the best thing to do, well if I was in your shoes, I would do it."

I chew the inside of my cheek. This lady was right. I was going to try and hide from Ben, and I did want to talk to someone about this, should I trust this lady? She seemed to know what she was talking about, and something was telling me that I should talk to her about this.

"Well, yes I am. The boy is actually my best friend too, but I don't want to see him on this trip." I say, pausing the song.

"Why is that?"

"Well, I think I messed up. See, when I left LSU to transfer, he and I got in an argument. We argued about how I was keeping something from him, and really it was my crush on him. He got so mad about it, saying that I wasn't being his friend because I promised I'd tell him when I graduated with my bachelor's on the 18th of December, and I went back on my word. I started telling him the same thing, how he promised to tell me who he liked too. Looking back at it, it was really silly, but it was just something that I just wasn't ready to admit to him." I took a deep breath before continuing.

"The argument got so heated that I got so mad I told him to shut up and just listen to me. I told him that if he spoke one word or interrupted me before I finished, I would get out of his life for good. After that, I told him everything. I told him every single feeling I had towards him. I told him how he was my best friend and how, well, how I felt about him. I told him I was in love with him and that he meant so much to me because he was one of the only people to not shut me out after I transferred from a school. I also told him that if he were my real friend he would not have made me tell him this. So I left, I ran out of the dorm and away from the campus, I just ran out of there and to the apartment I was staying in. I grabbed my stuff and booked the first flight to my home town." I wanted to stop talking here, but I couldn't. I just really needed to let this all out.