in which she swims to forget all the pain, but he sees it all because dallas edlen is not ok and, having loved her for years, seeing that was no task.
ONE BREATH
MINIMINTER
SIDEMEN
DEATHLIES 2016
[COMPLETED]
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TWELVE d a l l a s
The feeling of the water rushing over her as she pulled herself out of the water was not so tender today. As she walks along the poolside, goggles in hand, Coach strides over to her and walks with her.
"You're not having a great session today, are you?" She asks, clutching the whistle around her neck.
"No," Dallas replies, looking away. "I'm not."
"Try one more dive and then you can get out, alright? I don't want you to over do it in training when we have a competition this weekend."
She steps up onto the block, pulling her goggles onto her eyes and taking in a deep breath. Drawing it into her lungs, displacing the toxins and allowing herself to become driven by muscle memory.
With a glance beside her, she sees Allison in her pretty pink swimming costume ready to go. Dallas licks her lips, breathing out again and focuses on the sounds around her.
The whistle goes and she's off the blocks before anyone else. In the water, powering down the pool with more energy than someone running off four hours sleep should have. The water rushes over her as she goes. Her muscles do not burn like they usually do. The pain is blocked out by the drive to beat Allison at something, anything, even just one thing.
Her hand smacks against the wall and she is done. Looking to her side, Allison is two strokes behind her and Dallas breaks out into a smile. Allison comes to a stop, pulling her goggles off her head and pulling herself out of the pool.
"It was nice seeing you, Allison," Dallas calls after her, laughing to herself as the sarcasm laced her words like venom.
And perhaps she got more pleasure out of it than she should have, but she couldn't have cared less if she'd tried. The smile on her chlorine soaked lips was more than enough of an indication into the hostility between them now.
There was something about seeing Allison's face now that made her blood boil. Knowing where those lips had polluted. Her James. How simple Allison had made it look: to steal away a boy was a piece of cake.
Yes, Dallas had broken up with him, but she'd had a smudge of trust left for Allison and the party shattered it. In truth, she had been spending time with Simon because he was interesting. The way he looked at her was something else.
It was nothing like James used to look at her. It was something utterly special. Something alien about it. A part of her wanted to run into his arms and hold him as the sun went down, but that would be giving up on herself and she wasn't about to do that.
Dallas wanted to be independent. Relying on people only led to heartbreak and heartbreak to unfixable circumstances. If she could have a heart of stone, she would in the blink of an eye. Alas, she is cursed with a human heart. One which sways far too easily and, right now, it was swaying away from James into Simon's hands and the thought of that terrified her, so she pushed it deep and let it suffocate in her fingers.
But seeing him as she walked into the canteen later that day, she couldn't keep her eyes off the boy with the sky blue eyes that looked at her like she deserved to be adored.
Glancing over to where her friends sat, her eyes met James' as Allison whispers in his ear with the sweet enchantments of deceit. Dallas's lip twitches, not into a smile but in acknowledgement of him.
Then she pulls her bag higher onto her shoulder, holds her chin up and walks over to Simon's table with a somewhat infamous smirk on her face.
As she slips into the seat beside him, he looks shocked to see her.
"Hey," She says, dropping her bag down onto the floor.
"Hi," He replies, frowning at her in confusion.
"I'm sorry," She tells him, looking past him to his gawking friends. Then she looks back to him and twists one of her hands through his beneath the table. A secret of their own. Small, but mighty to them both because neither let go. "I mean, about last night." She swallows her pride.
"It's ok. You were upset and emotional; I said something I shouldn't have said and it turned out bad." He squeezes her hand beneath the table and her chest swells in warning of attachments. Simon turns in his seat as much as he could and looks her dead in the eye as he says, "Promise me you're not doing all this because of James."
"Simon," She whispers. "At first, yes, but now, no." Now she squeezes his hand, smiling genuinely as she does so. "You're something else. Why did we ever drift apart?"
"Everything happens for a reason, right?"
Her eyes flicker past him to Allison. "Right." Looking back to him she says, "Just don't let me do something I'll regret. No, promise me you won't let me do something I'll regret."
"I promise."
With those two words, she lets go of his hand and stands up, pulling her bag onto her shoulder.
"Where are you going?"
"I have to go home," She tells him, her voice cracking slightly. "But I'll see you tomorrow, ok?"
"Alright, I'll see you tomorrow."
-
they're making the movements
but also this chapter was a little insight into what dallas is really thinking.
