Enhance

Chapter 18 - Tomlinson

Chapter 18 - Tomlinson

It is great to have Robin there with me as I stay in my extra practice. It makes me a bit nervous but at the same time it gives me more determination to do my absolute best, to show her how much I’ve improved. As I dribble she says from time to time some encouraging comments and even claps when I score. It really makes me happy that she’s here with me, smiling and paying full attention to me.

After the last game when that sparkle of hope lit up in me, I’ve thought of her a lot. I’ve thought of how to ask her out, how to tell her how I feel, when it would be the best time. I also panic sometimes, actually believing I can’t do it and I better give up before I make a fool of myself. When that happens, I focus even more on football and my studies. Just to keep my mind on other important things.

Football and Robin are not the only things in my mind, okay? I’m not that basic. It’s just that… football is my biggest passion and it’s what I’m working the hardest right now, because I have an important goal ahead. Robin… Robin is what I don’t have, that problem I can’t solve and of course it consumes a lot of my time. But I also worry about my studies, about my family and how my sisters are doing back in Doncaster. I also think about what I want to eat next. About where we’ll go with Harry this weekend, and other normal things. It’s just that those things don’t seem to bring any kind of trouble so they don’t use that much space in my mind.

Once I’ve been practicing for another hour I call it a day.

“I’ll go shower, okay?” I tell her grabbing all the implements I used and putting them in their bags.

“Sure, I’ll wait for you outside,” replies Robin with her lovely smile.

Since the last game I haven’t seen her, just sometimes in practice, but we haven’t talked since then. That’s why it’s so great to have her here. A lovely surprise. I’ve missed her and as I stare at her, incapable of tear my gaze away, I wonder if she missed me, too. I hope she did.

I finally break the eye contact and we head together inside the buildings where the showers and other rooms are, like the coach office and the equipment room. I go to the lockers as fast as I can and I also shower really fast. I don’t like making Robin wait. A girl should never wait for a boy.

Once I’m finally done, I meet with Robin and we go to a near café outside campus. It’s a lovely afternoon and we speak about different things and enjoy some good tea and biscuits. That’s a thing I’ve realised that happens with Robin. It’s just so easy. Yes, we have our awkward moments sometimes when I actually don’t know what to do with my hands or what to say next, but when it’s not like that it’s just so easy to talk to her, to spend time with her. Her biggest passion is my biggest passion, but we live it from different perspectives and it’s so great we can compare and contrast. Can you understand how amazing is to find a girl to whom you can talk about football and who loves it, too? It’s like too perfect to be real.

It’d be so easy to be with her.

Maybe I should ask her out right now, maybe I should tell her how I feel but I’m reluctant to make this moment awkward with a confession. I just… I just don’t think this is the right moment or the perfect place to tell her how I feel. I want it to be more… well, special. I know it’s silly of me but I think Robin deserves better. I don’t know how it’s been before with the other guys she’s been with, but I want her to remember me differently. I want to make a real impression in her. Even if it doesn’t work out, even if she rejects me, I want her to remember my confession as something different, you know? At least I can have that.

So I don’t tell her anything about feelings or wanting her to be my girlfriend, not even when I walk her to her room and we say goodbye. Not even when she kisses my cheek and I feel my heart stopping for half a second.