The Heartbreaker's Home

Chapter 5

The First Game

Being the girlfriend of the star quarterback of the school was no easy feat, that Kelsey Harrington can easily tell you. She didn't like football. No, scratch that, she didn't understand football. But after your boyfriend has pleaded with you to attend the very first game he'll be playing at since you had gotten together, especially with those broody puppy eyes and brunette locks framing his face... well, it was hard to say no.

Yet now, Kelsey was inclined to change her mind. Especially considering the fact that as she sat in the bleachers of his first game of the season, and it  felt like a thousand daggers staring at the back of her neck.

"What was that again?" next to her, Megan whispered furiously. They had always spent school game nights tucked at home, either fiddling with Seeley's XBox 360, or on her computer on some new game she had bought off Steam. Megan had had to be bribed with copious amounts of chocolate milkshakes to agree to accompany Kelsey, and the blonde was now seated with a thoroughly confused expression, staring at the field of high school boys running around with gear so thick, Kelsey wouldn't have recognized which one was Declan had he not reminded her multiple times, what his uniform number was.

Then again, maybe it wasn't a good thing, because she had completely missed what Megan was asking her about, her eyes busy following the number '9' uniform. Megan rolled her eyes when Kelsey gave a sheepish look. "You've got it bad, Harrington. Are you sure he's worth it?"

Kelsey pursed her lips, and then felt herself flush when she saw Declan on the field, his eyes zooming directly on her figure. Before she knew it, he had fisted his hands, placed them on his chest, and then used the same hand to point his index finger at her. The glares at the back of her neck intensified, and even the cheerleaders turned to stare, but Kelsey shrugged, and gave her best friend an amused look. "I think he is, Meg, I think he is."

---

During the time when I had been going through the break up, Seeley liked to tell me that everything happens for a reason. It had sounded cliche then, so cheesy that I barely heard him, but after a year, I see why he said it. People often change, so we learn how to let go. Things go wrong so we can appreciate it when the world is right, and we get caught in lies so we eventually learn to know who we can trust. And sometimes, the best things fall apart so better things can fall together.

Often, that was the phrase I used to comfort myself, that things had fallen apart between us so something better could come along. Yet with circumstances the way they were, I couldn't help but wonder now, if everything happened for a reason, then why was he back?

Watching as he whirled around to face me with a victorious smile on his face, neither of us realized just how close we were until he turned, and suddenly he was right in front of me, so close I could see the bronze flakes in his eyes, a sight so familiar to me every time before we kissed. With my arms still around his waist, only the thinnest slice of paper could've fit through us, it suddenly felt like that moment. You know the moment in movies when time froze, the camera zoomed in on the hero and the heroine, lights seem to intensify and the romantic  background music comes on? Yeah, that moment. 

So if everything happened for a reason, what then, was the reason for this?

The moment was broken, when the guy manning the store cleared his throat, and when I looked over Declan's shoulder, snorted a laugh at the funny looking llama plushie he was waving around. "Your prize, manly duck-fisher." I motioned to his back, and the laughter escaped when I saw Declan's face as he set eyes on the glaringly purple, oddly misshapened llama plushie.

He groaned as it was shoved in his hands. "For Christ sake, you would think they give nicer prizes." he muttered, flipping it over in his hands in distaste. I pushed his crutches back at him, and took the plushie away.