The Boy And The Ball

2. Instinct

Marrisa knew that she was making a terrible mistake by letting her heart's instincts go before her brain's. However it was so hard to get Seb off her mind, she just simply couldn't get his face out of her head. Every time she thought about football, an image of Seb popped up in her mind that she would fail to push away.
This was becoming a continuous problem and she urgently needed a distraction.

23, 24, 25, 26... Keepy-uppies. How many would she need to do to stop thinking about him? She needed to talk to someone who would listen:
She found Nadine behind the girl's gym, alone. This was unusual, Marrisa knew, since year 7 that Nadine was a popular girl and not normally the one to be sitting by herself.

Marrisa sat next to her on the cold stone steps. She could see that Nadine was not ok, there were ugly snail trails left from solemn tears that Marrisa had missed. The last thing Nadine needed now was hearing about Marrisa's issues when Nadine clearly had some of her own.
"What's up?" Marrisa asked, her eyebrows knitting into a tight frown. She hated seeing her friend sad because she immediately let her empathy take hold of her and Nadine's emotions reflect onto her. Nonetheless, Marrisa's instincts were shouting at her that this must be something to do with a boy.
"Callum dumped me and I don't even know why!" And another sob came from Nadine. Marrisa didn't know what to say because she wasn't very good at reacting correctly when it came to her best friend having her heart broken. But she knew one thing that would definitely help, she gave Nadine one of her most lovable bear hugs (giving the situation).
"Agh! Gerrof me!" Was all Nadine managed to say through the muffling of Marrisa's sweatshirt.
"Oh, sorry" but Marrisa could see a tiny smile forming on her bestie's face as she pulled away. Marrisa wasn't going to mention her issues now, for the sake of her friend, she didn't want to seem shallow and she needed to be there for Nadine and give her full attention even though she was starting to regret it.
"Tell me everything!" Marrisa said trying as hard as she could to not sound sarcastic or roll her eyes.