Falling for the Quarterback

{"one second"}

//Edited//

A week passes and it's finally the day of homecoming. We've been practicing for a few days now and everything is just about perfect. Logan and I made sure to do more work on the tree house last week so that this weekend we could have fun with our friends without having to worry about working on it later.

Currently everyone is in the locker room preparing for the pep rally that's in thirty minutes. We are putting on our uniforms and chatting when our coach comes in to give us a pep talk.

"Alright ladies, our mission for today is to give energy to everyone here so we need to have one hundred percent spirit and one hundred percent smiling"

She says a few more things and by the time she's done, it's time to line up next to the football players. I take my spot in the front next to Logan. He takes his mouth guard out and smiles at me.

"You ready?" he asks through his helmet.

I smile back at him and nod my head. He puts his mouth guard back in and we wait for the speaker to announce our names.

"Let's give it up for our team captains, Logan Foster and Hazel Evans!"

As he says our names, me and Logan run out, but I let Logan break the poster because I know I would just get in the way of that. We run out to the field and I do some flips while shaking my pom-poms to help pump up the crowd. Then we both take our positions and wait for everyone else to follow after us.

Once everyone is in their positions on the floats, the float drivers go around the track. Aside from the cheer and football floats, there is also a float for the homecoming kingsand queen nominees, the band, the dancers, and all the fall sports teams.

 While the floats move around slowly, we do some different and new cheers and the football players toss the ball around and wave at girls as usual.

After doing some small chants we begin to do our biggest cheer. It's the new one I was teaching them the first day Logan and I went to the treehouse. 

I smile moving along to the music as we begin to do our stunt. I step on hands and then I'm thrown up into the air, and although I'm not supposed to, I close my eyes.

I'm only in the air for one second.

But it's the only second of the cheer I look forward too.

For one second I breathe.

For one second I feel free.

For one second I fly.

And as I split in the air my thoughts float to my mom and my dad. But before my thoughts can pull me in any deeper, I'm caught and I have to finish the cheer.

After the cheer I step to the back of the float as the rest of the girls continue to pump up the crowd with flips and small chants. I stand against a post, leaning my head back against it and close my eyes taking a deep breath.

I know it's been seven years but that doesn't make it any less easy. When my parents died I thought about quitting cheer because it was too hard. The only reason I stuck with it was because I realized that I needed to do it for them as much as I needed to do it for myself. Plus Harry wouldn't let me, it was a moment of weakness for me and he knew I loved the sport too much to quit.

But sometimes when I'm in the air, I can't help but to think about them. They always showed up to my cheer competitions, and even if I couldn't see them, I could hear them. Especially my dad, he was always the loudest one.

Suddenly I hear a loud noise right next to me which makes me jump and my eyes fly open from being startled. I'm met with a pair of blue eyes that belong to a certain quarterback.