Playing for Keeps

Alone With My Thoughts

It was midnight. My mom was asleep. Brit was asleep in my bed. Everyone I knew was probably fast asleep. But me? I was wide awake, and alone with my thoughts… Which was never a good thing. My brain was running a mile a minute, and focusing on all the crap that worries me. First to bother me tonight, was the most recent troubling news. Brit was pregnant. She won’t be able to play her senior year of high school. That scholarship she worked for? It was as good as gone. Meaning she won’t go to college. Her parents can’t afford it. So she’s most likely gonna turn out a single mother who works at McDonalds.

Brit always said how she was going to change the world. If she didn’t join the US Women’s Soccer team, she was going to become a doctor. Now her chance of getting noticed to play on the Us Women’s Soccer team was slim to none. Her once bright future was now dimmed. I have no doubt that she’ll be a great mother. Brit would be everything her mother wasn’t. She would be there for her child. She wouldn’t blame everything wrong in her life on “their sinful ways”.  She would be the perfect soccer mom.

But Brits mistake leads me to a new train of thought, and to a question that has been eating away at me since Brit asked it. Would I do the same? If it was Bryce’s last night, and he was going to college hundreds of miles away, would I be so despite to give myself to I’m fully and completely? I know the answer. Yes. I would. I would do absolutely everything in my power to keep Bryce here with me. He was a lot of my firsts. He was my first boyfriend. My first kiss. The first person I cried in front of after my dad’s death. The first guy to say he loved me. The first guy I ever loved.

Bryce and I were perfect together. He’s my support, and I am his. And the thought of him leaving just absolutely kills me. But if I did give myself to Bryce… would we end up like Britney and Gus? I would I be in Britney’s situation a year from now? Pregnant and alone?
No. Bryce and I are different. Anyone could see that. If I ever ended up in that predicament with him, he wouldn’t leave me. He would be with me every step of the way. Even if that didn’t happened, and he left to go to college, I believe that he would keep in touch with me. We would still be Bryce AND Summer. Nothing would change. Right?

I rolled over on to my side facing the coffee table. My eyes fell on a picture frame. In that picture frame was my dad. It was the last picture he’d sent us before-… I sucked in a hard breath.  He sent this before he died. It was a picture of him wearing his tan colored camo, and the desert was all around him. You could see the base set up to the left of him. He was tan from constant sun exposure. His smile was wide as he held up a white piece of posted board with the words, “I’m coming home! Can’t wait to see my girls again! Love and Miss you both!” written on it with a sharpie.  
A single tear rolled down my cheek. I missed my dad. Each time I thought about him, the emotions hit me like a train. Each time I tried to remember him; the memories seem to become more and more foggy. Which scares me. I don’t want to forget my dad. How can you forget someone you love so much? Maybe if I did forget him the pain would stop. Or is that just a lie that I tell myself?

God, I feel like an emotional wreck! Silent sobs shake my body. And my stomach twists into tight knots making me want to throw up. I just want to be normal. I want to have normal teenage problems. Like, I don’t know… Worry about my grades, or whether I have the latest clothes, or know the latest gossip. I don’t want to have to worry about missing my dead dad, or losing the boy I love that understands me, or having to deal with my pregnant best friend.

I want to be normal. But I know in my heart that that’s not possible.

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