That Night

0.4

"Kaden," Zacharias looked at me with hooded eyes and through his impossibly long eyelashes, his chocolate eyes flickered onto my lips and bit his bottom lip.

I swallowed hard, he put his hand under my chin and tilted my head up to look at him, "Kade,"

"Kade," I closed my eyes and waited.

"KADE," I woke up with a start. Groggily, I took in my surroundings, I was in an unfamiliar room, not mine nor Zac's. A sharp pain in my head reminded me that I was in Kean's house, after the party.

"Kade," a voice said somewhere under me, with a very familiar accent.

I finally noticed that I was half on top of Zac and Zac laid awkwardly below me. I scrambled off him, he shook his head and smiled ruefully, "you are quite heavy,"

I felt disoriented, the dream still floating around my mind, with difficulty, I answered, "it's all the muscles,"

He laughed softly but then winced, we were both very drunk last night, and very hungover right now. "Let's get some water,"

Knowing this place like the back of our hands, we stumbled to the kitchen, and found a slightly better looking Kean making an omelette. He took one look at us, sighed and got more eggs. We drank water like we had been in a desert for weeks. The wondrous smell of omelettes filled the air and my stomach rumbled. I didn't realise how hungry I was until the heavenly looking omelette was right in front of me. I dug in immediately, scarfing the food down. Kean and Zac were not much better than I. After we finished and helped cleaned up the place a bit, Zac and I left an exhausted Kean and I drove Zac home.

Arriving at my place, I took a shower and dragged myself to my bed, desperate to catch more sleep before dinner. I couldn't fall asleep, the dream kept replaying in my head on loop, like a broken cassette that wouldn't stop no matter what. The way his eyes had looked at me, like.... like what? and the desire I had felt. Desire for what? I forced myself to dismiss the thoughts before I would overthink.

It's just a dream, just a weird dream. I tried to convince myself. Finally, sleep took me but my mom woke me up all too soon. Dinner was normal, except that Emma didn't look much better than me either. It was a quiet dinner, both of us nursing our hungover and our parents slightly disappointed with our excessive drinking.

I went to bed early that night, luckily, it was dreamless. I still felt tired the next day and had to dragged myself to get ready for church. I didn't even bother to style my hair, just brushed through the mess and put on some sweats.

After church and lunch with some of my family's church friends, I slept the afternoon away too, glad that I had completed my homework before the party. However, due to my excessive sleeping, I couldn't sleep that night. My mind then of course decided to bring up that dream, I tried to ignore it, and pretend that it was just the TV playing some background noises. Finally, sleep took me but not without a price, another dream happened and left me more perplexed than ever.

"You look like shit," Zac commented as he got in my car.

"Thanks," I grumbled, I looked straight ahead at the road.

"We have practice today," I could hear the slight concern in his voice, I could almost see his furrowed eyebrows.

"I'll be fine, just tired, didn't sleep well last night." I said dismissively.

"Let me guess, you slept too much after the party and couldn't sleep last night," I could hear the humour in his voice, could just imagine the smile that had graced his lips.

"You know me so well," a smile tugged at the corner of my lips without my permission.

"You always do this," he sighed, I turned off my car and we got out.

"See you in lunch," I said, grabbing my textbooks from my locker. Before he could reply, a girl stopped by his locker and started talking to him animatedly, then they walked off to class together. Zac threw a smirk back at me and I returned it. Then I was snagged by Jeremy who also had AP calculus with me.

The day dragged on and on until it was finally practice. I loved volleyball. I knew people expected me to play football and basketball, two very overrated sports, but I chose volleyball, and then I started to enjoy and now I couldn't imagine not playing it. I knew Zac felt the same way as me. Volleyball was an escape, when you were on the court, nothing mattered except for the ball, and the satisfaction of seeing the ball hitting hard on your opponents' court was worth all the tiresome practices.

"Can you set the ball a bit higher?" Zac asked breathlessly, sweat had soaked through his shirt and stuck to his body, hugging his slender frame and muscles like second skin.

"Yeah of course," I set higher, pushing the ball harder until Zac gave me a nod. We repeated it a few more times until coach announced that practice was over.

"Let me just hit one more time okay?" He passed me the ball, I set it right above his head, the way he wanted it and the ball landed in the back corner on the line perfectly.

"Okay I think that's enough for today," I said to Zac, who was still catching his breath. He frowned at the idea of stopping, so I added, "I'm tired, we can continue tomorrow," it worked and he nodded.

We were one of the last ones to arrive to the locker room, most of our teammates had already showered. Without having to wait, we showered quickly and got out just in time to hear Jeremy's speech of how we could improve this year. We were not bad in our state but we were aiming for top ten this year. Jeremy's cheerful personality and sunshine smile were the reason that he had been captain since sophomore, his second year of volleyball. Even the seniors listened to him without complain because Jeremy just was not someone you could ever dislike. Jeremy stopped talking and let Zacharais took over, Zac began discussing what we could do more in practice and our strategy for the year. There couldn't have been a better person as vice captain. With our ever hopeful captain paired up with the strategic and best player, our team would definitely make it to top ten.

"Okay that's all, keep up the good work guys, our games aren't until a couple months later but we still can't be lazy, we'll see you all tomorrow." Jeremy ended the talk and all of us slowly filed out of the locker room. Zac and I walked towards my car, Zac still talking about some strategies he would like the team to try and about switching positions for some of the freshmen.

"-and I just think we can try rotation 4 better, I know it's hard for you to run all the way from the back to the front but-" he stopped abruptly, I glanced at him, he seemed to be concentrating hard on something. With difficulty, I focus back on the road, waiting for him to say whatever that had suddenly came onto his mind. "Oh yeah I finally remember! I need help for my maths homework, can you help me?"

I could feel his hopeful chocolate eyes on me, as if I would ever say no to him, "yeah of course,"

"And I have a math test tomorrow...." he said sheepishly.

I laughed, "yes I'll help you with that too,"

"Thanks you're the best!" He said that every time I agreed to help him, like he never helped me with Literature or Geography.

"I know," a good-nature smirk graced my lips. Without looking, I knew he rolled his eyes at me and that made my smirk softened into a content smile. I didn't see the same smile- if not a softer one- mirroring on Zac's face.