Grey Skies

Chapter 12

Happy New Year! Hope you all enjoy this chapter(:

Chapter Twelve

They say time flies. This past weekend it soared and before I knew it, it was Monday, August 18th: the first day of preseason and tryouts. I woke up feeling unbelievably nervous, the whole knees going weak, butterflies in the stomach, heart in overdrive kind of nervous. The kind of nervous they show on first dates or weddings or anything dealing with love that doesn't deal with me.

I feel like I did as a freshman, when I first stepped on the stadium near the high school and caught sight of Davis. He didn't look scary, not in the slightest, but he looked like he meant business and that was scary enough. I remember thinking that just one little mistake and I'd be tossed away. I was a freshman, and freshmen had to prove themselves. I feel the same way now, I'm just not a freshman anymore.

Tryouts would be three one hour sessions from Monday to Friday. The first started at twelve, and I was three hours from driving myself insane. I hadn't stopped thinking about it since Seven this morning.

"Earth to Iris, you with me here?"

I look up from my eggs at Austin whose preseason also starts today. "Yeah, sorry."

"Nervous?"

I smile and shrug my shoulders.

"Yeah, me too."

I laugh, "You are not!" He had nothing to be worried about and we both knew it. "You're amazing and arguably the best player on that team. You have absolutely nothing to worry about."

"Arguably? Not definitely? Now I have something to worrry about."

I shrug my shoulder and smile, "I don't believe in absolutes."

Austin rolls his eyes and takes a piece of bacon. "What if I told you you're absolutely, definitely going to make the team?"

"Then I'd tell you not to jinx it."

He laughs and we go back to talking about different things that don't involve this afternoon, like spiders and chocolate ice cream and brushing teeth in the shower. I had an irrational fear of spiders but I told myself at least I wasn't afraid of death or the dark. Those things were always around and well, you can run from spiders.

Austin wasn't laughing at my fear of spiders but the fact that I vehemently opposed people killing them. "It's true," I say, "I always make my dad let them go outside and when people smack them with a shoe I get really upset."

"Why?"

"It's not fair, I mean yes they are scary but that doesn't mean you get to smack them. They're defenseless and they have their own lives, too. I'm sure they didn't aspire to be spattered guts on someone's bathroom wall."

And the conversation went on until we found ourselves in the most abstract places and I never enjoyed talking to someone as much as today. Maybe because I needed something to take my mind off things, or maybe just because it was Austin. That was something else I had realized: there aren't many Austins out there, and here I was using my chance to talk spiders and oddly not regretting it.

* * *

The morning felt like it only consisted of a few seconds. I sat in my car for nearly ten minutes and it wasn't until I called Davis that I had the courage to step out. It was that or he'd come all the way over and drag me out.

"It's a ten minute drive and I have no plans," he said.

Even over the phone he was intimidating and I found myself walking along the track toward the group of girls huddled in a corner. I feel like the new kid asking to sit at the popular kids table. Like the only friend not included in an extremely funny inside joke.