“Nothing. I’m just annoyed I have to wait for my brothers to finish practice and it’s about to start raining again. Coach won’t just stop practice and I’m afraid if I leave, I won’t have a ride home.”
“Can’t your brothers just come get you inside when practice ends?” he asks, confused.
“That would be too simple. My brothers like to make things complicated.”
The drizzle turns to pouring rain in a matter of seconds. “Well, I don’t have to stand out here in the pouring rain. Good luck to you though,” he says as he gets up.
“Wait. You never told me if you’re playing here.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he replies as the rain picks up speed.
I take an exasperated breath. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
“That would be too simple,” he repeats my words to me.
I watch as he walks down the bleacher steps and in the direction of the parking lot. Like someone with nothing better to do, I follow after him.
“Wait!” I yell.
He turns back to look at me. The rain picking up speed. “Didn’t your parents ever warn you about talking to strangers?”
“They did, but I’ve never really been a good listener.”
“I can see that,” he says, turning back and continuing to walk.
I basically run the rest of the distance to him and when I reach him I pull on his sweater. He turns around and I look up at him. He’s tall, so much taller than I expected him to be. He looks like the kind of guy who can fight a bear and win. Seriously. “What’s your name?” I ask.
“That should’ve been your first question,” he says, finally smiling at me and I feel it down to my core. I smile back, feeling excitement course through my body.
“It was an implied question when I told you my name. Would you have answered if I explicitly asked?”
He shrugs. “Probably not, but it would have been a more normal thing to do.”
“Well, I’m not normal,” I reply and then cringe internally.
He smiles, again, and I’m mesmerized by it. “I can tell,” he says then turns around and walks away. I stand there in the pouring rain waiting for him to get into his car, but he doesn’t. Instead, he goes past the parking lot, crosses the street, and I watch until he’s out of my sight.
I turn around and head back to the bleachers. Taking a seat in the spot we abandoned, I can’t help but replay our interaction. I’m so captivated by it, by him, that I don’t even care about the rain that continues to fall on me like it’s lashing out in anger.
I don’t even know his name. But his smile and eyes are something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
2
A Week Later
“That was a good game,” Raquel tells me as she stands at her locker, which is right next to mine.
I nod. “Winning doesn’t hurt.” I take off my shoes and grab my towel.
“Sticking it to Bragan Prep is always sweet,” she replies with a big smile.
“Especially when you win all three sets,” I tell her. Bragan Prep is our rival school. Bragan High School is a public school, which doesn’t mean much because everyone here still has the same rich families. But Bragan Prep is a boarding school. It attracts people from this town but also people from all over. They’ve always hated us because we’re better at most sports than they are. Because our students get recruited more often. Because we’re just cooler. We hate them because having a rival is fun—and because they outperform us academically every year.
Our school likes to beat them so much that the entire volleyball team got to miss school today to warm up and get ready for the game. It was an away game, so we had to travel to them too.
“Did you see their faces when they lost?” Raquel says as she leans back against her locker, no doubt replaying the game in her mind.
“It would be nice if they actually scheduled the games at night so we had our people witness their defeat.” I honestly think that they know our team will crush them at volleyball and that’s why they always make the games happen at a random time. They don’t want our students traveling to their school. Instead, our side of the bleachers ends up being empty, while the other end has all the preppy students cheering.