I finished up the rest of my workout and headed to the locker room to get ready for school. I took a longer shower than I normally do, my legs already starting to ache from the run earlier. By the time I had finished up and gotten dressed, it was already a quarter past seven, which meant I had no time to dry my hair or put on the minimal amount of makeup that I usually wear. I slipped on a pair of black skinny jeans, an oversized tee and chunky sweater with a pair of Toms. I gathered the rest of my things from the locker and made my way from the gym to first period.

Our school, Woodstock High, was fairly small so getting from one place to another never required a great deal of effort to avoid being late. I stopped at my locker to drop off my backpack and the rest of my books that I wouldn’t need until later.

“Hey, hey, girlie,” I grinned as my best friend Sammie met me at my locker so we could walk to first period together. I had known Sam since seventh grade, when we joined the middle school soccer team together. We bonded over our love for the support and stuck together throughout the years. Girls would come and go from the team until eventually a core group of girls developed that were as passionate about the sport as we are. Sammie and I weren’t exactly alike, but we meshed well together. Her petite frame was always exuding confidence due to her tenacious personality, but she was much more reserved socially, not one to stray out of her “social confines.” The hierarchy of high school hadn’t separated us, because a majority of our social lives involved soccer and the other girls on our team.

“Hey,” I responded as I closed my locker and started walking towards our class, “you’ll never believe what happened this morning.”

“Uh oh, you didn’t sleep in and miss a workout did you?! The horror!”

“Ha, ha. But no, something even stranger. Seth Dawson was there and ran next to me the entire time.”

“No shit, he is hot! Please tell me you talked him up and didn’t avoid him like you normally do.”

“Yeah right, you know I have no interest in him.” However, as I replayed this morning over in my head I couldn’t help but reimagine the way his face lit up laughing before I walked away from him.

“Uh huh, well if you really don’t, you should find some ASAP, because he’s headed this way.”

Before I could say anything, the volume in the hallway dropped a few levels.

“Hey Tess,” I heard him before I saw him, “you clean up nice, although I think I like you better without your shirt on.” Catching me completely off guard, I didn’t have time to say anything back before he was already at the end of the hall.

“Okay,” Sammie started, but before she could say anything else the first bell rang.

“That’s our cue, we better get to class.”

“Sure Tess, but you’re not getting out of this one.”

What had started as another normal day was slowly taking me by surprise every chance it got. Without saying another word, we walked to class, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was getting a lot more attention from the lingering students in the hall.

The rest of the day passed quickly, and thankfully uneventfully. After last period I headed to the locker room for the second time that day. Walking through the main entrance, I saw Seth heading towards the doors from the other end of the hall, surrounded by a couple of his friends. They were all laughing except him, his face holding a serious expression. As if he could feel my stare, his eyes met mine and we held our gaze, the rest of the students falling away from my vision. His eyes brightened when they met mine, realizing I wasn’t going to run away from him this time.

My body had a mind of its’ own, my legs unable to move from the spot I was planted in. Seth turned to say something to his friends, as they continued to laugh and shake their heads as he headed to meet me.

“You’ve been on my mind all day, Tess. What am I going to do with you?”

“You could keep dreaming.” There was that laugh again, and I couldn’t ignore the flutter in my stomach this time. I had to stay far away from this guy if I was going to stay focused, and while his attention was making me feel a way I hadn’t before, I couldn’t let him get into my head. Guys like Seth Dawson sneak their way into your heart and before it’s too late, you can’t get rid of them no matter how hard you try.

“Remember what I said Tess, one day.”

“See you around Seth.”

I walked past him and forced myself not to look back at him to see if he was still there. I finally made it to the locker room and forced myself to focus on practice and put Seth Dawson behind me.

- - -

“Get it together girls! We’ve gone over this four times already and the same mistakes are being made.” Coach Anderson, or Jamie as most of us knew her, was harping on our every move today. It was still early in the season so we had time to work out the kinks, but in her mind we had to go into Friday’s scrimmage at our absolute best.

“God,” Sammie muttered to me under her breath, “it’s like she forgets that we don’t run drills all day because we actually have to go school too.” I looked around, noticing the sullen faces of many girls on the team, reflecting how I felt right now too.

“Alright girls, listen up,” I started, making my way to the center of the half field that we were practicing on, knowing that many would follow me lead.

“I know a lot of us want to go home, eat dinner, and take a warm shower, and if you’re as lucky as Mia, eat brownies that her mom made for her today, but none of those things are going to happen until we get this last drill nailed down. The offense can’t make it happen without the midfield and defense, so we all need to buckle down and get on the same page. I think we can give Coach that much, yeah?”

“Ashley and Mel, if you don’t have anything else to add, you two can go run two laps around the field and come back when you’re ready to practice with the rest of us.” Without even thinking about it, I had just shouted out orders at two seniors who surely expected they would be handed the positions of co-captains with minimal effort. I groaned to myself, knowing I may have just made unnecessary enemies with two girls that you wouldn’t want on your bad side.

“You heard her girls, get moving!” Well, at least I have the support of Jamie I thought. As I headed back to the middle of the field towards my spot, I couldn’t miss the small nod of approval that she directed my way.

When Ashley and Mel were back from their laps, the rest of the girls dispersed from the middle of the field and took their positions. When Coach blew her whistle indicating the start of the drill, the energy of the team had changed, and I could tell the girls had finally found their focus. I headed down the field towards the goal, Sammie at my side, before we split off in opposite directions while I maintained the ball. I made my way closer to the goal, dodging a couple of midfielders, before passing to Sammie when she opened up, and I sprinted closer to the goal. I had just gotten to my designated spot when I saw the ball headed towards me over the heads of a couple defenders, I lined up my position and without thinking twice jumped into the air to feel the ball bounce off my head and hear the swish of the net.

“Finally! Thank you girls! That is exactly what I was looking for,” Coach shouted from the sidelines before jogging towards us. The rest of us congregated near the goal knowing that we would be dismissed from practice shortly. I took a seat on the ground, and started taking my cleats, shin guards and socks off.

“I know it can be frustrating when I give you girls a difficult time, but it’s only because I know what you’re capable of. And what I just saw was complete focus from all of you. I wish you all could see yourselves the way I do when you play, because I know this is going to be one of the best seasons I’ve ever coached. That’s all I have, so go home and rest up, tomorrow afternoon we’re going to work on our sprinting so you have enough time to recover for Friday.”

I stood up, taking my discarded footwear and headed towards the locker room to grab the rest of my bags so I could head home. I was walking alongside a few other girls who were retelling the events of their Monday, likely gossiping about the weekend drama that usually circulated at the beginning of each week.

“So Tess, we hear you had an exciting day yourself...,” Riley smiled in my direction. She was a Junior like me but was much more involved with other social groups at out school, and was usually our go-to source for any information we were looking for about couples who were either hooking up or breaking up, and all of the juicy happenings at the weekend parties.

“Huh?”

“You know, with Seth Dawson.”

“What about him?”

“Uhm, only that he totally called you out in the hall this morning and made it clear to the entire school he loved checking out your body.”

“Yeah right, he was just messing around. He’s been bothering me ever since I saw him in the gym this morning, but he’ll find someone else to torment tomorrow.”

“Uh huh, whatever you say girl.”

We made our way to our lockers, and without wanting to stick around and hear anything else about Seth, I grabbed my bags and headed towards the parking lot before anyone else caught up to me.

My dad was waiting for me like every other day, the most reliable person you would ever meet. I climbed into the car, ready for this ay to end.

“Hey honey, tough day?”

“Do I look that bad?”

“Well, no...but you could definitely use a shower,” he chuckled as we left the school parking lot.

“I think I smell great, at least that’s why all the guys tell me.” It was my turn to laugh this time. It’s not that my parents were against dating, in fact they even encouraged me to spend more time outside of the house, but whenever I joked about boys they didn’t know how to react. Maybe it had something to do with me playing sports growing up, or that I was never involved with the girly girls. But either way, I was happy to keep things the way they were. The last thing I needed was to get involved with someone like Seth Dawson.