From Teammates to Best Friends to Boyfriends?

‘8:00 tomorrow’ I sent this to my mom.

She is supposed to come to my game tomorrow. This would be the first game she’ll ever come to this season. And that kind of makes me nervous. She’s always had to work during my games and this one she’s free. Hopefully, I do well and she’s proud. She’s the reason I’m playing this sport and if she sees I’m not good at it, she’ll probably make me go to a different sport next year. She wants me to find something (particularly sports related) to be really good in to go pro or something. I guess she wants me to do this for a free ride to college or something, like she got.

But what doesn’t make since is the one sport she doesn’t want me to play is soccer. And that’s my favorite.

“Hey, you ready?” Liam came up behind me. I turned around.

“Uh, yeah.” I close my locker door. “Let’s go.”

We headed outside to where his and Dillon’s vehicles were. We were all going to the lake today since it was Friday. Dillon invited Hannah and Hannah’s friend, Katie. Liam bought along his girlfriend, Alexis and Chandler. I forgot to invite anyone. I hopped into Liam’s car, since Dillon’s truck only seat three people and he had Hannah and her friend already in there.
I sat in the back with Chandler. The drive to the lake was about an hour long. Along the way, we got bored with the radio and played road games and would you rather. I tried to ignore Liam when it was his turn to ask one of us a ‘wyr’. Ever since that basketball game when Liam came with me to restrooms, I kind of have been keeping my distance with him. It’s not what he did that bothered me, it was what he mentioned. After the bathroom break, I went with him to his to accompany him while he smoked. (That’s one un-attracted thing about him.) Anyways, while we were out there, he was talking about Dillon’s girlfriend and how he saw her with Quin from the team at the movies. He mentioned how ‘friendly’ they were and that he didn’t tell Dillon about it. Then he said, “Besides, I don’t think he cares anymore about her. I think he’s taking a liking into someone else. He just doesn’t see it yet.” I asked who could that be and he just gives me this look and raised his eyebrows. He dropped his cigarette and stomped on it and then he muttered, “You,” and started walking to the entrance of the gym.I caught up with him and asked him what he was talking about and he said nevermind and dropped the whole conversation. So after that we went back in, and I sat quietly thinking about it. Dillon can’t like me. . .That’s just too weird. . .

When we arrived at the lake, we sat all our stuff on a picnic table. The three girls had already head to the sand to tan so that left Dillon, Liam, Chandler, and me at the table still. Chandler was applying sun block lotion because he’s a ginger and burns easily. Liam was pulling off his shoes, and he glanced over at me while I stood there waiting for them. He smiled for a second then went back to taking off his other shoe.

“Yay! Swimming!” Chandler yelled as he ran through the girls tanning area, kicking sand on them and into the water with a splash. Katie yelled his name and tried to wipe off the sand but the sun block lotion made it stick to her. She huffed and got up and ran to water. She got out to where Chandler was pushed his head down under. The rest of us were laughing as we went towards the water. I don’t really know how to swim so I stayed where I could keep my feet on the ground. The other guys were a little out there. But luckily, I had someone to talk to, Alexis was beside me.

“Ha ha, they are such losers.” She pointed to Liam and Dillon who were going out the booey.
“Hmm, yeah.” I agreed.

She laid out her back to float. “Why are you out there?” She asked.

“Can’t swim.” I swayed in the water. “You?”

“Deep water kind of freaks me out.”

“Hmm.”

It was quiet for minute as she floated and I kicked around the sand on the bottom.
“Wanna learn?” She got back on her feet.

“What?” I looked up.

“Want to learn how to swim? It’s easy.” She kicked off and swam around me like a dog.
“Sure.” I said, uncertain.

“Okay. Do this with your arms.” She got shoulder length with the water and started making them go in circles.

“Then paddle your feet.” She took off and showed me her feet paddling in the water and then stood up.

“It’s easy.”

I stood there for a second. “Do I do that constantly?”

“Yeah.”

I bowed forward and kicked off. At first, I didn’t know if I was doing it right, but Alexis was shouting, “Good,” so I kept going. I stopped when I felt tired and tried to stand up but my feet didn’t meet the sand, just more water. Then I realized I went the wrong way and I went out to the deep end. I started to feel myself panic.

“Just do the same thing back to me!” Alexis yelled. I pushed forward and started to paddle my feet again and moving my arms. I reached Alexis and stood up.

“God, swimming is tiring.” I huffed.

“Yeah. Well when you’re out in deep water and feel like you can’t keep going, you can always float till you feel like you can swim again.”

“I don’t even know how to float.” I admitted and laughed.

“Gosh, Garret, haven’t you ever gone swimming before?” She splashed my face with water.

“No. These swimming trunks are actually Dillon’s.” I said.

“Oh.”

We stood there for a couple more minutes, our heads taking in the sun. I started feeling thirsty.

“Wanna come with me to truck and get a drink?” I asked Alexis.

“Sure.” We started heading to bank and we heard Liam yell to us. We turned around to see all of them at the booey, and Liam was looking at us.

“What are you guys doing?” He yelled.

“Getting the cooler!” I yelled back at them.

“Can you get mine out of the trunk too, please?” He yelled back us.

I gave him a thumbs up and we headed to where the vehicles were. I got the one in the back of Dillon’s truck and Alexis got Liam’s out of his car. We headed back to the table to see the others were there, sitting down.

“We saw where you tried to swim! So cute!” Chandler ruffled my hair as I sat down beside him. Chandler likes to get flirty when girls around. It’s like this weird thing he has, whenever he’s hanging with friends and chicks are around, he’ll flirt with anyone, even boys.

We made sandwiches and the others swam some more before it got dark. When the sky turned fully dark and the stars came out, we laid out on the sand and stared up at them, all except Liam and Alexis. They disappeared half an hour ago and they went on the other side of the lake. We all know what they’re up to. . .

Anyways, Hannah’s mom called and said she had an hour to get home, so started packing up. Liam and Alexis weren’t answering their phone, so Chandler and I had to jump in the back of Dillon’s truck, as we went on the other side of the lake to find them.

We found Liam’s car on the side of the road and we parked behind it. Dillon got out, and we hopped out of the back too. We walked up to his car to find they weren’t in there, but their phones were.

Beside the road was a hill down to the water, and sure enough they were in there.

“Hey! Come on! Hannah and Katie got be home in an hour.” Dillon shouted to them.

They kissed and got out of the water, laughing. When we were all on the road, Hannah stuck out her head from the truck and called Alexis over.

Chandler joked with Liam about what they were doing in the water as Liam dried off. Alexis came back and asked Liam if the other girls could ride with them instead so she could go home with them instead.

So in the end, (and I’m still confused on how this all happened), Liam, the three girls, and Chandler were in Liam’s car, while it was just me and Dillon in his truck. On the ride back into town, I fell asleep.