From cero to a hundred

Do you like her?

"Okay girls bring it in!" Coach called for us as we finished our first training session of wednesday. "Great training session! Go and shower, then grab some lunch and by 3 pm I want you all back downstairs, we've got a meeting with the psychologist."

"Can I talk to you a sec?" I said as everybody started leaving.

"Yeah sure, what's up kid?" He said as I stood beside him.

"I was wondering if there's any chances of being able to come to the pitch this afternoon to work on some shooting. After the meeting of course." I asked him.

"I'm sorry, but not today. Tomorrow after the morning session you can stay longer and if you want a goalie can also stay, then I'll take you both back to the hotel." He explained.

"Okay, that'd be nice. Thanks." I said before jogging off to catch up with the rest of the girls.

I showered with the girls before we all walked back to the hotel fresh. A few of the girls headed to their room to leave their backpacks but I decided to just go and eat something first.

I grabbed a tray and my food before sitting down with a few of the girls who also didn't go up to their rooms. "I wonder what we'll talk about with the psychologist." Alex said.

"I hope it's nothing too deep. I hate opening up to people." Zoe said.

"Bitch, same." I told her before taking a bite of my pork.

"Well I hope she does talk about some deep shit. I wanna get to know you guys." Alex said.

"Let's do truth or dare tonight. After dinner!" Maeve said.

"Yes!" A few of the girls said.

"I'll pass actually." I said, which Zoe agreed too.

"You can't pass. It will be fun, I promise." Alex tried to convince us.

"It's still a no." I said.

"Rock, paper, scissors. First to 3 chooses if you play or not." Alex said.

"Fine." I gave in.

"I won!" Alex said after she pulled paper out to beat my rock.

"You've got to play now!" Maeve said.

"Okay I'll play. A deal is a deal."

After all of us finished eating we were called into a room. As we walked in each one took a seat that was placed in a circle and sat down. I sat between Alex and Zoe, at one of the first seats as you walked into the room.

"Good afternoon girls. It's nice to see you all here. My name is Doctor Hannah Stoyel. I am a port psychologist and I have worked along with the english swim team and the reading academy. I'd like to know who you girls are." She said before pointing at one of the girls at the end of the line. "Go ahead you start."

"Hi, I'm Sofia, I'm 16 and I'm from Argentina" She started.

All of us said the same kind of thing, just telling her our name, age and where we're from.

"Okay, I'll come back to this later, but to start today's session off, I'm going to show you guys this presentation I made. It has the difficulties we could face being a football player and also taking into account you all are still teenagers." She said.

"So the first point I want to tackle is not feeling good enough. I bet you all have felt it at some point, probably because you were comparing yourself to the people around you, or the people who were higher than you. You see, no path is the same, that's why we shouldn't compare where people are. I could get from point A to B in 5 years, and someone else could do it in 2 months. You have to put in your own work and be proud you got there. Some people stop in the middle and never even reach point B." She said as she drew something on the white board.

"Uhm Jamie right?" She asked me, to which I nodded. "We're gonna move on to the next point. have you ever felt you haven't done enough?" She asked me.

"Yes, more often than not actually." I told her.

"What does that day look like?" She asked me.

"Well if I do no sport, or if I don't go for a run when there's no training, if I was enabled to keep up with the school work while having practices, uhm if I had two cheat days or two cheat snacks in a row. If I didn't get out of the house all day." I told her.

"Okay, so walk me through an ideal day, with school and training included."

"Wake up around 7, go for a 20 to 30 minute run, shower get ready, have a small breakfast and go to school. Study and get as much work as you can done. After school, sprint home or cycle home, get changed into my training gear, go to training. After training, stay for an extra 30 minutes or so working on especifics. Shower head home and study or do homework for an hour, an hour and a half. Then meditate and read and head to bed." I told her.

"Okay, so imagine you don't do one, two or three of those things on that day, would it be a bad day? Like would you consider it unproductive?" She asked me.

"Usually I would, but I will give myself a pass some days when I'm just not up to doing all that. Some days it's hard to get out of bed, so getting out of the house would be like a great day, but if I'm up to it and I choose not to do it, then yes."

"Okay, great. What about you, uhm, Willow?" She asked.

Time went by and we all talked at some point in the meeting, giving our personal view point, while she also showed us some stats and helped us understand our brain a bit more.

"I'm hella hungry." Alex groaned.

"We can go and have dinner now, don't worry." I told her as we all headed to the dining room.

We devoured our food, and a few of us even went for seconds. We were so hungry. "We can play truth or dare now, all of us are here!" Maeve said since we were sitting at a round table.

We spun a bottle and whoever it landed on had to answer a question the person who spun the bottle asked.

"Jamie! How many relationships have you been in?" One of the girls asked me.

"None." I said as a few of the girls looked at me in awe.

"You're lying!" Alex shouted. "How have you been single for 15 years of your life?"

"Never really looking for anything, and when I did have a chance to get into a relationship I never really wanted it." I said before I spun the bottle.

As the game went on, less and less people stayed around, to the point where it was just about 8 of us.

"Jamie! Do you have feelings for your friend, um Shannon I think?" Alex asked me.

"You fucker, me and Shannon are just friends." I told her.

"I didn't ask what you were, I asked what you felt towards her." Alex said, stopping me from spinning the bottle.

"I hate you." I mouthed at her before taking a deep breath. "I do like her." I finally said making Alex jump on me.

"I knew it! I knew it!" She shouted, making a few heads turn towards us.

"Bro chill out okay." I said spinning the bottle.

After a bit more we all started to get tired and no good questions popped into our mind so we decided to leave it for today and head to our rooms to rest, since we had training tomorrow morning.

"Hey, Jamie." Zoe whispered a few minutes after I turned the lights off.

"What's up?" I asked her.

"Why didn't you tell the girls you liked Shannon from the start, instead of avoiding the question?"

"I don't know, it's just easier to avoid any kind of feelings. I'm not one to be open about stuff like that." I told her.