Bail | LRH

Chapter 8: the text

Luke Hemmings

It's all coming together. I get to train with her tomorrow, and I got her number. Slowly but surely she'll be eating out of the palm of my hand. It's only a matter of time.

When I got home from practice, I immediately took a shower changed into some joggers and a shirt, and just lounged around in my room before my mom called me downstairs for dinner. Dinner wasn't all that, don't get me wrong I'm always grateful for everything my mom does but conversation wise, let's just say it was a slow day. There wasn't much to talk about, but that didn't bother me because I had other things on my mind.

After dinner, I made my way up to my room and flopped right onto my bed, exhausted after a long day of snowboarding. I pulled my phone out from my pocket remembering that I had absolutely no details about what I was supposed to do tomorrow morning so I looked through my contacts looking for her name and I couldn't find it at all. I thought she completely played me, I was scrolling back and forth on my phone, looking carefully through the A's in case she was there by her first name, and by the C's for her last name but she was not in my phone at all.

"Come on, where is she?" I said to myself as I was bringing my phone closer to my face to carefully inspect every single name I was scrolling past. I was about to give up when I somehow managed to scroll all the way down to the T' where I found a new contact.

Three to Two ;)

"Oh for fucks sake."

She was taunting me even when she wasn't around. Rubbing it in my face that we were no longer tied on who had more medals and she was currently in the lead because I absolutely choked last time. I let out a groan as I stared at the contact name she put in, and after a moment of self loathing recalling what happened at that competition I proceeded to send her a text.

Ha. Ha. Very funny contact name. What time tomorrow?

I tried to play it off nice and cool, not letting her know that her little stunt got under my skin. After all, I was trying to get this girl to like me, and if I threw back whatever insult was building up in my throat, this wouldn't work out. I put my phone down and pulled out my laptop to watch a recording of my runs from the last competition, taking notes when I figured out what I did wrong, what I could do better and overall what I needed to fix to get a better score.

I do this after a lot of my competition to see what I need to improve on, but this one specifically hurt to watch as every time I went back to re-watch a clip and put it in slow motion to see everything more clearly, I was reminded of my disappointment, and how I was now Adrian's punching bag yet again. A little falter here when landing, an almost incomplete trick, it was a mess. She had every right to be calling me out on my performance, but that didn't mean I wanted to hear it. I was already beating myself up enough for it, I didn't need little miss perfect, the princess of Park City to be my constant reminder.

I was so focused on picking apart my last performance that I hadn't realized an hour had gone by until my phone chimed indicating I received a text. I put my notebook and pen down to grab my phone which I then unlocked and pulled up the messages app to see that Adrian finally responded to me.

What can I say, I speak the truth. How long did it take you to find me?

The only reason it's the "truth" is because she competed against the other girls, if she and I competed against each other there's no way I would have let her take home the win. I wouldn't have had a bad day if she was on my competitor line up, I just wouldn't have allowed it to end with her on top.

You're dodging my question, what time tomorrow.

I didn't want to entertain that conversation any longer because if I did, there was a good chance I would say something that would take me a few steps backward. Plus if I was going to spend a good portion of my day with her tomorrow I was really going to need to commit to this and keep it together.