Call it Love

21| Exhausted

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Exhausted

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Chapter 21: Exhausted (Emilia's POV)

"Can we wrap it up now? I'm tired," Ava whined, kicking the sand. 

I turned away from Brett and faced her. "We're down to the last point, we're tied." I faced the others. "Why don't we end it after this last point? Whoever scores first, they're the winners. I'm kind of tired too," I sighed, tucking the flyaway hairs behind my ears. 

"All right. That sounds fair," Brett nodded while Emma shrugged. 

I haven't even been able to look Adam in the eye after what happened earlier. 

Adam has... I want to say he's never acted like that with me, but that would be a lie. He has and there was a time when he would act like this at any and every given moment. It started off when we were younger and he would just use it as a way to tease me because he knew it always flustered me. 

But he would intentionally flirt with me just to get a rise out of me or see me feeling embarrassed and humiliated. And then one time it ended up saving me from rejection when I asked a boy out in sophomore year and Adam had magically already heard from his friends or something like that, that I was going to be rejected. 

Adam swooped in, flirted with me in front of the guy, pulled me aside, and told me what would have happened if he didn't intervene. As we got older, his flirting got more and more daring, but we always knew where to draw the line. At the end of the day, we were just best friends who would sometimes flirt with each other for our own entertainment. 

I never did it back until one day I was so sick of his tricks that I wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine. And then the one time I did it, I almost ruined everything. I mean everything. I chose the worst night to do it but we weren't young enough to call naive. It was during the spring break of our senior year, so we were almost done with high school. Honestly, if I knew we'd have the fallout we did, I might not have fought so hard to save our friendship back then. 

Because having sex most certainly ruined our friendship when it happened. Actually, scratch that. Me being a virgin and then us having sex with each other most certainly ruined our friendship when it happened. 

I looked over to the other side of the night, finally looking at Adam. He was sweating now and a little out of breath while he ran a hand through his hair, pushing the damp strands away from his forehead. 

"Can we take like a two minutes break?" Ava asked. "I'm taking a break," she said, not waiting for anyone's reply and heading to the seats, lying back with a dramatic sigh. 

I caught my breath and then went and sat down as well, my heart pounding because of the exhaustion but also because of Adam heading this way. He sat down on the seat beside mine, lying down and catching his breath. 

"Em." I looked up at aunt Christy who was holding out two sandwiches in clear wrap. "I went and bought some for everybody while you all played. Here. One for you, one for Adam." 

I caught it as she tossed it to me gently. "Thank you," I grinned, reaching into my bag and taking out some sanitizer before I unwrapped the sandwiches and held one out for Adam, trying not to look at him.