Like Real People Do [🗸]

10. football

Somehow, all of us end up strewn about the tattoo parlor, lounging about.

By all of us, I mean Aarya seated on a stool, her foot resting on another, Basil crouched up against a cushion, frantically typing on his phone, Silvia seated at Rayne's desk, pulling both them and Esther into conversation, and Elliot leaning against a wall adjacent to me as I clean up equipment.

It wasn't necessarily one of those things that came about with a clear blueprint and plan. More so, Esther came in for lunch, and Silvia ended up waltzing in shortly after with Aarya and Basil. 

As for Elliot, he'd been hanging out here more often since he didn't get the phoenix tattoo. It's interesting, how we explore each other's worlds, spend almost as much time in the other's as we do our own. 

Rayne is busy painting their nails, and Silvia's saying something about her Journalism class that I can't catch.

Somehow, at some time between this conversation filtering to and end and Elliot watching me at work with occasional questions slipped in - Rayne claps their hands together. "So," they start, and the group arrives at a hush. "There's a football game going on tonight. Anyone wanna go?"

"Football?" Basil blinks. 

"Football," Rayne echoes. I can hear their as previously mentioned resonating in my ears. I'd figured that we - whatever this makeshift conglomeration of people are - aren't a football group.

 It wasn't anything I'd pondered for a while. It was simply the way of the water in a sense. College divvies students up. It's not any high school status quo, but rather a natural gravitational pull between people with similar interests.

As far as I've been concerned leading up to now, we are the artists. The musicians, the writers, the tattoo artists, the dancers, and I suppose the gamers or aspiring computer scientists.

So when Rayne proposes heading over to the college football game, there isn't necessarily opposition, but rather a raised-eyebrow response, as though each individual is considering why the thought hasn't occurred to them before. 

"I mean, I'm not opposed to it." Silvia shrugs. She's in an olive-colored floral dress with those puffed up sleeves, her twin braids packed into one. 

"We could drink and hangout at my place afterward," Rayne says, blowing on their drying nails. 

This seems to seal the deal, and eventually glances are exchanged and the quick juts of chins into nods travel throughout the room. 

I don't believe there's much to say about our college football team save for the fact that they exist. They're not top of the state, but they are somewhere in the top five, which the college boasts at every single orientation brochure they print. 

Elliot glances up at me, hands clasped. "You better tell me what's going on, because I don't think I've watched football in years."

"I've got you." I assure him, grin pointed upward.