Oh, Dakota

25- You Suck At Love

*Bonus update for Christmas! Also, I have an announcement. My Christmas present to you all is that I'm going to start updating twice a week since I finished writing the story yesterday. So I'll update on Fridays and Wednesdays <3*

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“I think I broke my ankle,” Braeden whined.

I shook my head at him and gathered my books from my anatomy table. “Suck it up, we got an A, so it was worth it.”

“Even though I hardly did anything at all,” He chuckled. “I just talked and let you dance around me.”

I nodded in agreement as we walked together on Friday out of the anatomy room, right after we presented our project in which I did our dumb little dance about the body parts and Braeden talk-sang the words. It was cute, and we aced it, so I didn’t know why he was complaining, although it was pretty amusing. “This is very true,” I giggled.

“Well, I’m not a dancer, believe it or not,” He defended.

“You sure could have fooled me,” I teased him before we said our goodbyes and headed to our separate classes.

After my and Todd’s rough breakup almost a week ago, Braeden had been a really great friend by keeping my mind off of Todd and focused on this anatomy project. We just kind of ignored the fact that he kissed me on Saturday and that on Monday, he admitted to having feelings for me that are stronger than friendship. I wouldn’t allow our friendship to be awkward after that because I wouldn’t allow myself to lose yet another person that I cared about. I probably would have had a mental breakdown or something if I lost Braeden too.

I got through the rest of the day, which I was proud to say, considering most of this week, I’ve had to skip at least one period a day to hermit in the bathroom and cry my heart out over and over again. But not that day, which was Friday, like I said, so it was good that I hadn’t cried that day, because Coach Bradford was going to kick our butts at practice and I needed all of my strength.

At the end of the day, I gave myself a silent pat on the back for keeping it together, and then I made my way into the locker room where all of us dancers were preparing for our fatal Friday practice.

“Do you think we’re ready for nationals?” Nikki asked me while we both changed into our workout clothes. For me, it was short shorts and a tank top and Nikki had on yoga shorts and a crop top long sleeve.

I shrugged. “We still have two weeks, so we’ll get there.”

“Yeah, but none of the routines are perfect yet, and nationals are kind of huge,” She reminded me. “But we’ll do fine, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure,” I sighed, tying my tennis shoes and pulling my hair into a pony tail on my head.

“I think we’ll win,” Marnie’s voice piped weakly as she walked up to both me and Nikki. She was obviously ready for practice with her red hair in a braid down her back and she was wearing sweats and a t-shirt.

I ignored her presence and then shut my gym locker and started walking out towards the gym since practice was starting soon while I heard Nikki reply to Marnie. “I don’t think your opinion is rather relevant anymore,” Nikki sighed, trying to be as polite as she could to our ex-friend. After Nikki found out what Marnie did when I announced it stupidly to the whole cafeteria, Nikki has kind of shunned Marnie as well. Both in my defense and in the fear that it may happen with Levi or something, which is probably her just being paranoid, but I didn’t want her to be friends with the skank anyway, so I didn’t stop her from stopping contact. Nikki was a lot nicer about it than me, though, because she still acknowledged Marnie’s presence as politely as she could whenever she tried to be part of our conversations like she just did.