Jada's Journal

4/8/19: Pure Unbridled Happiness

  I totally left the last chapter hangin'. Sorry about that. I didn't feel like writin' about it any more than I needed to.

  Despite that, today was one of the best days ever! It was an ever so vibrant evening with a gentle breeze and sun beaming down on the DGS Track team's faces. The amazing weather and the fact that I was gonna get to see Clarice again more than subtly turned my evermoving frown into a beaming, genuine smile that only got wider and wider as the day went on.

  After my last period was finished, I hurried on to my locker down the hall (as per usual), and grabbed my workout bag along with my black and white Nikes, replacing my suede Adidas with the light running shoes. I rapidly paced down the two flights of stairs and speed-walked to the locker room in the lower level of the school. When I arrived, I made my way to a bench and started changing. As I was changing, Kayla (a girl on the team), asked me if she could send me pictures that I took from the meet. You see, I really like photography and I wanna go to different classes outside of school to study it. I took a shit ton of pictures at the track meet we were at two days prior for no charge since they're of equal quality of the professional photographer we have already. I got her Snapchat username, added her, sent her the pictures, and made my way to the track alongside my friend Eileen.

  When we got outside, it was perfect. We all cheered and whooped due to the fact that we didn't have to run in 30-degree weather for once. Eileen and I sat down on the turf along with the rest of the team. The coaches started going over PRs and giving out ribbons from the last meet. I got my first ever PR! It was highkey daunting having to go up in front of everyone, shake the coach's hands, and sit back down. Especially since Clarice was watching me with that cute face of hers.

  The captains went over athletes of the week, and then we went to do our one warmup lap. It was 73 degrees and the whole team was sweating by the time we finished the first lap. People started removing their shirts, and the coaches couldn't really stop them since they could feel the scolding heat too. We did our 50m pre-run workouts which were led by the captains in three lanes (I was in Clarice's lane 🥰). After that, we ran hills for endurance, which are literally painful, but of which I enjoyed due to the fact that I got to take off my shirt AND see Clarice run shirtless (she's fucking ripped and has abs btw). Needless to say, the hills were the least of my troubles. Having to peel my eyes away from her body was the hardest part of the workout.

  After we finished the endurance hills, we walked back to the large rectangular building as a team and made our way to the workout room once we arrived in the school. When we got down there, we were faced with a strange sight. The workout room was completely empty! We got the whole workout room to ourselves! No football players, no joggers, no powerlifters, nobody! Just the team and I! I was hyped for that. This was obviously gonna be fun. Someone sprinted to connect their phone to the AUX and played Old Town Road. Everyone got lit, but I really wanted to go home, so I went ahead and rolled out before starting some exercises.

  I finished my hex bar squats, falling starts, and knee-ups until I noticed that this pole vault girl was doing pull-ups. Pull-ups are hard as fuck, so I made it my job to install some hype in my teammate. I started cheering her name and giving her some confidence n' shit, you know how it be. She did a few more, and to my surprise, a small crowd of other girls that were working out came over to where I was and started cheering for her too. It got loud—and quick. More and more girls started hoppin' on the pull-up bar, and we kept cheering and cheering louder and louder. Girls working out in different areas were being attracted to the pull-up bar, and we only screamed louder.

That was until Clarice and her friend (the other captain) came over. Her friend, Lauryn, turned red as a tomato when we suggested that she should try the bar. She shied away from it, indirectly declining the pull-ups. When she did, we assumed that our lil' group up was done until Clarice stepped in front of the bar and ripped off her shirt in the most badass way ever. Everyone went fucking WILD. When I say WILD, I mean WILD wild. She hopped on the bar, did more pull-ups than everyone on the team combined, and hopped off. Everyone hugged her and cheered and slapped her on the back. Then I realized,

Why are they congratulating her, but I ain't? This was my chance to interact with her for once.

  She turned around and was about to leave when a spike of worry shot through my veins. I desperately screamed her name, and she surprisingly heard me. It was the first time I ever said it to get her attention, and I smiled even harder than I was already when it slipped off my tongue. She turned and started walking toward me, shirt still off, glistening sweat still dripping from her forehead onto her shoulders. I've never looked directly into her eyes before, but I swear I was taken to a different dimension once I did. I held my hand up and back, signifying a handshake, but I got much more. She grabbed my hand, squeezed it, brought me close to her, and hugged me. I really really REALLY wasn't expecting that at all, but I literally melted after my body caught up to my brain. While she was hugging me, she said sumn along the lines of "I saw those abs while you were running, girl. They're looking great," and smiled.

... Holy shit.

  I conversed with her, got a hug from her (shirtless at that), and got my abs complimented by her all in one evening.

Holy fuck.

  That gave me more energy than anything else ever could. After Clarice did the pull-ups, Lauryn got inspired and ended up doing them too, despite the clear embarrassment on her red face. We hyped her up, of course, and she hopped off the bar looking accomplished. I powered through the rest of my workouts and went home happy as fuck.

There's no way that just happened.

When I got home I released my tears of intense joy, flailing around like a fish and screaming into my pillow.

P.S., sorry for being thirsty but I hope I can feel her skin on mine again... 🤤