Comfy Closets

5|| Tumbles and Lies

The events of yesterday have not left my mind. In all honestly, the possibility that Leah might’ve found out about my sexuality scared me to crap. It was clear to me that she was flirting and teasing me yesterday, as if playing with the knowledge of my crush. I couldn’t stop the bombarding, paranoid thoughts that plagued me, scenarios of her telling other people about me playing on repeat.

I didn’t want to be out. I wasn’t ready.

What do I do? What do I freaking do? The words played out in repeated loops in my head as another part of my brain tried to think of a solution to this problem I made.

Surely, I did something to give it away; maybe I stared at her for too long or looked at her in a certain way? Damn it, I have no clue, and now I have to fix this problem before it becomes worse.

“Woods! What are you doing just standing there? Get to the ball and push the line!” My coach yelled at me from across the field.

Friday afterschool soccer practises were normally a joy-filled pocket of time in the week to me, despite the varied opinions within my team. But today, these worrying thoughts were taking over my mind, distracting me. I couldn’t help it. There was this urge in me, a compulsion that drove the need to do something, because there’s no telling if Leah has told people about me already. And if not, then I needed to confront her about it before she did.

I shook my head as if trying to physically shake the thoughts out of my mind, bringing my focus back to concentrate on the scrimmage game happening around me. “Come on Alyssa, worry about it later,” I mumbled to myself.

Making a sprint to an opening that I saw in their defence, I called for the ball from a midfielder, who sent it over to me. The ball rolled ahead of me, past myself and all their defenders. Perfect, I thought. I pushed my legs harder and ran ahead, trying to gain control of the ball that was just out of my reach. Just a little bit more.

My determination returned with a vengeance as the familiar competitive spirit flowed through my limbs. I clenched my jaw, sprinting to cover the gap fast. But as I got a touch on the ball, I suddenly felt a body collide with my own; a member of the opposition's attempt to tackle the ball out of my control gone awry. The strength of the collide caused both of us to fall to the ground, tumbling and rolling a few times on the grass, and I felt the bruising force of contact with the ground and her limbs before coming to a stop as she ended up landing on top of me.

“Oof! Oww, that hurt,” I gasped weakly, sparks of pain emanating from more than one place. My chest heaved as I tried to regain my breath with the girl still lying on top, seemingly doing the same. I opened my eyes then as one of my hands went down and clutched the spot on my hip that was inevitably going to bruise.

I noticed just then that the person that tackled me, Olivia, didn’t have the strength to get off me yet, so she opted to rest her head on my shoulder whilst splayed on top, trying to regain her breath too. Finally, after a couple of seconds had passed, she propped her elbows up on each side of my face, trying to take some weight off me. I felt my breaths becoming deeper with the weight that was lifted off.

As she moved her head from my shoulder, I met her blue eyes that were very close to my own. Our breaths mixed together as we continued to take deep intakes, my brain slowly processing what just happened after the jostling it just took.

Our close proximity slowly registered in my mind, and I couldn’t help but imagine what it must’ve looked like with the way we were currently positioned. I noticed my hands had moved to her waist to steady her as she hovered above me.

She was the first one to speak after a couple of seconds of us staring at each other had passed. “Sorry about that, Al. Got a little too rough there, my bad.”