The Perfect Touchdown

I shrugged. “If you say so. I’ll see you there.” I closed my locker with my clothes and walked out the door, not bothering to change anymore and left with my cheer uniform still on.

As soon as I was out of distance from the changing rooms, I called Aiden and breathed a sigh of relief when he picked up right away.

“Hey, are you almost ready?” he asked.

“So, you are still picking me up?”

I could almost hear his confusion. “Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I’ll tell you later, I’m heading back to the dorms now, I’ll text you when I’m ready.”

I groaned after I got off the phone. Why did this girl have to cause so much drama over one guy? I had gone to my own extents in the past to get Aiden to notice me, but I would never blatantly lie about being with someone who barely gave me the time of day.

That was asking for that relationship to fail before it even began, but she was going to find out the hard way when I showed up with Aiden at the party.

At the same time, I was getting a bad feeling about all of this. What would happen if she did get really upset and acted out against me and Aiden? What if she tried to break us up?

‘I just have to trust that we will get through it.’

~*~

For the first couple of hours of the party, I was mostly worried about when Leah would show up, but she was nowhere to be seen and it made all my petty feelings futile when I walked in with Aiden, and she wasn’t there to see it. I honestly felt pathetic after that.

“I’ll grab you a drink,” Aiden said and disappeared into the kitchen.

I crept out into the living room to find Noah and Carter in their usual spots in front of the 64. Mario Kart was on the screen, and there were already three bottles in each.

Aiden found me shortly after with a twisted tea and told me he was going to play beer pong with Avery. I stayed and played with the boys, content with staying there for the rest of the night until Carter got up for a smoke and I realized I had received a text message.

I gasped and hid my phone from view before anyone had the chance to see it and ran into a corner of the room. I looked at the picture of Aiden and I kissing under the bleachers and tried to recognize the number, but it was clearly an unknown number from someone I didn’t know.

Who the hell was there and who were they that they cared so much? I looked around the room and tried to narrow down suspects, but I couldn’t think of anyone in the room who would want to use something like this against me like I suspect this person does.

I messaged back and asked what they wanted.

But there is no response.

I kept checking my phone for the rest of the night but there was never another response. I tried calling the number at one point, but it was disconnected. Whoever it was had enough money to use for burner phones or whatever it was they used.

The first person who came to mind was Carter, but when I glanced at him outside the back door window as he smoked his cigarette and joked with Noah, I thought there was no way it was him. I glanced around the room until I found Aiden, but he was still too close to Avery, it would be suspicious if I just dragged him away.

I spotted Kendra in the corner by the back door as she secretly glanced out at Carter.

“Hey, I need your help.” I ran up to her and showed her the picture and text message. “I need to find out who sent me it. Other than Leah, who could it be?”

“You honestly don’t think this was her?” Kendra snorted.

“If it was, she would’ve just gone straight to my brother or exposed us. Why play with me like this? Whoever sent this is just toying with me for some reason, but who?”

“Do you think Jake Porter may be behind this?”

I hadn’t even thought of that. What were the chances that he happened to be there and snapped this photo? But again, what was his motive? It didn’t make sense, no matter who I thought of.

Why was this happening when everything was just starting to go so well?

I tried to ignore the text message for the rest of the night until Leah decided to show up with a few other members of the cheer squad. The house was packed to the brim now with people and got way too crowded for my liking.

I was still anxious about the text message and went outside to get some fresh air. I didn’t expect Leah to follow after me until I heard the sliding glass door close behind me and smelt her overly strong vanilla perfume.

“Hey, Rylee. I just wanted to apologize for earlier, our argument earlier was totally unnecessary,” she said with a sweet smile.

I peered at her to see if she was being genuine or not, but it was hard to tell with her.

“No hard feelings,” I said. “But you probably shouldn’t go around saying you’re dating someone when you’re not. I’ve known Aiden for years; he isn’t the dating type.” This wasn’t a complete lie, I just wondered now if he hadn’t dated anyone because of me, or if he really just never met anyone worth investing your time in like that.

“Well, I just wanted to let you know that as of now, I will be pursuing Aiden and I’d like to kindly ask that you step aside.”

She had me there. I couldn’t very well say that he was already spoken for, I wasn’t even sure yet if she was the one who sent me that photo, I would be stepping on my own toes if I said anything now.

“Why are you telling me this? Aiden is a big boy; he can do whatever he wants. It’s Avery you need to be worried about.”

She scoffed. “Your brother, why?”

“He’s pretty protective of his best friend, and he doesn’t like you too much after the whole bowling fiasco. Speaking of which, I remembered I went home with Aiden that night. Huh, where were you again?” I smirked and felt giddy at how petty I was being for once.

Leah had become so red in the face, I legitimately thought steam was going to come out of her ears. “Whatever, your petty jealousy ends here. You need to get over the fact that you’ll never get out of the friendzone with him and move on.”

I rolled my eyes and had to seriously bite my tongue. The only thought that was helping me get through this conversation was knowing I would be the one who would end up in Aiden’s bed by the end of the night and not her.

As if karma wasn’t bittersweet enough, while Leah was going off on me neither of us heard the sliding glass door until someone cleared their throat after her rant and we both turned to see none other than – Aiden.