Ash's life carries on in spite of the strange goings on.

Day Three

“Hurry up, Ash!” Laurie said from outside the bathroom. I woulda said something back, but whatever I had eaten the night before had given me a diarrhea fit something awful. I wasn’t outright groaning, but nothing about this was comfortable.

When I was done, I almost wanted to step on the scale and weigh myself to see if I’d lost a visible amount of weight. It felt like I had, that was for sure. I decided against it, though. I had to get ready for school and Laurie needed her shower. I just splashed a little water on my face and then left the bathroom.

I walked into my room and grabbed my phone. There was a text from Grant.

Sck, wont be at scool, he said. He was probably shitting himself stupid, just like I was. Made me wonder what he’d eaten last night. Great, now I had scripts to get to him and no way to get them to him until I type them up after school. Maybe I could get them typed up in a free period.

I pulled off my sleep shorts and got busy getting dressed. As I was pulling on my socks, something seemed… Off. It took me a minute to place it, but then I spotted the bright yellow nail polish bottle on my desk.

I picked it up and wondered what it was doing there. Laurie liked bright yellow, so I imagined it was hers… But that didn't feel right. It wasn’t hers, it couldn't be. It wouldn't be in my room, and neither of us had gone into the other's room since we got up. That… That meant it had to be mine.

But I didn't remember buying it or having it the night before, or even when I got out of bed for my shit fit, so where the hell had it come from? The rational part of me knew I should take it to Laurie and let her have it.

A different part of me wanted to paint my nails.

Should I really listen to that part? It's not like I hadn't been the subject of schoolyard teasing before, and I was the star quarterback, so that might mitigate some of the bullshit. Or it could exponentially enhance it and I’d be the laughing stock of the school for a day or two before something else happened with someone else.

Neither Dad nor Laurie made any sort of remarks when I walked downstairs with yellow fingernails. With any luck, nobody at school would notice either, and I’d be free of any teasing. I didn't expect my day to be that easy.

Later…

Wheeler tossed me a football the second he spotted me walking through the school doors. I fumbled it a little, but didn’t drop it. He was standing next to Kathy, who was standing at my locker with her arms folded under her breasts and a look on her face that suggest I needed to be worried. I juggled the football a little then tossed it back to Wheeler and took a deep breath. This was not going to be good.

Well, at least I thought it wasn’t going to be good. She didn’t actually say anything to me as I opened my locker and pulled my books out. She instead kept staring at me, like she was trying to gaze into my soul, or some shit. Wheeler just looked like he wanted to burst into laughter.

“Okay, whaddya want, Kat?” I asked as I brushed my hair away from my eyes. I didn’t think my hair was that long. Huh.

“Your article, the one I’ve been waiting for, the ‘School Life’ one?!”

I shut my locker. “You mean the one you pulled me away from last night to go shopping?”

Her face turned red, and not just from the shade of blush she’d picked that morning. “Well, I…”

Wheeler finally broke. Almost everyone in the hallway turned to watch him fall on his ass. When he eventually stood up and composed himself, he said, “Oh… Oh man… That was worth it.”

Kat rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, I deserved that. The point is, I need it in by this afternoon.”

I smirked. “Yeah, I’ll get on that. Probably get it through lunch.”

She nodded. “Great, that works for me.” She sighed. “Sorry for treating this like it’s your fault.”

I slapped my hand on her shoulder. “Don’t sweat it.” I ruffled her hair a bit. “You’re cute when you try to be intimidating.”

Her eyes turned pure steel. “Don’t do that again, missy.” For some reason, that passed me by. “See you at lunch.” She pushed my hand away from her shoulder and sauntered off, swinging her ass side to side. I just chuckled. Kat did love the attention, even if she looked embarrassed because of it.

Wheeler leaned against the locker beside me and whistled. “You could do worse,” he said.

“Shut it.”

“Coach ain’t gonna bench you again today, is he?”

I shrugged. “Beats the hell outta me. I hope not, I don’t wanna lose my game, y’know.”

He reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of Pepsi. “Not like you’re not the best player on the team or anything, so losing your game probably shouldn’t be too much of a concern.”

I took the bottle from him and took a long gulp. “It’ll always be a concern,” I said.

“And that, my friend, is why you’re the best player on the team.” He grabbed his Pepsi back and gulped down the rest of it. “Remember, you promised to give my little sister a manicuring lesson after school today.”

I nodded as he slung his book bag over his shoulder and headed off for his class. I laughed, then opened my locker again. Of course, I’d forgotten that I’d help Kelsey after practice. I had too much on my mind.

Later…

The library was mostly empty during lunch. There were maybe three other people, not including the librarians. Not much chatter, everybody was in different parts of the library. Stephan Wolffe was over by the graphic novels, poking around the manga; Emily Forsythe was on one of the other computers on the other side of the room; and Kevin Daly was sitting at a table flipping pages in what looked like a medical textbook. It couldn’t sound more empty in there if we were all dead.

The article went smoother than I thought it would, considering I also couldn’t keep the comic out of my mind. Hand in hand, I’d type up a sentence of the article, then write down some of the comic. Productive, but almost too productive. It worried me that I would eventually lose the inspiration.

Another couple paragraphs down on the article, another page written for the comic. At some point, I’d need to type those up and get them to Grant before the end of the day. I wondered how he was doing.

How you doing? I texted him.

He sent back, Puking my guts out.

The fuck did you eat?

Crappy burrito. My mom can’t cook for shit.

I chuckled. Any pages done?

Nah, too shitty today. You?

A few. Should have em typed up before the end of school today.

Don’t rush.

No problem.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket and wondered for a second why I had so much room in that pocket. Anybody with fast fingers could reach in there and grab my phone and I’d never notice. Or maybe I needed something else to carry my phone in. I dunno, the thought was a stray and I shouldn’t have let it take up so much of my time.

I got back to the article and realized I was just shy of Kathy’s appointed word count. I either had to chop some off to finish how I wanted or throw in a semi-hasty ending. Or, I could take a third option and ask Kat to make it a two part piece. She liked me, the odds were good she’d be fine with it. At that point, I wouldn’t need too much more time.

“Are you done yet?” Kat asked, surprising me. Then I remembered she’d said she’d be here.

“Just about. You averse to this being across a couple papers?”

Her hands were on her hips and her face was extremely unpleased. “You’re kidding? First I give you extra time and now you wanna split it?”

“Please?” I asked, putting on a look of false innocence and clasping my hands together like I was praying.

She took on a look of extreme annoyance, now. “Fine, but it better be done in time for next month’s.”

I snapped my fingers. “You got it.”

She smacked me on the back of the head. “For a jock, you’re such a dork.”

“Most secretly are.”

She sat down on the table beside the computer. “So, I’ve been meaning to ask you…”

I looked up from the computer. “What?”

“What are you writing in your notebook?”

“Oh, a comic Grant and I are gonna put online.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You two write comics?”

“No, I write, he draws.” I quickly wrote a note on the side of the page about a character based on Kat. An inquisitive, semi-nagging character who would probably be a character’s friend or maybe even the main character’s potential lesbian love interest prior to discovering her sexuality.

“Aw, that’s so cute.”

I felt myself blush, somehow. Why was us doing a webcomic “cute”? Except that it almost kinda sounded like it was. Why was I thinking that?

I ignored those thoughts and instead returned my focus on both the article and the comic. Just a few more words and I could wrap up part 1 of the article and the current chapter of the comic. The comic was the most difficult. Sometimes it felt as though I was writing myself into a corner, and needed to find a way to keep going.

At least I had Grant’s art to look forward to when he got the pages.

Later…

I poked around on my phone as I sat on the toilet. I mostly looked at webcomics, primarily TG webcomics, trying to make sure I wasn’t writing too many cliche scenes into ours. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, as so many TG tropes existed in every webcomic out there. El Goonish Shive in particular played pretty much all of them with every character it could, sometimes multiple times. We obviously had the easy ones, like the main character being dragged along to buy clothes or the obligatory beach episode (who doesn’t like seeing their gorgeous female characters in bikinis?), but we were also straying away from a few of them. Brenda wasn’t the hottest girl in the comic, nor was she completely disgusted by what was happening to her.

The main thing I wanted to avoid was Misfile Syndrome, as I called it. That was a good comic, but it dragged something fierce. We weren’t going to make ours any longer than it needed to be.

I sighed. Researching webcomics to write a webcomic could be exhausting at times, especially when you’re trying to avoid their cliches, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Grant and I were gonna make the best damn webcomic that we could, and even if we didn’t hit it big, we were gonna have our foot in the door with it. Though, personally, I wanted to hit it big.

I took a moment away from my phone and glanced at my fingernails, inspected them. The polish was still spotless, a very pretty looking yellow. For some reason, I felt like I should have been worried about something, but I didn’t know what. It was no secret that I wore nail polish, it never had been. Maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe I didn’t have any on my toenails. That must have been it. I had forgotten to paint my toenails.

I flushed, pulled my underwear back up, then my pants, then slipped my phone back into my pocket. I only had a few minutes left before football practice started, and I was eager to get out there. Hopefully, Coach wouldn’t bench me three days in a row.

Of course, he did just that.

Instead of being on the field running plays with the rest of the team, I sat on the bleachers with Coach. He had me running the stopwatch on the team, timing how well they did. They weren’t exactly doing great, but that didn’t mean much yet, as they’d only learned the plays five minutes before. I realized with a chuckle that we’d never really be good college players.

I stopped the watch after the fourteenth run, and Coach blew the whistle. “You’re the sorriest maggots I’ve ever seen running this field! How you get your asses out of bed in the morning amazes me, you’re so damn lazy!”

I always got a laugh out of Coach doing his drill sergeant routine. It was never a good motivator for this team, but it usually worked good enough with repeat attempts. Maybe it would work faster this time.

“Now pull your panties up and run those plays!”

I started the stopwatch again and relaxed in my seat. I should have been out running those plays with them, but I couldn’t deny the comfort of the bleachers. Hopefully I’d be back out there tomorrow, because I was sure my game would be way off. I couldn’t sit out four days and keep my nickname honorably.

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I reached for it and saw a text from Laurie. heading 2 the mall dont wait up, it read. What the hell I was “waiting up” for was a question I didn’t care to ask. She had a habit of thinking I wanted to hang out with her friends when I really didn’t. I wasn’t sure if it was just some twin thing or her thinking I was more invested in her life than I really was. Hell, she’d probably try to pass it off as helping me research the comic when all she’d want me there for is carrying the bags.

ok, I replied. I then proceeded to nearly drop my phone when Coach shouted at the team again. “Kick off those high heels and move, pansies!”

I giggled, then reset the stopwatch. I was at least getting a whole lot of laughs.

Later…

“Now, remember, shaping the nails is as important as any other part of a manicure,” I said. Kelsey watched as I shaped her nails with a file. She was really paying attention, which surprised me, since I always thought she pretty much had Wheeler’s attention span, which was so short that a fire lived longer in the vacuum of space. This whole thing actually impressed me.

Wheeler looked bored but didn’t say anything. He was probably anxious for me to finish the lesson so we could hang out. We had plans to head over to Grant’s and bug the shit out of him. Part of me knew it was a stupid, juvenile thing to do, but the rest of me just wanted to have the fun of doing it.

“Okay,” I said, “you try now.”

Kelsey grabbed the file and set to work on the nails on her left hand, as I had been doing her right. I wondered for a moment why she wanted me to give her these lessons. Judging by how pretty her nails were to start with, she kept really good care of them. I couldn’t teach her much she didn’t already know, really. Then again, manicuring was a hobby of mine. Maybe it was one of hers, and she just liked talking to somebody who shared the same interest.

Wheeler leaned forward in his extremely comfortable looking armchair. “You guys done yet?”

Kelsey just smiled. “Nope.”

He groaned. “C’mon! Ash and I have shit to do!”

I giggled. This reminded me of how Wheeler and I met. Laurie and I had been arguing about something, and Wheeler just happened by and watched. Now, I was the one just watching a different brother/sister spat.

I glanced down at my watch. “Okay, Kelsey, you’re doing great. Just run me through everything I taught you, and we’ll call this lesson over and done with.”

“Right,” she said, then her bright smile was replaced by a concerned frown. “Um… Can you take me back through that?”

I sighed. Wheeler fell out of his chair. Kelsey and I both started giggling, then I asked, “What did you fall down for?”

“I! Don’t! Know!”

Later…

“What the fuck are you guys doing here?” Grant asked. He looked miserable.

“We got bored,” Charlie said. He’d met up with us on the three block walk between Wheeler’s place and Grant’s. “And besides, what are you doing that we can’t be here?”

“Damn food poisoning wiped me out, that’s what.” He downed a half a can of soda. “How was practice?”

Wheeler answered, “Coach kept Flash off the field again, for some stupid reason.”

Grant looked over at me. “What the hell?”

“Don’t ask me,” I said, “Coach does what he wants. It’s gonna screw me up when I’m back out there, though.”

Wheeler sat down on the edge of Grant’s bed. “You’re still probably better than the rest of us, though. Coach’ll bring you back when he thinks we’ve caught up.”

Charlie grunted out a laugh. “Yeah, like that’ll ever happen. We’re the shittiest team in the county.”

“Bullshit,” I said, “we’re fucking amazing with or without me. Coach is just being too hard on you guys.”

Grant laughed. “Yeah, we need it sometimes. We damn sure aren’t the best team in the county.”

Wheeler at some point grabbed a bag of pretzels that must have been laying around somewhere, because he was munching on them like there was no tomorrow. “We’re an awesome team, we just get saddled with facing off against better teams.” He almost threw a handful of pretzels in his mouth. “But let’s put that away for now and get to some Dynasty Warriors.”

Charlie groaned. “Oh, for fuck’s sake… No! Halo or no go!”

I knew I had some big dumb smile on my face when I looked over at Grant. He, too, had a big dumb smile on his face as he turned to me.

And I felt the weirdest urge, but suppressed it. Why the hell did I want to kiss him?

Day Four

I heard my alarm going off what felt like an hour earlier than it should. I grabbed my phone and saw that it was going off at 5:45am, just like it was supposed to. Why did it feel so early, then?

I put the thought out of my mind and just turned my lamp on, then sat up. Thursday meant no football practice, which was good, since I'd probably be benched again anyway. It also meant I could get my article done. Sure, the part due today was already finished and I had a whole month left for part 2, but getting it done on time would actually be a big change for me.

I took my shower, dried off, brushed my hair… Everything I normally did, and yet something seemed off. I couldn't put my finger on it as I pulled my panties back on and went back to my bedroom.

After throwing a shirt on, I sat down at my desk and got back to work coloring the pages Grant sent to me last night. The page in question had Brenda pleading with her best friend about… Something. Honestly, I couldn’t remember, as I’d written that page weeks ago. I’d get around to remembering it when I got to the lettering.

I looked at some of the past pages and saw I'd constantly given Brenda darker colored clothes, kind like Laurie actually wore, but for some reason, that just seemed wrong now. When it came time to color her next days’ outfit, I'd make sure she wore some more colorful clothes. She wasn't an emo, or anything like that.

An hour or so into coloring, I heard my phone buzz. A second alarm? I didn’t remember setting it. Why would I only get up an hour before the bus came, anyway? But there it was, clear as day, an alarm set for seven o’clock. Weird. I wondered why I would have set it at all. Unless…

I got up and walked across the hallway to Laurie’s room, and sure enough, she was still asleep. She was clad only in her bra and boxers. “Hey, get up!”

She flipped onto her side, her back to me. “Go away, Ashley.”

I hated it when she called me that. Yeah, it was my name, and it was unisex, but it still sounded stupid. “C’mon, it’s seven.”

“Don’t care, get the hell outta my room.”

Dad just happened to be walking past as I was arguing with her. “Laurie, get your ass up now.”

She groaned, then sat up. “Fine, Jesus…” She looked over at me. “I see you’re dressed.”

I folded my arms across my chest. Yeah, I was standing there in just my panties and a shirt, but it’s not like it would take me forever to get dressed. Only like twenty minutes to both pick out my outfit and put it all on, and I was about to go do that. “Hey, I had to wake you up.”

She flipped me the bird. “Whatever. Just get outta my room.”

I just walked back to my room and set to work getting dressed.

Later…

Grant was already working on whatever page he was on when I got on the bus. It was always impressive to me how he focused on his work on the comic. The world around him was nothing compared to his art.

So, naturally, I dropped my bag on his head.

“What the hell?” he almost shouted through laughter.

“You were dead to the world again, man, had to knock you out of it.”

“Still.” He threw my bag back at me as I took my seat next to him. Did… Why did he smell different today? Was he wearing aftershave? “How goes the writing?” he asked.

I pulled out my notebook. “Almost done with this chapter, just gotta figure out the right ending.”

“What about… You were telling me about that lesbian thing you wanted to do.”

“Yeah, that girl based on Kat.”

“We haven’t introduced her yet, so how about we end the chapter with her introduction? That way Brenda has this character who never met her as a boy, but is super interested in her anyway.”

I liked that idea, honestly. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

“So, we have her…” he trailed off. “Um, whadda we have her do?”

I shrugged. “Uh, I think I had Brenda shopping for a swim suit, so having New Girl come in and admire her is a way to have her flatter and creep Brenda out.”

He nodded, an excited look on his face. “Yeah, and we'll make sure her friends aren't around for extra conflict.”

I jotted down our plans on the margin of my notebook. This was what I loved most about doing this webcomic, just the two of us hashing out ideas and plots. It made this whole thing fun, exciting even. We'd been friends forever, but working together on this thing was just great.

That urge I'd felt last night, to kiss him. I felt it again, for some reason. I wondered why I was feeling anything like this. I'd never considered that kind of thing before, so why was it running through my mind now?

Most important of all, would he mind?

What was wrong with me?

Later…

“Alright, everyone, I want you to put your pencils on your desks,” Mr. Krenzler said as he walked into the classroom. “You’ve all done that? Good.” He slammed his briefcase down on his desk. “Now I want you to put your notebooks on your desks.” Everybody followed his instructions. This was Creative Writing class, so it’s not like we didn’t have our notebooks on our desks anyway.

Benji Schneider asked, “Are we going to be tested on this?” I was sitting beside him and I wanted to smack him. Most everybody else just laughed.

Mr. Krenzler shook his head. “Not to worry, Ben, there will be no test today. There will be a challenge to you all, however. I want you to pick someone in this classroom and I want you to create a character inspired by them.” He smirked as he leaned back against his desk. “And for added challenge, I want you to pick a classmate of the opposite gender.”

I looked around at everybody else. Most everybody was annoyed at the idea of picking somebody of the opposite gender. Most likely, everybody was just gonna pick the person closest to them. Though, honestly, they still could. We were seated boy-girl-boy-girl.

Mr. Krenzler continued: “You have two weeks, and every class up until then is dedicated to this challenge, as well as whatever curriculum we have on the docket. However much you get written is of no importance, only the creativity, the wonder, the range of your story. It can be anything you like, as well, no judgments will be made for genre, so long as you keep it school appropriate.” There were many giggles from around the room, my own among them. As if any of us would do anything… Like he was insinuating. “You have fifteen minutes to pick someone, and then the writing begins!”

I looked around the room and tried to decide who to base my fictional character on. It wasn’t easy to pick, I was pretty much friends with everybody in the room. I was fairly certain I could easily mimic their personalities, and my descriptions were good enough for Grant to draw people exactly the way I wrote them, so that wasn’t a worry. I just didn’t know who to use.

That was when an idea hit me. Nowhere did Mr. Krenzler say we couldn’t pick two people, and he said we wouldn’t be judged on the genre we wrote in. I was already writing a TG webcomic, maybe a prose TG story would be just as easy to do. And since the comic was male-to-female, I could do female-to-male for the story. Sure, it’s technically not the “opposite gender” stipulation, since I was writing both, but at least the final character would be opposite of me.

Besides, it’d be fun to do a TG story for school credit. Be nice practice for my future writing career.

The girl the character would start out as would be… Tracy McMaster. Though I tolerated her, we weren’t exactly friends, because she was a bitchy cheerleader. Having a character based on her, all prissy and uptight, turned into a guy would be hilarious irony. Now to pick the guy… Benji was a stand-up kind of guy, though a little awkward. Turning the popular girl into an anxious mess would actually be a pretty good way to then have her/him break out of their shell and become a better person, maybe even more friendly.

I quickly opened my notebook and started jotting down notes, mainly about the before and after for the main character. I was starting to like this idea the more I thought about it.

“And the first one to get started is Flash,” Mr. Krenzler said with a hint of amusement in his voice. “This one’s got a career ahead of them.”

I felt myself smile at that.

Later…

I had no idea why, but changing in front of the other guys in gym class seemed… Weird to me that day. I didn’t understand it at all, but it’s not like anybody thought I was weird for deciding to change in a restroom stall. I wasn’t even the only one who did, as Charlie did the same thing, but he always did.

I slipped my gym shorts on over my panties, with this weird feeling like I was wearing the wrong shorts, but I knew I wasn’t. It was an easy feeling to ignore, though. I pulled my gym shirt over my head. My chest was kinda itchy for some reason. I'd need to deal with that eventually, somehow. Maybe… I dunno. I'd look it up online later.

I laced up my gym shoes and then mussed up my hair a little. I liked looking like I'd already had a workout before class started, made it look like I took class more seriously. Charlie did the same thing, but that was so that he didn't need to work as hard, or however the fuck he justified it. Charlie was a little more normal than Wheeler, but more of a goof than Grant.

“Dude, can you believe it?” Charlie asked as we both left our stalls.

“Generally, yeah, I believe a lot of things that don't sound like total bullshit.” I chucked some chewing gum in my mouth. “What ‘it’ is this, Charlie?”

“Swimming starts tomorrow, man. Girls! In bikinis!”

He had a good point. Until last year, girls had to either wear one piece bathing suits or cover up with a shirt. Last year, however, the gym coaches got tired of telling the girls to cover up, so the rule was tossed out. I remembered Laurie cheering, since she refused to buy a one piece she'd only wear for a week while she wore her regular bikini whenever we went to the beach.

The idea of bikinis during swim class this year was enticing. I was almost excited.

“Now that you mention it, that is something to look forward to. Who are you looking forward to the most?”

He scratched at his chin as if lost in thought. “Hmm… Amber Forsythe would look perfect in one. Maybe a nice blue one, since she wears light blue clothes most of the time.”

I nodded. “Yeah, she’d be great to look at. What about Kristie Deckard?”

His eyes lit up. He’d had a crush on Kristie since puberty set in. “Oh, man… I’d have a woody immediately, man. I’m having trouble keeping one down just thinking about her.”

I laughed. It wasn’t uncommon for us to talk about this kind of stuff, but for some reason, it seemed… Different. I couldn’t put my finger on what was so odd about our discussion. Maybe I was just thinking about other things. It wouldn’t be a surprise to me if I was thinking of either the webcomic or the story for Creative Writing instead of thinking about pretty girls.

Except that I didn’t think I was. I just thought I was, for whatever reason, uncomfortable with talking about other girls like that.

I didn’t know. I just pushed it to the side and tried to think about what kind of bikini I’d wear for swim class. Did I even have any? Maybe I should worry about that after school.

Charlie and I followed everybody else out into the gym, where Coach Brandt blew his whistle and shouted, “Alright, you limp dicks, get in your spots!” He meant our assigned “seating”, which was just a place on the gymnasium floor we were given for our warm-up exercises.

We were separated with boys on one side of the gym, closest to our locker room, and girls on the other side of the gym. For some weird reason, I felt like I was on the wrong side of the gym, like I should be sitting with the other girls. I wasn't sure why I felt this, but I worked hard to put it out of my mind as we did the warm-up stuff.

At least, I tried to. I couldn't quite get the idea that something was wrong out of my head, like I was in the wrong place, or… Or even the wrong person. I couldn't quite peg what was wrong about me or anything else, but the feeling refused to go away.

What the hell was up with me today?

Later…

“Not today, Flash,” Coach said when I got out onto the field, in my gear.

“C’mon, Coach, I’m losing my edge! Lemme play today.” I sounded somewhat like a pleading child, but at the same time, goddamnit, I needed to play.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “You’ve got what you need, but these SISSIES! can’t seem to get what they need. So, instead, I’ve got a little work for you to do.”

I sighed. “Fine. Whaddya need?”

He smirked. “Remember when I had you checking out recordings of the last game the other day? I need ya to go back over them one last time, make sure you didn't miss anything. Last call on new plays is today, that way we can get them in for tomorrow.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Take Grant with you, he's still in the shit from whatever he had yesterday.”

I nodded again. Good. Grant and I could work on those plays and get some work in on the webcomic. I'd even explain my plans for that Creative Writing story. He'd love it. Plus, just spending some time with him would be great to me. Just the two of us.

I called Grant over from the field and he hurried over. A quick explanation and he was ready to go. Wheeler was looking at us kinda funny as we left the field.

We took our gear off in the locker room, changing back into our regular street clothes. As I stood there in just my shirt and panties, I caught him taking peeks at me. “What?” I asked.

He blushed. “Oh, uh… Nothin’, man.” He then turned to face away from me. “Yellow looks pretty on you, by the way,” he said so quickly I wasn't really sure he said it.

Pretty? Me? I felt myself blush.

Later…

I crashed on my bed and breathed a sigh of relief at being home after such a weird day. The weirdest thing about it being that I really couldn't tell what was weird about the day. Everything was completely normal, but nothing was normal at all.

I heard my phone buzz. A text, or a game notification, or something. I reached into my back pocket and pulled the phone out. A text, it seemed.

From Grant.

I felt myself blush, for whatever reason. He wasn't in the room, he couldn't see me. He was my best friend, why was I so… So nervous about this? We texted each other all the damn time. What the hell was wrong with me?

hey got 3 more pgs done he texted. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was almost worried it would be something else.

send em over & ill get to coloring I sent back.

u busy tmrw nite? he asked.

Why did he ask that? What was… What was he going to ask if I said I wasn't busy? What the hell was going through my head right now?

I shook my head, needed to drive away the crazy or the stupid or the whatever the hell. no I responded.

wanna c a movie?

I felt my heart racing for some reason. A movie? The two of us? What was even playing? sure I answered.

I agreed to go to the movies with a guy. With my best friend. This wasn’t something new, but it felt so very different now that it was crazy. Why the hell did I feel like something had changed between us when everything was exactly the same? What was so wrong with me?

An hour or two later, after some coloring and some writing and then brushing my teeth, I slipped into my nightie and dropped onto my bed. I stared at the ceiling in the dark for a long time, not sure what had really happened. For whatever reason, going to the movies with a guy I’d gone to the movies with a hundred times before was suddenly different than it ever had been. This was nothing new, and it was completely new.

I felt my dick stirring in my panties, signaling that I was aroused. Aroused! Aroused by going to the movies with Grant! What was wrong with me? Why was this such a big deal?

My chest started to itch again, so I let my hand move away from my cock and scratched at my chest. There, something to take my mind off of Grant for a little while…

But only a little while.

I reached for my phone on my night stand, tapped the calendar app and set a reminder for “Movies with Grant” on tomorrow night. I even left a little heart emoji beside Grant’s name. This was a big deal. I may not know why, but I knew it was, and I had to treat it like it was.

I was going to the movies with a guy, and that was huge.