Comfy Closets - Chapter 5: Chapter 5

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.”
She was so close. I felt her every breath on my face and smelt the sweat on her skin with a hint of her rose perfume buried beneath. I couldn’t stop my thoughts of how intimate this moment felt. I was never attracted to Olivia before, but I’ve always thought she was really pretty, and now with her up close to me, I could confirm to myself that she was indeed a beauty.
I swallowed a big gulp out of nervousness. “Um, y-yeah, it’s alright. It’s soccer, gets pretty competitive…” I trailed off, unable to tear my eyes away from her lightning blue ones. She must’ve felt my hands on her waist because she looked down with a glance before focusing her eyes back on me with a curious glint.
Hearing footsteps approaching, I was finally able to make myself look away, looking to the side to see our teammates approaching in concern. “You guys alright? That was a rough collision,” I heard Camilla voice out with worry.
Realizing how long we’ve been in this position, I quickly let go of her waist and gently pushed her off me to the side, sitting up as they arrived to check up on us.
“I feel fine, just a little bruised up,” I stated, with a hand rubbing my head to feel the small bump on the side from the fall. I kept my head down, unable to meet Olivia’s eyes after that look she gave me.
I felt like I crossed a line just now with my actions. Although it was done unconsciously, it was nonetheless intimate and not something I should’ve done with my teammate.
She didn’t know about my sexuality, and somehow, I felt that made it worse, as if I took advantage of the fact that she didn’t know. I’ve never felt like this before, and to make it worse, she now might know about the one secret I’ve always been careful to try and hide.
Our teammates helped us onto our feet, dusting us off from the grass and dirt that stuck to our kit and skin. I waved them off after that, feeling better now that I was on my feet and walking.
I picked up the courage to lift my head and looked over at Olivia to see if she was alright and found her looking straight at me with a confused expression, like she was puzzled about something.
The coach quickly jogged over to check up on us too. “You girls alright? Be careful next time, Farrow. We don’t want any injuries, especially so close to our match next week,” she reprimanded, putting a hand on my shoulder to make sure we were alright.
“Yes, coach. Sorry, coach,” Olivia said, bowing her head in shame.
“Alright. Girls! Take a water break. We’ll be back in 2,” coach informed everyone. They started walking to the bench for a quick drink, with me and Olivia lagging behind.
“Sorry again, cap. Is your side alright? Did you hit your head?” she questioned worriedly, touching my head slightly to see the damage done.
“I’m alright, Liv. It was just a small tumble, I’ve had worse,” I chuckled slightly, wincing a bit when she pressed the small lump starting to form. I avoided looking into her eyes, for fear she’d figure out that something was wrong and press me about it.
“You sure? We can sit down for a bit until it feels alright.”
I hesitated for a bit, not sure if I wanted to hang around her after I crossed the boundary she didn’t even know I crossed, but I gave in when I saw her concerned face looked up to me. “Yeah, that sounds good. How about you? Are you feeling alright?”
“I’m good. You took the brunt of the fall, so I guess I should say thanks for being my human buffer slash saviour?” she grinned with humour.
“It was my honour, my lady,” I dramatically announced in a poor imitation of the English accent, chuckling afterwards as I bowed for dramatics’ sake. Guess I learnt a thing or two from Gia.
We both laughed at our own antics as we got to the benches and sat down. However, now that the distraction was gone, I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering back to the moment we had lying on the grass. I internally cursed myself for slipping for one second, and now Liv might suspect that I might be into girls.
Wracking my brain for a plan to deviate her possible suspicion, I could only come up with one solution that might side-track any thoughts she had about that.
“Umm, ahh, so w-what are your thought on Conner? Captain of the swim team?” I nervously stuttered out as I ran a hand through my hair, desperately trying to distract her from what happened.
She looked at me weirdly for a second, as if wondering where that out of the blue question came from, before replying. “He’s alright, I guess. I’m not really into him, but he seems nice, at least when he’s not with the lads. Why?”
I forced my next words out with difficulty, not believing a single word that came out, but hoping she did, nonetheless. “I-I think I’m into him.”
She stared at me as I looked down and played with my fingers. She seemed unsure of how to answer my statement.
Finally, after what felt like minutes when it was only seconds, she spoke again. “Oh, cool. You should go for him then, see how things go. I heard he likes you, so maybe asking him out wouldn’t be so hard.” She said enthusiastically, although it sounded a bit forced near the end.
I subtly let out a breath of relief, glad she bought my fake attraction to the guy.
Honestly, I thought he was a pretty cool guy, quite the charmer. But as Liv said, he acts like a douche when around his friends, just to get a good laugh. Many of the guys here did that too and sadly it really took away from their attractiveness.
Well, it’s a good thing I’m not into boys.
“Yeah, I might just do that,” I lied.