First and Tension (Summersweet Island 4)

“No one is trying to ruin your life,” Wren says with a roll of her eyes. “I thought helping out with coaching at cheer practice tonight would put you in a good mood.”

I smile out at the formation of fifteen girls on the field, even when they all completely screw up a move in the middle of the dance they’ve been practicing for the last hour and a half.

“Girls! Get it together! You need to get those high-kicks in sync!” I shout over the music currently playing from a portable speaker sitting on the sidelines next to me. “Once more, from the beginning!”

Grabbing my phone off the top of the speaker that’s connected to the Bluetooth, I restart the song. While Billie Eilish sings about bad guys again, I keep my eyes glued on the girls, doing a toned-down version of their moves with them, and continue my conversation with Wren, who’s sitting on one of the sideline benches a few feet away.

“You know I love you more than anything for telling me Kristen had anniversary plans with her husband and needed a fill-in tonight. Coaching definitely cheers me up, pun intended.”

Before I tried out for the Vipers and moved to California, I was the varsity cheerleading coach for the high school. After I moved away, whenever I came home for a visit, I always made it a point to stop by and say hello to the girls and to give coach Kristen a break at practice. Kristen Gray and I cheered together all through high school, and she was the best person to take over the job when I left. I love being able to give back to my community, sharing my experience of being a professional cheerleader with these girls and spending a few hours doing what I love most in the world. It makes me forget about all my troubles.

Unless those troubles start with the letter Q.

I’m now realizing nothing in the world can make me forget about him.

“Can you just admit you’re not pissed Bodhi divulged your secrets and that you’re just sad and feel sick to your stomach, because Quinn left, and you screwed up yet another chance with him?”

I completely forget the next move I’m supposed to be executing, helping the girls out from the sidelines in case they forget. I don’t mess up. Ever. It doesn’t matter that I just learned this intricate routine less than two hours ago. That’s what life as a professional cheerleader is. A choreographer walks into the studio at 6:00 p.m., and by 7:30 p.m., you have to do the entire routine you just learned… absolutely perfect and game-day ready… by yourself… in front of everyone. Because at 7:45 p.m., that choreographer is ready to move on to the next dance you need to learn for the game that weekend, which will be nationally televised, in which you stand at the very front point of the entire forty-girl formation. If you mess up even one little thing, if you bob your head when you’re supposed to look left, you don’t cheer that weekend. And if you don’t cheer that weekend, an alternate will happily take your place. And your paycheck. We work forty hours a week, only to be paid for the handful of hours we work on Sunday. It’s hardcore and not for the weak. I don’t screw up, even when I’m wearing a hoodie and cut-offs, doing half-assed moves with no one watching.

Fucking Quinn Bagley.

“You just messed up,” Wren whispers, her eyes wide with shock, as I quickly recover by pretending like I meant to stop right there in the middle of the routine and redo my messy ponytail. “Awww, you really do miss him!”

“Shut up!” I fire back at her, shoving my hands in my hoodie pocket when the girls can’t get it together and completely shit the bed on the rest of the routine before they all fall into exhausted heaps on the turf.

It’s not like he owes me anything. He doesn’t need to tell me what he’s doing or where he’s going. But that’s what it all boils down to. I am sad that he left, and in just one day, I seemed to have slipped right back into the sad, pathetic existence I was living here on the island before he showed up out of the blue and flipped my world upside down all over again. And now I can’t even focus on cheerleading.

Quinn Bagley broke me!

I’m sad, because he spent all day making me have the most annoying fun I’ve had since the last time I spent a few hours with him, and then poof! He just left and took all the good times with him without even a goodbye.

“He sure gave up easy, didn’t he? Not very dedicated to his favor-cause if you ask me,” I grumble, smacking my fingers against the screen of my phone to turn off the music.