Never Fall in Love with the Fisher Boys

19- Go Jags!

“Heels.”

“I like them.”

“They’re nice,” I agreed. “But really. Heels. Who wears heels to school?”

Carter laughed across the table from me as I continued to complain about the black bootie heels that Paige had given me to borrow for the day. “You, apparently.”

“It isn’t natural,” I refuted with a huff as I took a bite of my cereal. “Just because I’m on the soccer team, I have to dress up every Thursday.”

“Well, not every Thursday,” He justified. “Only when you have a home game.”

“Okay, it still sucks,” I sighed. “This is so stupid.”

“I think that you look nice,” He told me as Will came into the room and grabbed an apple for breakfast.

“I appreciate that,” I told Carter, hoping that I was not blushing although I felt like I was. If I was though, neither Carter nor Will said anything about it. “But seriously. Heels.”

It was apparently a tradition, Paige explained to me at school the previous day, that the whole team dress up for school on the day of each home game as a good luck charm type of thing. Kind of like throwing a prep rally for ourselves. I thought that the whole thing was nice, the whole tradition and everything, but that didn’t make the heels on my feet any less uncomfortable.

“Oh yeah, your first game is tonight. Nervous?” Will wondered, leaning against the counter across from the table.

I just shrugged and took another bite of cereal. “Not particularly. Just a little bit, I guess.”

“Well, we’ll all be there cheering you on,” He said.

“All of you?” I asked curiously. I knew that Andy was going to the game (if not for me then for Sophie) and Tommy was going to bring Anna but I hadn’t expected Will to go considering we weren’t very close and I assumed that Carter wouldn’t want to go since his ex-girlfriend is starting forward.

“Yeah, did you think that we’d miss your first game?” Carter asked me with raised eyebrows.

“I wasn’t sure,” I admitted. “You guys don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“We’re going,” Will said to me with a certain level of stubbornness as it was time to start to leave to get to school on time. “Even Ace and Alijah are looking forward to seeing the game tonight.”

I thought that everybody was getting a little bit over-excited about the whole thing- my mom had rarely ever gone to any of my games and I wasn’t used to so much support from the people around me, but I was confident that I could get used to this. It felt nice to have people standing with me- having my back.

In school, I noticed a lot of people waving at me, smiling at me, talking to me. I quickly realized that it was because of the way that I was dressed, people realized that I was part of the soccer team and decided that they wanted to be really nice. I usually wasn’t a fan of so much attention but I kind of liked being noticed a little bit in the hallways as my heels clacked against the tiled floors on my way to lunch.

I even got hit on by somebody in my creative writing class which was embarrassing, but also a little bit flattering. A lot of people wished me luck at the game though, so I’d just smile and say thank you.

At lunch, I sat with the team again but this time, I noticed that a lot of other people were sitting at the table too.

“I told you,” Sophie told me with a bright grin. “Once people know that you’re on the team, it’s basically instantly getting your name out there.”