My Buddy Archie [1]

09..

Another couple days went by. I saw Mrs. Keller only one other time, when I was dropping Archie off on Monday, and she had the nerve to glare at me from her car. She was being immature, so I didn’t even bother to look at her for too long. Trisha apologized to me multiple times for the incident, but I assured her it wasn’t her fault. For some reason, she thought the fight between Miles and Archie reflected the daycare as an institution, and that it was push me away. In my opinion, she was freaking out way more than necessary; she calmed down in a couple days though.

On Wednesday I only had half a day of work, so at around noon I called Bucky, knowing he didn’t work in the middle of the day on Wednesdays, asking him if he was up for tennis at the Rec Center.

“Yeah, mate! This is just what I need.”

“Things been tense lately?”

He sighed, “Sunny’s just being her usual obsessed with work self. I’ve barely seen her since she got here, even though it was her idea to live together.”

“Oh.” I scratched my neck, trying to think of a temporary solution for his problem. “Well, what’s she doing right now? She can come play with us.” It had nothing to do with the fact that I was also thinking about how I hadn’t seen her since we ran into each other in the market. “Does she like tennis?”

“No, but it wouldn’t kill her to stop working. Hold on a sec.” He put the phone down and I heard his feet walking away. Muffled voices could be heard in the distance, bickering probably, before Bucky came back. “Yo, she’s coming. I told her she can be ball girl.”

I laughed, “Alright, whatever, I’ll see you in a bit.”

“See ya!”

I hung up and scrambled around to shower and change, switching outfits about three times, which was stupid since I only ended up putting on sweatpants over basketball shorts and a t-shirt. My keys, wallet and phone were snatched up and jammed in the pockets of my jacket just before I heard the doorbell.

I opened the door, greeted by Bucky wearing basically the same thing as me. Connie though was wearing a nice purple sweater with, what looked like, the same bottoms and shoes that she wore to the market. Still, she looked good.

Stopping myself from looking at her for longer than considered socially ‘okay’, I nodded for both of them to follow me out the garage door. We piled in my car, but I didn’t notice that Connie had to go around to get in on the other side, until I was adjusting the mirror. My heart dropped a little. I should’ve taken Archie’s damn car seat out! She didn’t say anything about it, and neither did I, but the whole ride I was self-conscious of what kind of trash she was probably sitting in. God…

Bucky did most of the talking in the car. Once we were in the Rec Center though, on the tennis court, Connie actually spoke up.

“Bucky, since when could you play tennis?”

“Since today.”

I laughed and served the ball, “I’m not very good, so I’m not much of an opponent.” Bucky sprinted to hit the ball back, only to send it out of bounds. “Though, I’m not that bad.”

“Oh shut up,” he grumbled over Connie’s giggle.

After a couple failed attempts, we finally got a good rally going, though it broke that whole ‘one bounce’ rule. I didn’t consider myself too stressed before this, but the exercise did a good job at relaxing me further. It was just…fun to run around like this, to laugh at our complete inability to actually play the game.

Connie was seated in a chair on Bucky’s side of the court scrolling through her iPad and being a very useless ball girl. The times I glanced at her though, it seemed like she was having a hard time focusing, her vision constantly flicking to Bucky and I. At one point though, she had enough and got up.