She's Just That Kind of Girl

Seven | Violet

            "It's my life."

            I turned to face him. "That's not what I asked you."

            Tanner stared at me through his mask and I did the same through mine. Was he afraid to say anything or give me a straight answer? He cocked his head, about to answer when I suddenly felt a sharp pain hit my arm.

"Dios mío!" I fell to the ground grasping my hit arm.

            More balls came our way so Tanner dived to my side. "Move your hand." He commanded softly.

            Slowly I removed my hand from my arm and he slid to my other side to examine it. A yellow paint splatter was all that was there. "You'll be lucky if you don't get a welt, but you should be fine. You weren't shot from a close range," he stated like a doctor, shooting me a grin for reassurance.

            I shot back up. "Thanks Tanner. Ready to do this?"

            Mischievously smiling as he nodded, we sprinted out of the woods closer to where Dallas and Sel were and slid down behind the closest shield to their fence.

"You never did answer my question by the way," I reminded him, keeping my eye on the fence.

            I could feel him eyeing me from behind. "No, not really. Like I said, it's my life and I love football so it's fun to talk about it. I'm a guy after all."

            I glanced back at him. "It's about time you answered."

            He smiled. "Don't forget, I still have paintballs."

            A paintball hit our shield with a big thud! "Puf, let's get this over with. Shall we?" I asked.

            "We shall." Tanner agreed, pretending to cock his gun and I smiled. We got up again and ran all the way around the fence, dodging paintballs along the way. At some point I did a beast somersault that propped me back up, something I've always wanted to do like in the movies. Though we didn't avoid getting hit by balls, which hurt a lot, the adrenaline helped with that.

            Once on their side we took a few shots at them, they squealed as they got hit. They were covered in paintballs, just like I imagined Tanner and I were. Tanner and I laughed and high-fived each other. Dallas didn't look happy at all but Selena seemed to have taken it in stride, even laughing at herself and high-fiving us.

            After that, we spent two hours playing on the field. By the end of it all, all of us were covered in colorful splatters. "Hey Tanner, mind taking a picture?" Selena asked, handing him her iPhone.

            "Sure," he took it and held it up. We did one shot with Selena in the middle with her gun pointed at the camera and we were on the sides with our guns up, all of our helmets still on. Then we took our helmets off and tucked them in between our arms on our sides and our guns strapped over our shoulders with steely expressions as if we were posing for a magazine shot.

            He gave Selena her phone back. "You guys are crazy," Tanner chuckled.

            "You just now pulled that conclusion together?" Dallas asked.

            "Nah, Violet was pretty much the preparation warning."

            I glared at Tanner, jokingly of course. Or maybe I wasn't.

            Scott came back just in time as we were finishing up. "Did y'all have fun?"

            We agreed in our ways.