A and D

A and D (10)

I frowned in confusion. "You've been looking at her differently for the past few weeks," I told him. "I noticed."

Not just that, I'd been watching him. I didn't tell him about it until now because I wanted to be certain that I wasn't just seeing things. But I always caught him looking at Dakota's direction. Why would he look if he was not interested? Why would he be all ears whenever I talked about her? I know I was onto something here. So why did he deny it?

"You're getting the wrong idea," he said, looking me straight in the eye. I can see that he was hesitating as he said the next words, "I'm interested in someone else."

I blinked. "Who?"

Luke didn't answer. He just stared at me. It was quite obvious that he was deciding whether to tell me or not. This was the first time he hesitated on telling me something before. If so, then the girl must be really important to him.

BAM!

The locker room doors suddenly opened. Ethan came inside the room. He looked at us as though we were crazy.

"Dude!" he exclaimed. "Where the hell have you two been? They're waiting outside. We have a game to play, you know."

Luke and I exchanged looks. Without a word, we went outside.

I could hear the crowd's noise by the bleachers. And when we stepped into the light, there was a roar of cheers from the crowd. I could hear my name being chanted along with our team name 'Stallions.' In an instant, I felt excellent – refreshed, even. And even though I know that we would be wasting our time putting effort in this game, I felt the need to do my best.

This was what I always felt whenever I hear the crowd yell my name. My thinking gets over powered by my instincts. And my instincts have never failed me before.

We went to Coach and waited for our names to be called for the introduction. The announcer blabbed on with the usual greetings. Then, he finally announced the starters.

"The starters for the Mount Valley High School Stallions are Aaron Ford, Luke Wright, Ethan Tyler, Nigel Collins, and Sam Castillo," the announcer's voice boomed in the gym, I now recognized him to be Eunnikoh Montgomery – a sophomore from the AV club. We called him 'Nick.' There was no other way to describe him other than he reminded me of a bear. But not the scary one.

Anyway, the guys and I went to the middle of the court while Nick announced on the microphone the other team's starters, "And for the Franken Stein High School Sharks, we have Christopher Wilson, Bryan Sanders, Adam Lively, John Ray Olsen, and Nathan Moscovitch."

I couldn't deny that I heard the sniggers from our side of the bleachers. Like I said before, their school's name sounded comical.

Afterwards, we returned to our bench and removed our jersey jackets. I grabbed my bottle of water and took a drink.

"Have fun winning, jock," someone said with a bored voice behind me.

I knew that voice so well that I didn't need to turn around to see whom it belonged to. Nevertheless, I glanced at Dakota and let out a crooked smile.

I certainly will.

The buzzer went off, which was the cue for the players to go inside the court. And then the game began...

* * * * *

The base of the music from the stereo system made the chandelier tremble. A lot of people were dancing wildly in the living room. Some were taking a swim at the pool outside. A few couples were making out in every corner of the house.