Goals Off Court | SatoSere

Chapter 32 - Inevitable Feeling

"It's okay," she exhaled quietly. "We don't have to talk about it."

He couldn't read the tone in her voice anymore, but he knew that was the end of that conversation. She did that a lot. Ignore—

"Great, here. This is my favorite scene. Watch it."

"Yes, ma'am."

She also loved to give him orders and he wasn't complaining.

It was soon two in the morning and Serena couldn't be any more awake. She had showered and put her hair in a messy bun – and went to bed before twelve, as she always did. The movie was done and she had fell asleep on Ash again. She assumed he ended the call when he realized she did.

But now, there was just no way she could sleep.

Maybe it was because she had, in fact, drank cups of coffee just to focus on her schoolwork, or maybe it was because she simply couldn't stop replaying that whole day in her head, non-stop. How she couldn't bring herself to forget the things that she had so intently memorized about Ash, what she willfully learned about him, everything she kept imagining and speculating that couldn't wait.

She wanted to put it down. To put him down.

To freeze all the little shots of him she had taken with her brain, so she wouldn't ever lose them. She could.

Sitting in her pajamas on the corner of her bed, Serena couldn't look away from her phone sitting on her nightstand. When it came to herself, she already had the device in her hand, unlocking it and opened to her home screen. Her thumb scrolled to her camera roll and and her eyes fell to her recent picture, ignoring the others. It was as instinctual as breathing, as moving a limb, as talking.

She waited a second, two, waited for something to come to her, and she clicked on it. The first thing she noticed was his brown eyes with golden specs hidden. Terribly, lethally gold. The background was dark, but in the light he was in, she swore she could see it.

The shine when he looked at her.

Her gaze soften, her heart already a gear faster. This was the same Ash she spent the whole day with, the same mouth that grinned and joked and made her laugh. The same untamed hair that was never in place, the rebel strands falling over and around his face, unconformed, and how that contoured his features.

The same eyes she never looked at for too long, too incisive, too cutting. The slope of the jaw, sharp, the turn of his ear partially hidden by tousled hair. The tilt of his brow, the sharp inquisitiveness and confidence that accompanied his sights. The edge. The focus.

She thought about the long, tufts of eyelashes that shaped his look. The usual arch in his thick brow, the keen shape it made when he was concentrated, always set to whatever became his eye's target. His Z marked cheeks, unique and fitting. His mouth, to the stabbing part his lips made when he was listening attentively to something, full and stout and impossible to look at just once.

He was so serious and so handsome, too.

Serena's realization of her actions only kicked in when her phone when dark, her reflection showing through it. She laid back in her bed, completely, utterly astounded. She was feeling several things. She had to go back to sleep. She swallowed hard, looking back down at her phone before her. She didn't rightly know why — perhaps she had an idea, but in her gut, she could feel it.

She was in trouble.

Throughout the day, Ash felt oddly frustrated, like something wasn't right. It was stupid. His practice with Serena went well the other day and she seemed enthusiastic instead of pissed, which was a plus. However, for some reason, Ash couldn't shake the feeling she was underestimating him.