Schoolbus Graveyard Ships+More

Failure and frusturation

(Aiden and Ashlyn are at the city park walking around when they find a good passtime)

Ash's POV:
     My mom drives me to the park and drops me off, zooming out of the parking lot once I'm no longer in the car. I check the group chat another time and nearly die of annoyance. Tyler had a baseball practice and so moved our hangout an hour later. Fuck.

I decide to text Aiden.

----------------------------------------------
                            Aiden

                                 (Hey, Aiden, I forgot           
                                  to double check the          
                                  gc and im here early,        
                                  can you come too?)
(Ash im alr here)
                                                    (Wait why)
(Same reason as
you i guess, im at the
Basketball hoops)

----------------------------------------------

I read his text and head over to the hoops. I see him there dribbling and practicing half-court shots.

     "Aiden!" I yell to him as I walk over.

"Whats good, Ash?"

     "Not much, I'm bored as hell right now." I respond.

     "Wanna shoot some hoops with me?" He tosses me the ball.

     "I'll see if I can. I used to play basketball. I regionals twice." I state, matter-of-factly.

     "We'll see if you're rusty." He smirks. We practice for awhile, turns out he's right. I suck absolute ass at basketball, and my competitiveness makes losing repetitively very infuriating.

     At one point I'm so sweaty and gross and not good at basketball that I nearly ripped my hair out.

      "Ash, stop that." Aiden says, pushing my hands off my head. "You won't always be good at everything."

     "Came to rub it in, huh?" I say, my temper now starting to boil.

     "No, just- lets do something else, alright?" He suggests.

"What, Soccer? Baseball? Tennis? Wanna beat me at that too?"

"What? Ash, you're not making sense just chill for a sec-" He puts his hands on my shoulders "talk to me."

"You're a patronizing asshole." I snap, walking away. He lets out a dramatically loud frustrated sigh but doesn't follow me. I sit on the bench him and I sit on when we get ice-cream together. I bluetooth my AirPods to connect with my phone and listen to 'pages turn' by 28th day. After a few more songs and about 30 minutes, Aiden sits next to me.

"Piss off Aide-"

"Wait. Please. I wanna talk." He interrupts. I sigh,

"What about?" I ask. I look at his face, and instead of his normal smirk plastered on his face, he looks concerned.

"What was that? Genuinely." He questions.

"What?"

"Ash, what do you mean 'what?' you got pissed and ran away. I wanna talk about it."

"So talk."

"Alright, are you ok?" His concerned look becomes more intense.

"What do you mean?"

"Ashlyn, don't play dumb. You know I didn't mean to make you feel patronized. You're an extremely capable, clever, person." I somehow can't sense sarcasm in what he says.

"Oh yeah?" I start. "Then why is it that you're better than me at everything, and you don't ever try at anything. You're flawlessly perfect and I always look like an ignorant moron next to you."

"Ashlyn... No." My face scrunches in confusion, as does his. "Ash, you're- YOU are about the most perfect person I've ever met in my life -in fact
-if i dreamed the perfect girl, she'd not even get close to you're level. What the hell- sorry- WHO the hell are you talking about because YOU are nothing like what you just described." We both sit in scilence for a second.

Then, I stand up, him still man-spreading on the bench, and give him a hug and a kiss, and then I say,

"Wanna go shoot some hoops?"