Millie

Chapter Thirteen- Getting the call up

As the whistle blew on an intense game, Clark threw herself at me to celebrate our final win of the summer. I lifted her as her legs wrapped around my waist and our sweaty body's merged for a second.

"Great goal Nomikos" she praised as she jumped down and beat her fist into my shoulder.

"Great assist" I praise back, rubbing the place she had pummelled below my shoulder. "Dream team is back in action"

Clark blew out hot air causing her blonde sweaty wisps of hair to blow upward. We both peeled off our jerseys, throwing them over our shoulders and walking across the pitch, following the team back to the showers.

"I can't wait to get back to it" she said, reaching down and picking up a soccer ball and drop kicking it halfway across the pitch. "This season is it Nomikos... beast mode activated... take no prisoners type shit"

I look to the sidelines and catch the scouts observing us all walk away. "You think they will call anyone up" I ask her, leaning in and talking quietly to be discreet.

Clark looked over and carried on walking "I hope so. I wouldn't mind a shot at the national team"

"A dream" I muse.

Clark smiled and nudged me off of my feet playfully "you actually want it now" she asked.

"I do" I confess, and I nudge her back harder. She stumbled sideways before grabbing me and lifting me off of my feet as I laughed. She threw me onto the inflatable crash pad we had been using earlier that day.

"You gonna have to fight me for it" she teased.

I struggled off of the crash pad and chased after her as she took off to the changing rooms, dodging between girls to avoid me.

Clark was the light relief I had needed in my day and the familiar here at camp that made it a home from home. Without her, it may have taken me longer to find my feet, but with her I had found them and taken off running... quite literally.

It's hard to imagine almost a year later, how we had ever slept together that one time, because now she felt so familiar to me, like family, that I couldn't and wouldn't be able to ever go there again. Sure, Clark was gorgeous, but she was friend zoned to the furthers corner of the zone and nothing she did to try and pin me down again would work. I don't think she would anyway, because Clark had bedded fifteen percent of the camp over a six week period.

For the first time this year, I was celibate, and the need to bury myself and my pain in girls had gone. I didn't want to do that anymore, it didn't help, and it only made things messy. I had already slept with the worst person I could have, my ex... Ava. That was a poor decision. Ava had feelings for me, and I had ignored all of that when we slept together after a night out before we left for the summer. I felt guilty for my part in that, and the texts from her since, they made me feel like I had led her on, and now her hopes for a reconciliation were too high. We were not getting back together.

Ava was my first love, but unlike my family history... my first love was not my truest love or my lasting love... in-fact it was what it was for many and most people...just the jumping off place.

Ava may have been the one to take my heart first, but her actions after were the reason I had withdrawn it and taken it back. Right now at this very moment, my heart was in the hands of another, right back in Portland where I had agreed for it to stay, with Millicent Dawson.

When my grandmother had text me a week or so into my stay here, I had asked her if Millie got the job I helped her apply for at the school. My grandmother had told me she had, but she couldn't find any accommodation, because she had been travelling back across country and not made the applications in time. It had taken me two seconds to type back "How about the guest house?!"