Freshman Year – Savannah High
“Run! Run! Go! Yes!” I screamed and jumped up and down with my fists clenched so tightly the pressure started to cut off my circulation to my fingers. I was cheering like a crazy person when number thirty-eight leaped into the air and caught the football. He veered to the right, dodging his attackers, and half-spun, taking the ball down the field toward the goal line.
The crowd cheered.
They screamed and chanted.
Hundreds of feet stomped against the bleachers.
When thirty-eight crossed into the end zone, everyone went wild.
When I turned back to face the stands, my heart thumped right along with them, but my feet became rooted to the track. Standing there in the middle of the steps that separated two sides of the metal bleachers was high-school heartthrob RJ Watson, the boy of my teenage dreams. He stood there, scanning the crowd as his best friend Tyler trotted down the stairs ahead of him.
I wonder if he came here to see me?
A girl could hope, right?
I never expected to see him at a football game, let alone a junior varsity one. I’d actually never seen him at any of the sport events that I attended, but here he was, and he was definitely looking for someone.
Stupefied by the boy that only Lilly knew I had a major crush on, I must have been daydreaming longer than I thought. Lilly elbowed me and then handed me my pompoms. “Come on,” she whisper-shouted as she pulled me by the arm toward the field. “What’s gotten into you?” I guess she didn’t see who was in the stands.
That was when it hit me—they were here because of Lilly, who had been seeing Tyler for the last couple of weeks. My young and naive heart sank.
I shook my head, downplaying my brief star-struck moment as I gripped the handles of my pompoms just a bit harder. I followed Lilly onto the track and climbed on to her and Piper for a thigh stand.
“Make that point! Make that point!” I cheered my heart out and snuck a quick peek over my shoulder, wanting to know if he was still there.
He was, but he wasn’t alone, and my heart sank a bit more, my smile losing a bit of its shine. Carla Jones sat so close to RJ that she was practically on his lap. She was the most popular girl in school, not to mention the sweetest. Seeing them there together was a simple reminder that RJ was way out of my league.
I turned away and back to the game. Our next cheer was one of my favorites, and it was also one that I needed to focus on. I hated to admit it, but there was more than one occasion where I was almost dropped. I didn’t need to be carted off to the trainer’s room so I could ice an injury, or worse, to the ER.
The sound of the kicker’s cleat connecting with the football got my attention. The ball sailed in a beautiful symmetrical fashion between the goal posts, making the extra point. We cheered for our boys and got back into formation, carrying on with our sideline cheers.
My attention was never entirely focused on cheering, though. My eyes kept darting to where RJ and Tyler sat, and when I looked and didn’t see Carla next to RJ anymore, I didn’t try to hide the smile. What I hadn’t counted on was RJ’s smile back. I turned away, again, and faced the field.
No, he wasn’t looking at me.
That smile wasn’t for me.
It was nothing but wishful thinking on my part that a boy like RJ would ever be interested in a brainy girl like me. Besides, there were eight other cheerleaders on the track, so I couldn’t be sure I was the one he was looking at.
Belting out cheer after cheer, jumping around like crazy beans, time came for the half-time show and I knew I had to get over my infatuation. But not before getting one last dose of self-inflicted misery. I went against my better judgment and turned back one more time.
My heart burst like a firework. The sparks tingled through me, and my breath took a short pause as our eyes connected. RJ was looking at me for sure this time, but as soon as it happened, it was gone. RJ dipped his chin, hiding a smile. Then Piper ruined the moment by practically dragging me out onto the field.
Knock it off, Ads. You need to concentrate. If I were going to pull off my first-time-ever basket toss and wanted to walk away alive, focus was of the utmost importance.
Surrounded by green turf and painted white lines, I got in formation and sucked in two extremely deep breaths. The setting sun near blinding, and a mixture of fear and exhilaration ripped through me. Here went nothing.
The loud music beat out of the stadium speakers and after the first eight counts, my arms effortlessly flew into a high “V”, my hips swayed and approximately four minutes later, I had given a near flawless performance, the highlight being my awesome basket toss. I felt high, even with my feet on the ground. Excited, I faced our fans and did a short series of jumps. Then I picked up my pompoms and jogged back to the track.
The Savannah Blue Jackets’ fans cheered from the stands, clearly in agreement with the ref’s last call. The boys made a few more great plays, and just as the buzzer sounded, scored the winning touchdown, sending everyone into a wave of deafening cheers. The whole time, I had avoided looking toward RJ. There was no need to torture myself, but as we finished the winning cheer and everyone else headed to collect their stuff, I broke and peeked over my shoulder.
He was already gone.
With a little extra force, I stuffed my pompoms into my duffel bag, threw it over my shoulder, grabbed my water bottle, and searched for Lilly.
Turning from left to right, I muttered, “Lilly” but didn’t see her anywhere. I looked behind me, but she wasn’t there either. When I turned again, my eyes settled on a pair of dark brown ones staring back at me. For a the second time that night, my knees screamed at my brain, warning that they were not prepared to carry all the weight if I decided to faint.
Leaning against the chain link fence with his hands tucked deep into his front pockets was RJ.
I stood speechless.
I blinked, and he straightened.
I blinked again, harder this time, thinking he was just a figment of my imagination, but that was far from the truth. RJ was very real and slowly sauntering in my direction.
I glanced over my shoulder to check if there was someone next to me I hadn’t seen before, but it was just empty bleachers. When I turned back around, he stood a footstep just outside my personal space.
A smirk pulled at the left corner of his mouth, and just that tiny movement had me looking away so I could control the flutters taking over my stomach. I was freaking nervous.
“Hey,” he finally said. The smooth sound of his deep voice almost cracking had me biting back a smile. I stopped myself from looking over my shoulder again. The last thing I wanted was to look like I had some strange tic and scare him off if he were actually talking to me. He scuffed his foot back and forth, shifting and looking nervous. I wondered why. What did RJ freaking Watson have to be nervous about? Then it hit me. He was talking to me, and there I was like a weirdo, just staring at him. I opened my mouth to say something . . . anything . . . but he beat me to it.
“Are you waiting for someone?” He cleared his throat, and his brows pinched.
All I could manage was a small shake of my head. Why wouldn’t my brain tell my mouth to actually say anything? I’d never been scared to talk to boys. But most of those conversations revolved around academics. The focus on whatever topic we were talking about. This was something totally different.
He nodded once, and we fell quiet as his eyes locked onto mine. The intensity of his stare caused a wave of warmth to flush through me. I dropped my chin, a nervous reaction, and watched his feet shuffle forward an inch.
When I looked at him again, he was biting his lower lip, as if to hold himself back from saying anything else. Maybe he was uncomfortable. After all, I hadn’t said a single word to him yet. Chastising myself for being such a coward around him, I finally forced words past my lips. “So, do you come to the games often?”
He did that one eyebrow raise thing again, a smile bending his lips into a smirk as he shook his head.
“Umm.” I uncurled and curled my toes inside my sneakers, rocking back on my heels. He was so handsome that I couldn’t help but smile.
“So . . .” was all he said. For the life of me, I could not understand why he appeared to be as nervous as I was.
“What’s up, fucker?” Tyler said, rounding the corner with Lilly walking next to him. RJ gave me one last long look and then turned toward him. If I had to guess, he looked almost . . . disappointed. I brushed it off, though. There was no way RJ was disappointed by whatever awkward exchange just happened. Had he just been waiting here for Tyler and felt obligated to talk to me? Probably. Feeling a bit disappointed myself, I smiled at Lilly when she stopped next to me.
“Hey. You guys wanna come with?” Lilly asked, but her facial expression ordered me to say yes.
RJ cleared his throat. “Yeah . . . so you . . . you wanna come and hang out with us?”
I looked from RJ to Tyler to Lilly and back to RJ. Was he for real? My heart fluttered, a giddy feeling had me curling my toes one more time. What the heck just happened?
“Sure, where are you guys headed to?”
Tyler smacked RJ on his arm. “Cool. Meet you guys at the truck.”
RJ nodded, but they were already walking away. When he looked back at me, he held his hand out. “Let me carry that for you.” His voice was gentle, but his words were clearly a request and not a question.
RJ slid the duffel strap from my shoulder and when his hand brushed against my bare arm, I swore all the air rushed out of my lungs.
“You looked really good out there tonight.” He held his hand out, ushering me out of the stadium. “Were you afraid at all of being thrown in the air that high?” he asked, and we turned at the same time to look at one another.
“Not really.” I paused, realizing that was a lie. “Well, maybe a teensy bit.” I pinched my thumb and index finger close together, barely leaving an open space. RJ chuckled softly, and my heart melted.
“So you don’t have a boyfriend or anything, right?” He rushed out and then cussed under his breath. “Shoot. My bad—”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. And no”—I shook my head, biting the inside of my cheek to stop myself from grinning like an idiot—“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“That’s good.” He nodded. “That’s real good.” He smirked, and I went from an infatuated, dreamy-eyed teenager to a borderline love-at-first ball of mush.
If this were any indication of what the next three and a half years of high school were going to be like, I wanted to make sure I enjoyed every single second of it—preferably with RJ Watson next to me.