My skin burns from the sounds I can now only vaguely hear.

Ashley, Ashley, Ashley—the walls are thinner than you realize.

And he’s more into you than you realized.

I bury my head in my pillow, giggling hysterically.

But.

WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS MEAN?

Sixteen

Georgia

The next few days I hardly see my roommate at all; he’s all but ghosted me, if you don’t count the fact that we live under the same roof and sleep down the hall from one another.

He must be avoiding me.

Not surprising, since he was jerking off and calling out my name the other night.

I’m sitting in the grass watching Veronica do the high jump at the end of the stadium field, the vault set up in the end zone. So far she has made it over the bar every time with ease, an impressive feat considering she’s not that tall and not that fast.

If it weren’t for Ronnie’s bad attitude, I would admire her more. I would want to be her friend. Unfortunately, her attitude stinks, and if she weren’t my teammate, I wouldn’t be sitting here now clapping and cheering for her victory.

She lands on the mat, on her back, barely getting over without knocking the bar off the rack. I think the next time she runs, leaps, and goes over may be her last, and she is the last event of the day, which means I will get to leave and go home.

Actually…

I think Ashley has a match today, too. I think I remember seeing it written on the calendar he keeps on the fridge, his schedule scribbled in black dry erase marker in sloppy letters and numbers I can scarcely make out.

If I’m remembering correctly, his is at home too.

Perhaps the rugby team needs cheerleaders the same way we do to motivate us.

I was right.

Ronnie is done.

She hasn’t been able to make it over the pole without knocking it off, finishing her for the day.

Fortunately for our team and the points system kept for track and field events, Ronnie has scored enough points to put our team in first place and probably make us the winners of this meet.

Which puts us in the top three for our entire division.

I push myself off the ground, wiping grass off my ass and the back of my legs, heading over to our coaches, who congregate near a bench with all the water and the trainers. They usually go over the day, giving us notes and sometimes criticism while we’re standing around, and they tell us what time to be at our team meeting the following morning.

Early.

I hate having to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to sit in a meeting when I’m barely awake and retaining little to no information, but that’s just the way it is.

Practices before class and sometimes in the middle of the day to stay conditioned is what it takes to compete at this level.

I don’t bother going to the field house to shower and change out of my clothes, heading for the locker room. I have a spare set in my locker so I won’t have to wear my track uniform to Ashley’s rugby game.

That’s where I’m headed, and I want to make sure I have time to get there before it’s over.

I want to see him play.

He’s been ignoring me for days, and I miss him. In an odd, weird way, I miss him.

The house has been too quiet.

He cannot avoid me forever.

If ambushing him is what I have to do, ambushing him is what I will do.

Googling the rugby schedule on my phone, I walk toward the outskirts of campus, following the sidewalk to the park where I’ve seen rec leagues play; there’s a big field for intramurals, and I know I’m in the right spot a few minutes later when I come through a row of residential houses and the field appears.

It’s filled with dirty giants.

Grunting, shouting, dirty giants, tossing around an oblong ball that kind of looks like a football but isn’t.

I walk the perimeter of the field to the opposite side where guys in our school colors sit, lining a wooden bench, bleachers behind them.

The crowd is sparse, but loud—and I lean over to ask a guy seated nearby what the score is and who’s winning. I know absolutely nothing about rugby.

The score is three to one, our game.

Good.

Still, I have zero clue what’s happening on the field, transfixed as a mass of players begins piling up when one goes down, climbing over each other, elbows and knees flying.

Faces get smashed.

Mud everywhere.

One guy’s nose begins to profusely bleed as he steps away from the pack, and for the love of all that is holy, what the hell is going on?

I’d compare the sight to a cross between the Scottish Highland games and an actual brawl—it’s not a fight but it looks like one?

I’m so confused.

Not sure what I was expecting, but this was not it.

No wonder Ashley is so damn tired all the time, bumps, bruises and scrapes on every part of his body. The black eye he had that first night we met, the scar on his left eyebrow, the cut lips.

Sheesh.

It’s a shocker he still has all his teeth. Honestly.

I lean over to the same guy who gave me the score to ask, “Does rugby have halves or quarters?”

He gazes back at me like I have three heads. “Halves.”

“How many?”

Another odd look. “Two.”

“Okay, thanks.” I should have googled it instead. “Um. Where are we at in this game?”

“Ten minutes left in the second half.”

“Awesome. Thanks.”

I rest back against the cold metal bleacher behind me, doing my best to identify Ashley on the field.

In a strange way, all the players look the same.

Big.

Covered in mud.

Why are they covered in mud—it hasn’t rained outside. Do they drench the field with water before each match? There’s no other explanation for it!

What an odd game this is.

Only a few of them are wearing helmets with ear guards. The others are insane, no doubt, not afraid of having their brains addled by an errant knee to the cranium.

Most—from what I can see at this vantage point—are wearing mouth guards.

Spit. Blood.

I lean over again. “Excuse me—sorry. Would you happen to know which player is Ashley Jones?”

My bench partner scans the field, squinting. Searching. “Uh, yeah, he’s number nine I think.”

Number nine.

Tall, muscular, filthy.

Clearly out of his damn mind because he has no safety gear on his head, hair mussed and shooting in different directions, perspiration dripping down his forehead.

I can see it from here.

Ew.

So sweaty.

So gross.

He’s dodging and weaving on the field, headed straight for the kid with the ball, a messy tangle of competitors running like a herd of bulls through the wilderness.

They huddle.

“What on earth are they doing?” I wonder out loud to no one in particular.

“That’s a scrum.”

Oh. Okayyy…

I stop asking questions; it’s pointless—I will never grasp the rules of this game.

My head whips back and forth as I watch the action down in front of me, occasionally googling how things work so I can leave the poor guy next to me alone.

Mostly I just watch Ashley.

Check him out as he runs, huddles, takes hits.