Page 8 of Offsides

Which draws my thoughts back to Eli. He loves when I do a clean and jerk, clapping and whooping in the weight room, telling me how awesome it is, then making me give him pointers to try to do it too. He’s actually gotten pretty good at it, with his weights overtaking mine now that he’s mastered the moves.

He’s always been my most supportive friend. Hyping me up at every turn, whether it’s with school or in the weight room.

When he showed up last night, I wasn’t even surprised at first. He’s always there for me when I need him the most. Going home with him felt like the most natural thing in the world.

While I’ve thought he was cute many times over the years, we’ve always just been friends. Strictly platonic. It’s easy to be friends with a guy when you know he’s not attracted to you. I saw the type of girls he goes for when we started studying together and he invited me to hang out with him at game nights and parties.

The girls he hooks up with are flirty. Pretty. Made up. Forward.

Basically, everything I’m not.

I exist in jeans or joggers and sweatshirts most of the year, the summer being the real exception to that. Sometimes I’ll rock booty shorts in the gym, but it’s mostly leggings and loose tank tops because it’s most comfortable, especially in the colder weather. But I don’t wear makeup, my hair’s almost always in a bushy ponytail or messy bun, and I don’t think I know how to flirt to save my life.

Last night, I had on makeup. My hair fell around my shoulders in sexy waves. I didn’t even know I could look like that, to be honest.

I spent so much of my teenage years focusing on strength sports and competitions and trying my hardest to make my dad proud—though never quite feeling like I managed it, even when he said he was proud of me—that I skipped over all the usual clothes and makeup and hair care knowledge all the other girls I know seem to have absorbed. Including my younger sister.

But I eschewed all of that, taking pride in the fact that I was Low Maintenance and Not Like Other Girls.

I was One Of The Guys. I’ve always had guy friends and felt more comfortable with guys than with girls. I never really fit in with any of the girls I knew, even the athletic ones. They were all into team sports and had that sense of camaraderie that develops out of that, while I worked out on my own. No team. Just my dad and my coach and eventually Luke.

Living with Piper helped me turn a corner. She’s into football and sports too—though she doesn’t lift like me—andshe likes to dress up and wear makeup and do her hair. Though she’ll rock a messy bun, leggings, and hoodie when she feels like it too.

She’s opened my eyes to the reality that there’s the possibility of in between. It doesn’t have to be all girly makeup and skirts and high heels all the time or never. Getting a house with her plus Autumn and Ellie over the summer only made that more obvious, though I never tried out makeup or doing anything else with my hair. Every time I thought about it, I just felt overwhelmed. Like I missed out on learning all of those things—how to dress up like a girl, how to put on makeup, how to do anything other than brush my hair and put it in a ponytail. Which is why when Autumn insisted on dressing me up for karaoke, I let her.

It was the perfect opportunity to try out all those things I’ve become more curious about, but don’t have the knowledge or confidence to try to pull off on my own.

My hair, though frizzier and flatter, still boasts the waves from last night. I smooth the sheet next to my pillow. Could I make a little change? Start wearing my hair down?

It always gets poofy and bushy when I brush it. But that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Brush it? But Autumn only raked her fingers through my hair to get it all going the same direction, smoothed it with what she called the praying hands technique, and then, in her words, scrunch scrunch scrunched until it formed into waves.

“There,” she said last night, sounding smug and satisfied. “I thought you were hiding waves in that ponytail of yours. Look at you. You’re a goddess.”

Her compliment had made me itchy and uncomfortable. I don’t get complimented on my looks. Smarts, strength, capability, how easygoing and levelheaded and low-maintenance I am, sure. Never, ever my looks. Luke did a few times, but rarely.

Traveling to powerlifting meets—he competed in both powerlifting and Olympic lifting like my dad wanted me to do—we spent so much time together. We got along. He said I looked hot in my singlet, which made me laugh. He also grinned when he said it, but he never took it back. And then he asked me to dinner and a movie and kissed me when he took me home junior year of high school, and we’d been a couple ever since.

Well, until now. Even though we “took breaks” because being long distance was too hard for him—ha—I always thought of us as a couple. Expected us to end up together again eventually.

We were in love.

Or so I thought.

Autumn made a lot of good points, though, while we were at the bar last night. She didn’t tell me what to do or berate me for my choices. That’s not her style. But she asked questions. Uncomfortable questions. Things like, “If he loved you, why didn’t he make some kind of effort to see you between school breaks?” And, “What did you love most about him?”

I didn’t have an answer to the first, opening and closing my mouth and feeling like I needed to defend him like I did so many times over the last two and a half years, but when I started to, Autumn placed her hand on mine and with a soft look in her eyes said, “Dani. It’s not your job to defend him. It never really was, and it sure as hell isn’t now. He didn’t make an effort because he was more important to you than you were to him. His behavior is evidence enough of that.”

That’s when she followed up that gut punch with the question about what I loved most. And I didn’t really have an answer to that one either.

I loved the fact that he seemed to notice me.

We were friends first. I was one of the guys. We’d hang out and have fun and work out together and then competed together. And since everything is divided up by both gender and weight class, we never had to compete against each other. So we could freely cheer each other on no matter what.

But when I decided to go to Marycliff—where my mom graduated from and close to my grandparents—Luke was pissed. He didn’t understand why, if I was going so far from home anyway, I wouldn’t just follow him to Michigan. If I loved him, I should, right?

Autumn said something similar, actually.

Maybe I always knew somewhere deep down that he didn’t love me the way I loved him. And me refusing to follow him, choosing to interview for a scholarship at Marycliff and then taking it when it was offered, was my way of choosing me over anyone else. Maybe for the first time ever. Since my parents divorced right before I turned nine, I’ve been chasing after my dad’s approval. Some tiny part of me thought—hoped—that if I managed to make him proud enough, he’d come back.

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