Page 55 of Through the Flames
I shoved it down, gritted my teeth, and forced my racket through another swing. The ball met the strings with a crack and shot deep into the corner.
She lunged, but too late. My fucking point.
The fear didn’t vanish, but it quieted under the rhythm. Serve, return, sprint, sweat. Over and over, until the noise in my head had to keep up or fall behind.
She started muttering after every missed point, her braid fraying, and her strokes growing frantic. At this moment, I knew I had her.
With a score of 6–3, the second set was mine too.
I shook her hand at the net. Her grip was limp, and her attention was already elsewhere. My mind, however, was still spinning. I was always wound tight after a match.
The sound of clapping and cheering from the bleachers suddenly reached my ears. My name echoed back to me.
Dom stood up as if he had just won, his arms in the air as he roared, “She’s a killer! That’s my sister right there!”
I rolled my eyes, but my chest still swelled. I loved the big idiot.
Sierra leaving, the boxes, the slow collapse of everything I thought was stable — all of it was waiting for me back outside.
But here, under the harsh lights and the echo of rackets against strings, I was untouchable.
I dominated.
And for a little while, this was enough.
***
“Holy fucking shit, you have no idea what kind of weirdos roam this campus!” I whined as soon as Hailey’s cute little face popped up on my phone’s screen.
She furrowed her brows, her lips parting in confusion. “Umm, what?”
“C’mon, Michaels, keep up. The roommate slash apartment hunt?” I waggled my head meaningfully, like some kind of deranged bobble head.
She held up a perfectly manicured finger. “First off, it’s Brentwood, not Michaels, as you very well know—”
“For the moment.” Colt’s deep voice rumbled from the off.
Hailey snapped her head to the side, gaping at her boyfriend. “Stop it!” she said in what she probably believed was a stern voice, but it just sounded adorable.
Colt must’ve felt the same way about it, his husky laugh rumbling through the speaker.
My bestie turned back to me, her eyes still wide. “Anyways, as I was saying, before I was sorudely interrupted… what kind of weirdos are we talking about?”
“Like, all kinds of weirdos. It was like a fucking variety pack.”
Hailey winced, but the corners of her mouth were twitching. “That bad?”
“Let me break it down for you.” I settled deeper into the couch, taking a sip of my iced matcha, the ice sloshing in the cup as I wedged it between my thighs.
“Okay, so get this, roommate number one, right? I call her The Vanishing Act. She was perfect. Literally perfect. I’m talking, skincare fridge, a fucking Stanley collection she was willing to share with me, and she responded to memes with better memes. We’ve texted for a weekandset a move-in date. It felt like a win, like the solution to all my problems.”
Hailey’s eyes were huge. “And then?”
“Andthen…” I said dramatically. “Nothing. No reply. Just blue bubbles of silence and emotional fucking whiplash.”
Hailey’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s odd, but she doesn’t sound like atotalweirdo.”
“Keep up, babe. She was literally the only semi-normal one, but considering she ghosted all this,” I made a circular motion in front of my face, “something must’ve been wrong with her too. Ergo, weirdo.”
