Chapter Thirteen: "You Do Know But You Don't Know."

WE WERE DOING doubles.

It wasn't said out loud but when our Peters declared something, it was going to happen even without a verbal agreement.

However, doubles season didn't start until the second semester but it didn't mean that Nikko and I didn't spend time together. In fact, I think I spent more time with him and my team than I did with my busy friends. We were either at gym sessions, practices, or tournaments every week. Even when our tournaments were split for women's and men's, nowhere near each other, we still had breakdown meetings before and after together to watch hours of film.

The last tournament I had been at I placed seventh, obtaining my goal again. The women's side of our team placed first with the most wins and Liya, the bright, confident yet humble girl that she was, placed first individually. While I was getting along with the rest of my team as the weeks went by, I barely spoke to Rhett. Instead, I pushed down any annoyance and ignored him whenever he would give me a knowing look whenever Nikko and I were within proximity of each other. 

Besides him, I had been having good days. Really good days in the moments leading up to Reading week. In fact, Sundays were best.  

After Nikko and I went running, we'd find ourselves laying back on the grass in a clearing by the trail that was soon dusted with frost as October started to close to an end. We'd lay back and talk. Talking consisted of various subjects ranging from our teammate Alan's latest hookup story that he wouldn't stop talking about whenever we saw him at the gym to looking at the clouds and attempting to decipher if we could see them the same way.

We rarely ever did until one Sunday when Nikko pointed to a cloud right above us. "Three." He said.

"Two." I continued.

"One." He ended.

"A hat."

I gasped, sitting up to face him as he broke out into a wide smile accompanied by a loud laugh. "Finally! We did it!" We finally saw a cloud the same exact way.

He raised his hand up in a high five that I slapped with glee before lying back down beside him. My arms were getting cold, the frost surely seeping into my fabric as water but I wasn't complaining. I couldn't complain when I was happy over something that may have been so childish. But with the amount of clouds the two of us had observed? This was groundbreaking. 

"Can't believe it took us this long to get on the same page," Nikko said. 

"It's not my fault your imagination isn't as good as mine." 

Nikko scoffed, playfully nudging me in the side with his elbow. "I'll take weak imagination over not being a criminal." 

He'd been teasing me about this for weeks. "Is this what you do in your free time?" I asked. "You keep a list of my crimes?"

"Yes," He said, sitting up to face me. "You're a hater—"

I sat up as well, leaning back on my hands. "That's only because I told you I didn't like Boston cream donuts."

Nikko looked appalled. "Because who doesn't like Boston cream donuts?" 

"To be fair, I really don't care for donuts anyways."

He pursed his lips. "Then what kind of sweet things do you like?" 

I wasn't a huge fan of candy. I liked chocolate but liked coffee, too much of it and I fell easily sick. "I like ice cream," I concluded.

"You're going to say you like something bland like vanilla aren't you?"

"No," I huffed, bringing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. "I like pistachio."

"Pistachio ice cream is good. We should go get some right now." 

"It's practically -5 degrees." I pointed out and he shot me a face that made me laugh harder than it should have, my spirits too light around him. 

"You're also an adult-napper." He continued. 

"You could have gotten out of the car at any point that day." I reminded him.

"You're a serial racquet breaker—"

A breathy chuckle left me. "One time does not equal serial."

Nikko mimicked my position, loosely dangling his arms around his knees as he brought them to his chest. His hair was pushed back from his face, displaying his handsome features as he kept his eyes on the slowly moving clouds. I willed myself to drag my focus away from him. 

He pointed to another cloud that I had to twist my head to see properly. "Three." 

"Two." 

"One." 

"Pineapple." 

"Half of a flower." 

I turned towards him, unable to hold in my laugh. "Half of a flower? Just half?" 

"Yeah," He raised his hand to the cloud. "You see the little things sticking out up there. Those are the petals and the little blob that they're coming out of is clearly--stop laughing." 

He poked me in my side when I didn't do as he asked because of how serious he was, joining me in my laughter. 

Our snickers dimmed into content sighs and he twisted to face me. "After you graduate, what are you doing? You didn't answer that question last week."

I didn't answer because Iman had a crisis regarding another assignment of ours and showed up at my place with his laptop. The assignment was due that night and he kept calling me multiple times to the point where I had no choice but to cut my time with Nikko. 

"Tech."

"No," He drawled. "You're going to work in farming."

"Software developing," I said, fighting the urge to reach over and poke him in his side like he had done to me for that statement. "I applied for an internship over the summer that I got for next year. I want to get a position with them after the summer to work full-time if I like it. If I don't like it, then I'll go into farming." 

He grinned. "Where is it?"

"Toronto." If everything worked out, I'd live with Paula. She basically insisted that I live with her anyways. 

"You don't want to move back to BC?"

"I do," I admitted; my breath came out as a white puff every time I spoke. "I miss the mountains and the water. The nature back home is so unreal and compared to Ontario, this is so depressing." Nikko only looked amused but I was serious. "My first winter here was a nightmare."

I didn't want to leave my residence building in first year at all. I didn't unless I was being driven from place to place. Walking in the snow? Terrible. Looking at the snow and the way it seemed to pile up in a never-ending way? Horrifying.

"And you want to stay here?" He asked. 

"For a few years to save money but mostly to be with Paula for a while," I explained. "Then I'd hopefully move back. Have you ever wanted to go to BC?"

"Yeah," he confessed. "I've always wanted to visit."

"Message me when you do," I couldn't stop myself from saying. "You should visit Whistler for the skiing." Whistler was a town a lot of people went to, especially tourists during the winter. It was known for its famous ski resort, Whistler Blackcomb.

"I've never skied," He admitted. "I've snowboarded though, I liked that."

"I'm the opposite. I like skiing a lot."

"And yet you hate the snow?"

"The snow here is not like the snow back home," I stressed and he laughed at my tone. "The snow here is hell. Anyways, what are you doing next year?"

"Hopefully physiotherapy school," He said.  

I raised my eyebrows. He was a kinesiology major. The path of getting into PT school was not uncommon but it definitely not easy. "In Ontario?"

He nodded. "Deadlines to apply are in January."

I laid back down on my back, eyes on the sky. "I hope you get into all of them."

"I hope you get a full-time position after your internship."

"I hope you get to visit Whistler one day."

Nikko laid back, mimicking my position once again. "I hope you like the snow here one day."

I scoffed. "Never."

We grew quiet, staring at the sky in what I considered the most comfortable silence. And then something fell on my nose. Then another. And another.

I sat up again. "Oh, my goodness."

"Nature's on the same page as us today too," Nikko murmured, snowflakes dropping onto his handsome face. The light snowfall wasn't getting harder, it stayed just as it should light; enough for me to tolerate. Enough for us to cycle back to the beginning of the trail. Enough for us to know that the tall trees were soon going to be covered over and ice was going to be in our paths, bringing down our  progress but—

"I like this," He suddenly said. I twisted to face him, only to be met with a very serious expression. "Sundays. Running with you."

So he didn't want to stop this. Even though it was going to get colder. Maybe we could move it to the indoor track at the Rec center. It didn't matter because I knew Sundays were our days. This knowledge and what he said only made me more aware that my face had gotten warm. The flush spread to the point where the frost beneath my palms definitely melted. "I like it too."

What a huge understatement.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What does doubles even mean?" Yasmeen asked. She was flicking through her phone on my bed while my attention was stuck on my computer monitor. I had a page of code open on one window and I was looking through cute tops on another. Iman, who listening to what Yasmeen and I have been saying for the past twenty minutes was definitely doing something similar. 

Basically, we were not working on our assignment for one of our shared classes. 

Like always, this assignment was due at midnight. But the way Iman and I were working on it, doing fuck all, let me know that a well-crafted email from the hands of Yasmeen might be needed to grant the two of us an extension.

We had gone from talking about code to talking about the latest drama between his roommates at his house to him telling me his plans for reading week where he was going to Cuba with his family. When Yasmeen came into the house and made her way into my room, it was established that we were all going to talk about everything except for school. 

"You know how in the last few tournaments I was in singles, meaning it was me against one other person from another team?" I received a quick nod. "This time it'll be me and Nikko against two other people from other teams."

Yasmeen raised an eyebrow in interest. "Do you want that?"

"It's basically been decided," I said.

She didn't budge. I swear her eyebrow went higher. "But do you want this?"

Yes. Yet I said: "I don't know."

Yasmeen assessed me carefully. I could lie but the way she looked at me was as if I was five and broke a plate and was trying to blame it on my sister to my mom. It didn't work when Yasmeen made that face. It made me feel like I was being examined under a painfully bright light. "I mean I do."

"So, you do know," Iman said through the speaker.

"No, I mean that—"

"You just said you do."

"Iman!" I snapped.

"Sorry," He chuckled. "So, you do know but you don't know. Continue. What? Are you nervous to be around him or something?"

Yes. How was it possible to be nervous around someone but comfortable enough to feel like I could talk to him about anything? It was weird to describe how I felt around Nikko. 

Sometimes when we were too close to each other, it felt like I wasn't the one doing the talking in our conversations. My gaze would linger on his dark eyes, fall to his hands, and look back to his lips before focusing back on his eyes to make sure I wasn't being weird. Sometimes it felt like I was in a haze when I was near him. Playing this sport with him, and seeing him outside of practice more times than I ever thought I would, definitely didn't help. To make things worse, he was suggesting it. He was the one asking for the extra time in a subtle manner and joking about it in the way he always did.

I'd never forget Nikko's face when Peters had brought up our chance of playing together. He looked stunned. Hell, I was stunned. I liked to compete against him almost as much as I liked the idea of competing with him. Now we got the chance to do it on a competitive level? With each other? Similar to how we once used to be?

I didn't have doubt in his ability at all. I'd seen him play millions of times but our dynamic was definitely going to shift after we started focusing on more double-based practices after reading week. 

I blinked, glancing up at Yasmeen who was eyeing me, "You look like you're about to vomit."

"I'm not," I assured her. The way my stomach twisted fought against my words. 

"If Yas says you look like you're about it, then you're probably about to vomit," Iman muttered.

Yasmeen observed me once again, hopping off of my bed. "Oh shoot, Larine, I almost forgot. Kate from down the street needed our help setting up her things."

"Who's Kate?" Iman asked.

Who was Kate? I was about to ask right with him.

The stern look Yasmeen gave me made me shut right up. I nodded, even though I didn't know what was happening, not wanting to face her wrath. "Yeah, she did say that," I said slowly, my finger now hovering over the red button on the screen of my phone. "Iman, I'll call you when we're done."

"Who's Kate?" He repeated. Kate could be a girl from Edmonton, Alberta who enjoyed lakes and the outdoors and went to Herringway University to major in International Relations. She didn't know how to build a bookshelf so Yasmeen and I were going to help her because apparently we could (Maybe Yas, not me unless it was from IKEA with clear instructions like most of the things in my bedroom). 

Instead of saying all of that, I hung up the phone, staring at Yasmeen who had her arms crossed.

"Why are you nervous about doing it?" 

"Because I really like him, Yas," I admitted. "And he wore the pink hair tie that day." He hasn't worn it since than any other time I had seen him since. I didn't dwell on it too often but it was always in the back of my head whenever I spoke to him. 

"Oh," Yasmeen sighed. "Mari said she'd do more research but she's been super busy. Why can't you just ask him if he's seeing someone?"

"Because every time I get the courage to do it, we get interrupted, and maybe because I just, don't want to hear it from him," The confirmation from him, that he was seeing someone, felt too big to bear. "So I'd rather just hear it confirmed from one of you."

Yasmeen bit her bottom lip in thought but I knew she wasn't going to pressure me into this. "What are you going to do if it's confirmed? And you can't say avoid him. You're doing this doubles thing together, you have practices together, you can't avoid him. Besides, before all of this, you'd been avoiding him for too long."

For good reason. If I didn't want to play squash in the first place, the chances of me seeing Nikko was slim to none. It had been slim to none before I tried out in the first place. Now? There was no getting rid of him. Maybe if I stopped staring at him in a way where Rhett would smirk when he would catch me or if this crush went away, then we'll be normal.  "I'm going to—"

"You're delusional," She stated, cutting me off immediately. Sometimes friends said this in a way that was jokingly. Yasmeen was completely serious. "I already know what you're thinking. Your feelings for him aren't going to go away. They haven't gone away for years even when you didn't see him, no?" I didn't say anything but my silence was clearly the answer since she continued speaking. "You're scared to ask him if he actually has a girlfriend because a part of you is scared of the answer. Of what it would imply if he says no and the pain that it will cause if it says yes."

"Not the mention the guilt if it's true and I've been pining over someone unavailable." I quipped.

"Yes, the guilt," She looked sympathetic in a way that made me want to run away from my own room. "I'll remind Mari to look into it again."

"Thank you," I mumbled. At least she understood me.

A small smile came to her face as she slowly shook her head. "You're so complicated, Larine."

"But you love me," I reminded her as she got up from my bed.

"That's true." She said, her dimples flashing before she left my room. 

I sat there, blowing out air from my cheeks as I tapped on my phone to call Iman back. I glanced back up at the code in front of me, exiting out of the tab filled with the outfits I'd surf through another time. "Alright, let's crack this complicated code," I murmured as I tapped Iman's number. 

He picked up before the second ring sounded. "Who the hell is Kate?"