So, as promised, here is another chapter for The Summer Run! Chapter 10 will come on Thursday, and then Chapter 11 on Sunday!
To my guest reviewers, thank you so much!
To Leelan: I applaud you my friend, because I could not do that. If my significant other thought that my sport was boring, I doubt I could ever make it work.
Elsa sat calmly in at her desk, enjoying how slow Monday was so far. In the brief weeks she had been here at Arendelle, she had seen days when the study room was a frenzy, and then there were days like today. A few people come in here and there, and they keep quiet. Days when she could hear herself think. It was nice.
Of course, her thoughts these past few days were anything but peaceful. Her every waking moment had been terrorized by the memory of Anna ripping her hand away and running out of the study room. She replayed it over and over again, and every time, she thought of a way that she could have done it different. She could have just kissed the girl. She could have simply emailed her again and explained her feelings. She could have jumped up and tackled Anna when she tried to leave. Anything.
But she did nothing. She sat there and watched as she ran away. She thought about emailing her over the weekend. Didn't happen. She lost her nerve when she opened a blank message to type. She'd thought about going to the soccer coach and asking him to tell Anna to come see her. She made it to his office door before turning around and giving up.
She was hopeless. Every time she even thought about the soccer player, her legs got weak and her ability to speak coherently vanished. Though, as if she were torturing herself, she left the soccer schedule, with Anna front and center, on her wall. Every time she turned around to her filing cabinet, she saw it, and saw that head of strawberry blonde hair. The dusting of freckles on her face, spread almost symmetrically under her eyes and across her cheeks. The way her beautiful eyes were focused on something that was probably a goal that day.
A knock on her desk brought her back to reality. She felt heat rise to her cheeks as she realized she had been staring at the picture. She spun the chair quickly, focusing on her guest.
"Ah, hello Kristoff." She greeted the big man. He gave her a wide grin.
"What's up, Elsa?" She liked Kristoff. On the whole, he was a very pleasant man, and quite the athlete too. Actually, she generally enjoyed all the throwers on both men's and women's track. They were kind, down to earth people who took their academics seriously. Something that usually lacked in many athletes.
"Ready for our meeting?" He nodded animatedly, but sat down carefully. Kristoff was a big, heavy man. He almost broke her mentee chair the first time he flopped down into it. By the time she had her sheet prepared to write on, he was already firing away with his class updates. She had to do some catch up, but got everything down.
"Well, this looks great. Anything else you want to talk about?" She asked, following along with her tradition. When she was a little girl, Elsa never had anyone to talk to, bar from the few times her brother was ever home. As such, she made a promise that she would always lend a listening ear to the people she worked with.
"Well..." Kristoff ran a hand through his unruly mess of blonde hair. "There is something, but...it's...I guess it's a bit inappropriate for me to talk to you about? Maybe?" Inside, Elsa laughed at the very notion. She doubted his version of inappropriate came even close to what she had already done.
She finished filing his information, then spun her chair to face him and crossed her legs. "What's up?"
"This girl I know from class, who's a friend of mine, asked me for...relationship advice, I guess? I talked to her, but...I dunno, it just feels like I wasn't much help." Elsa smiled softly at him. This kid was such a big softie, getting all worked up over the fact that he thinks that he wasn't much help. He'll make a great partner for some lucky person.
"Don't beat yourself up over it, big guy. I'm sure whatever advice you gave her is fine..." She thought for a moment, gauging how he would react. Oh well. He's nice enough that he wouldn't jump to any conclusions. "What exactly did you tell her?"
He seemed to brighten at her question. "Well, she told me that she doesn't know what to do to impress this other girl, an–"
"Wait, a girl asked you for advice on how to impress another girl?" She blurted out before she could catch herself. She placed a hand over her mouth, staring in fear at Kristoff, clamoring for a lifeline. "Not...not that there's anything weird about that..." She uttered in recovery. The blonde man simply shrugged, seeming to forget it was ever said.
"Yeah, right? I hate homophobes. Anyway, so I told her to go all out. Like, completely overboard with her feelings. I thought it was sound advice, seeing as that's what I would do, but...she didn't look too thrilled with it. Then she asked me about my relationship that I was trying to get off the ground. I guess I hate the idea that I might not have helped out all that much," He trailed off quietly. Elsa shook off her blunder from before and patted his enormous knee.
"It sounds like great advice to me, Kristoff. Always remember that she actually thought enough of you to ask for advice. That, more often than not, means that they hold you in high regard." She felt her chest warm up with pride when Kristoff's frown lifted. She absolutely loved making someone feel better about something. She was robbed of it when she was a little girl, and she knows how it felt to have no praise or positive words.
"Thanks Elsa," He grinned widely.
"My plea...oh!"
To Elsa's surprise, Kristoff lurched over and enveloped her in a hug, his huge arms wrapping around both her and her chair. She slipped a single arm around his big neck, applying a bit of pressure, but in general hoping that this didn't last that long. Not that she didn't mind it; she just wasn't...comfortable with people springing stuff like that on her.
"Hey there, she isn't a cheeseburger! Let her go!" Another voice echoed into the room, and Elsa would have tried to see who it was, but...yeah. Her face was buried under a mountain of Kristoff. The man let her go and stepped aside, and Elsa caught sight of the head throws coach.
Oaken Post, as a man, personified his name perfectly. Literally. Seven feet tall, legs like tree trunks, arms like telephone poles. The only weird things about him was his perpetually cheery disposition, and his oddly high voice. Elsa wasn't sure what type of cosmic coincidence made him as big and solid as a literal post made out of oak wood. He, quite literally, was an Oaken Post.
"You can't go around hugging people like that, Kristoff. They're gonna think you're hungry and want a snack." The coach chastised. Elsa had figured out that the throwers and their coach had a...strange sense of humor that was entirely unique to them. No other team and their coach talked about the chances of other people actually fearing that they were going to be eaten. To be fair, every thrower at Arendelle was simply huge.
"Sorry coach. What's up?" Kristoff said, rubbing his head and staring at the ground. Oaken shook his head at his thrower, but Elsa caught the smirk that he tried to hide. Coach Post was a nice man who understood his athletes, whether they have strange tendencies or not.
"Came to see Miss Frost about your teammate, Sven." Oh. That. Elsa took a deep breath, knowing what she was going to have to explain. When she had gone to the bathroom earlier today, she spied another thrower, Sven, in the weight room working out. Only problem was that he was signed into study hall and was supposed to be in here, studying.
"What did he do?" Kristoff blurted. Oaken shook his head and jerked a thumb to the door.
"You'll find out later, now make yourself scarce. Better spread the word that the running today is tripled, too. Be ready." Elsa felt a momentary pang of guilt over the revelation. The blanching in Kristoff's face made her feel doubly worse. He gaped at the coach for a moment before tightening his lips. He whipped around to her and grinned widely.
"You have a good day! Thanks again!" And just like that, he was out of the room. She shook her head at the thrower. For such a large person, he could move quite fast. Oaken chuckled at his athlete, coming to stand next to Elsa's desk.
"If only Sven were like him, I wouldn't have to triple the running..." He trailed off, tsking quietly. Elsa allowed him to gather his thoughts, sitting calmly and waiting. She had heard that the man had a bit of a temper, but he controlled it well. She heard.
"So, Miss Frost...what exactly happened this morning?" Elsa leaned back and began her explanation.
The talk with Oaken had taken longer than anticipated, and not even because they were discussing Sven the whole time. Eventually, they devolved into talk about day to day activities, how Elsa was liking AU so far. Elsa actually began to enjoy herself, asking Oaken about his athletes and their potential. She knew a few of them by name, like Kristoff and now Sven, but she didn't know all of them. Oaken gave her his thoughts on each of them, like who he thought would cause trouble and who he knew would be easy to handle.
It was a fun talk, but now she was alone, and her study hall was empty. It was strange; there were a lot of people who needed to complete hours, but Elsa often found herself with an empty room on Mondays. She didn't know why, but most athletes hated coming in on Mondays.
And with an empty room, she had plenty of time to go back to brooding about Anna. What was she going to do about Anna? Nothing she could think of ended well. First off, she was surprised that she still had her job. The way Anna had reacted when Elsa told her how she felt was, in every way, bitter and angry. Maybe Kai was trying to salvage what he could of Arendelle's reputation before the NCAA came and took her away.
She spun her chair to face her bulletin board, her eyes traveling to the poster, lingering for a moment on its largest inhabitant before trailing down to the schedule. Her breath caught in her throat as she sighted the thing she had been trying to avoid for the entire day.
Arendelle University vs. University of South Carolina
There was no time posted for it, because that was a tournament. A three day tournament that the team would be gone for, which meant that Anna would not be here for her meeting. Not that Elsa was looking forward to such an event anyway, considering how poorly everything else with Anna had gone. She was entertaining this irrational fear that if Anna laid eyes on her, the girl would explode.
She took a deep breath and tried her best to think about something else. Thinking any more about Anna right now would do her absolutely no good right now. If she could make it to the end of the night, she would be fine.
Luckily enough, the rest of the day was uneventful and soon enough, Elsa was sitting on the couch in her house, sipping on some wine with a small salad sitting in her lap. The house was dark, apart from the lamp that sat on the table next to her and the television. The news was as boring as it usually was, not that Elsa was actually watching it. She really only used the television to have something happening in the background.
Every now and then, she would find something that piqued her interest, but that was very seldom the case. Regretfully, as much as she had tried to think about anything other than a particularly beautiful soccer player, she couldn't get away. Every single thing she did made her think of the girl. She didn't understand, because she had never been one to be so suddenly and completely smitten with someone.
She hated it. She had no clue what about Anna drew her so strongly, nor how it happened. She had told herself when she landed this job that she couldn't do anything to mess it up. First thing she does is get involved in a taboo dance with a student. Of course, it might not be a dance at all. Anna might come and tell her that she wasn't interested, and that would be the end of things.
That would be amazing, if it would just hurry up and happen already. How lucky would she be if Anna just shut her down, but didn't say anything to anyone? That would be the mulligan of a life time. While she would rather prefer the opposite…Elsa knew that the best thing to happen right now was for Anna to forget about the proposition.
Just then, her phone notification tone went off. She glanced over at it curiously, wondering just who was trying to get in touch with her at this time of night. She went over and grabbed it, looking at the screen. It was an email, so she quickly opened it up. She lifted her glass of wine to her lips while she read.
The red wine sprayed all over the coffee table and carpet as Elsa's eyes re-read the email that might send her life into shambles.
Hey Elsa!
How is everything? Good I hope. Unfortunately, there has to be a change in the schedule and I have to ask you for a big favor. Flynn had a family emergency last week, and as such he cannot travel this week. The women's soccer team is headed to South Carolina for a tournament, and the team requires study hours for all players. To help them out with tournament weeks, we usually send a mentor along to monitor them while they study at the hotel. Flynn was going to be doing it, but he can't. I hope this isn't too much of a bother, but I need you to go to South Carolina with the team. You'll stay in the hotel with them, but you'll have your own room.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me. Again, sorry for springing this on you. You'll leave Wednesday morning, 5:00 AM.
Kai Gelfson, A.D
Elsa read through it three or four more times, just so she could be sure of what she was actually reading. This was, by far, the worst possible thing that could be happening to her. Four, almost five days on a bus, and then in a hotel with the soccer team. With Anna. She flopped back against the cushions, her head in her hands.
What cosmic power was playing games with her? After all that has happened, it now feels like making Elsa and Anna be where neither of them could get away from each other. It wasn't like she could just say no to Kai, either. He said he needed her to go, and she would not stick Flynn with this. Even if she tried, she had no reason to not want to go with the team. At least, no reason that she could explain to Kai or Flynn.
She shook her head firmly, then went through her phone book. She found Flynn's number and hit the call button, chewing on her nails as she did. She hoped he was still awake. The call ran a few times, but to her relief, he answered.
"Elsa, how nice of you to call!" He said cheerfully. "What can I do for you?"
"Hey Flynn. I just got an email from Kai about traveling with the soccer team, an-"
"Yeah, sorry about that. I just can't. Punzie went into the hospital, so I just can't be away from home right now." He interrupted. Punzie, short for Rapunzel, was his wife. German descent, hence the odd name.
"That's fine, Flynn, I understand. I just called to ask you how it all works…" She trailed off when he started to laugh loudly into the receiver.
"Oh, Elsa! It's like a mini vacation! Now, you have two options. You can ride the bus, or drive your own car down. If you choose your car, just take the mileage down. AU will reimburse you for it…"
Oh my god, perfect. Elsa thought to herself with relief. She could drive in the comfort of her own truck and she wouldn't have to see Anna at all there.
"Then, you get your own hotel room, which is sweet. Usually, the hotel will let you use their lounge area as a study room. All you do is sit there and watch the girls study. Then, you can either go to the games that they play or veg out at the hotel It's great, and really simple for you."
Only great if you didn't have an undeniable crush on one of the players. "Alright Flynn, thanks. Tell Punzie that I hope she gets better soon!" She hung up the phone, only feeling a bit better about this whole situation.
She would drive herself, which went without saying. Hopefully she would get out of this weekend with both her job and her dignity. Hopefully. She ran a hand through her hair, sighing. This was going to be a tough week.
I hope you all enjoyed it! Show the review button some love, and expect chapter 10 on Thursday!
