Away games were always the best.
Trish, despite being quarterback of the football team, had never been the school spirit kind of person. She liked football, of course – she rarely put effort into things that didn't interest her – but that was less about the 'school' thing and more about 'being good at it and having an excuse to tackle people in a way that fed her love of winning.' She didn't care about winning for Marino as much as she did winning for herself. But, despite her lack of school pride, she loved away games for one specific reason.
A specific reason she was currently in danger of missing out on.
"Señora Gomez!" She cried, panic coloring her tone, nearly tripping on the asphalt of the school parking lot as she ran up to the Spanish teacher currently doubling as the cheerleading coach. "The boys on the basketball team are smoking weed in the locker room again!"
Señora Gomez's eyes widened and she swore under her breath as she stalked off at a steady clip back into the school. Trish watched her go, waiting until the double doors slammed shut behind the woman to let the panicked expression drop from her face. Honestly, it was just too easy now.
She climbed aboard the bus that Señora Gomez had been standing next to/guarding, ignoring the bus driver (who wouldn't care if she brought on a flamethrower) as well as the stares from the cheerleaders crowding the seats. Football players and cheerleaders were supposed to ride to away games on separate buses, hence her need to distract Señora Gomez. And the lie she had fed Coach Simmons earlier about driving to Calhoun High, the school they were playing against.
She walked down the length of the bus, stopping at one of the seats near the back. The cheerleader sitting there – Tiffany, maybe? – stopped her conversation with a girl across the aisle to look up at Trish with an annoyed expression.
"Move," Trish demanded. No need to beat around the bush.
"Um, you're not supposed to be on this bus," Maybe-Tiffany snapped back, as though this wasn't a routine occurrence. Trish felt a modicum of respect for the girl – not many people stood up to Trish De la Rosa. But that respect didn't overwrite her will.
"I said MOVE!" She repeated, louder this time, stomping her foot for emphasis. Probably-Tiffany huffed, but nonetheless stood up and slid into the seat behind the girl she'd been conversing with earlier.
Trish sat down and Tiffany's former seatmate beamed at her. "Aww, you threatened someone just to sit next to me."
"Shut up, Dez," she said. She shot an irritated scowl at the boy, but he simply opted to ignore it and, mindful of the pom-poms in his lap and the camera hanging around his neck, reached out to intertwine their fingers. She let him.
After a moment of letting the buzz of everyone else's conversations flow over them, Dez interrupted their own private silence. "You might act annoyed, but I know you like me," He teased, apparently not ignoring her comment after all. "In fact, I think you have a big fat crush on me."
She rolled her eyes. "You are the most obnoxious boyfriend I have ever had."
"You love it when I'm obnoxious," Dez replied. He gave the top of her head a quick peck before shifting his position so he pillow his cheek on her curls.
"Lucky me," she said. Their new position pushed Dez's camera into her arm at an angle awkward enough to hurt and deep enough to leave an imprint, so she moved it away from herself and back towards her boyfriend. As she did this, she realized how weird the presence of the object was in the first place. "What's with the camera anyway? You're not seriously on yearbook duty while you're cheering, are you?"
"Not technically, but I wanted to get some candids at the game because I'm the only person who takes yearbook seriously!" The last part seemed directed less at her and more towards the front of the bus, and, most likely, a specific person sitting there.
"Suck my dick, Red!" The voice of Chuck McCoy bellowed back, confirming Trish's suspicions. Their little feud was entertaining and all, but she couldn't wait for the day when one of them got bored with it and finally buried the hatchet. Especially if it was Chuck- she had a bet to win with Austin.
"Make me!" Dez shouted in response.
Any other potential verbal warfare was preemptively stopped by Señora Gomez boarding the bus. Trish quickly ducked down so the backrest of the seat in front of her would obscure her from view. Being kicked off the bus would be as annoying as it was humiliating. The bus rumbled and lurched before beginning to drive away as Señora Gomez started to make sure every cheerleader was accounted for.
She stayed with her head lowered until Dez told her in a rather unsubtle stage whisper, "We're turning onto Wayne Street."
She slowly sat up. Wayne Street, they had decided, was the point of no return. Now, even if someone ratted her out or Señora Gomez saw her, it would be too late to drive back to Marino without missing out the time allotted pre-game for stretching and bathroom breaks.
Dez let go of her hand in order to stand slightly and take a couple pictures of the cheerleaders lounging on the bus, because clearly that was the kind of thing people wanted to see in their yearbooks. After what was probably ten shots too many, Dez sat back down and started going through the pictures he had taken.
"If you want real pictures, let me remind you that your girlfriend is always photo-ready and also sitting right next to you," she said, doing the signature pose she did for all her employee IDs. Dez grinned goofily and started snapping pictures of her. Some were serious, but most were her making faces at Dez or doing ridiculous poses or flipping off the camera.
After their impromptu photoshoot, Dez settled back into their half-cuddle position from before, with Trish leaning into the polyester of his cheer uniform. It was paradoxically kind of intimate and innocent at the same time.
Most of the football players believed the lie she always gave Coach Simmons about driving to away games, but there were a few who knew the truth, if only because she had enlisted them at some point to help her distract Señora Gomez. They assumed her reasons for wanting to ride with the cheerleaders were much more lewd, but none of them seemed to consider the fact that a bus full of twenty other people wasn't exactly the best place for a make-out session.
(There was also the fact that Dez's romantic relationships before her were limited to a crush on his straight best friend and a two-month long relationship with a girl who ended up moving to LA. So, they were taking things slow and really what she and Dez did on their own was no one's business but their own.)
"It's weird that this will be over soon," Dez said abruptly. It was how he said most things- like he was throwing you onto his train of thought twenty miles after it left the station.
"The bus ride?" she snarked.
"No, I mean…" He gestured vaguely. "This. You sneaking onto the bus and me cheering for you at games and you kicking every other team's ass. Everything."
"Calm down, it's only the third game of the season," she said, poking him in the ribs. A snort of laughter escaped him, but it didn't seem to dissuade him from his train of thought.
"I know, but this is our senior year. This is our last season, and after it ends…it's all over. For good," Dez explained, and she knew they weren't just talking about football anymore .
"I get it," she said, absentmindedly playing with one of her curls. "I know I've complained about school every day for the past twelve years, but it's still weird to think about it actually being over. About having to go into the real world."
They'd never talked about the future, really. At least, not seriously; in all their conversations, the future was a far-off, fanciful thing with no hold over reality. But now, with college applications looming and everyone talking about what they wanted to do after high school, it seemed like the future Trish had been ignoring was now nipping at her heels. She knew what she liked to do, but she wasn't sure what she wanted to pursue for the rest of her life- a job as a manager? An acting career? A football scholarship? Every path seemed to have a thousand outcomes branching off it and a thousand more off those branches until it left Trish upside down and dizzy.
And of course there was the question of where her friends and boyfriend factored in. She knew that not all high school friendships lasted (Ally probably knew the exact statistic of how many did, but she wasn't Ally) and she knew that, even if they stayed close, their bonds would be irreversibly changed when they stopped seeing each other every day. Ally had her sights set on Harvard while Austin wanted to try his hand in the music industry. And Dez had his dreams pinned on Los Angeles the second he decided he wanted to be a director.
So, her best friend was planning to jet off to one side of the country while her boyfriend went to the other. While she could probably convince Austin to move to wherever she attended college (after all, couldn't stardom start anywhere?), there was no possible way to be near both Dez and Ally, or even a guarantee that the college she went to was going to be anywhere near either of them.
The future was suddenly becoming more concrete than Trish wanted.
"Um." A pale, freckled hand waved barely an inch from her face, distracting her from her thoughts. "Sorry if I freaked you out with all that 'this is the end' stuff. Austin and Ally said I've been a real downer about it."
"Trust me, if anyone has the monopoly on freaking out in this relationship, it's you," she laughed, forcing away the last straggler thoughts. "Also, I'd love to hear what you said that made Ally think you're being a downer. Did you give Austin another existential crisis?"
"No!" he said defensively. "God, you bring up the inevitability of death one time." He pouted, but quickly got over it. He tilted his head like he was trying to see something in her no one else could. "And seriously, forgot all that future stuff. Right now all you need to focus on is kicking Calhoun's ass while I cheer you on."
That brought a smile to her lips as he pulled her into a full hug. Not to brag, but her boyfriend was pretty much the best.
The bus rumbled to a stop and she knew that they would have to get off soon, and that she'd have to deal with the real world at some point. But, right now, all she wanted to do was fold up the memory of being in Dez's arms and keep it with her forever.