Sam is stunned. His blood became frozen solid and he stands, gaping and alone, at the school gate as the bustle of students run aimlessly around him.

He does not know what to do. He was positive he had made people cry before, and he has seen girls fall apart because of him. It usually gave him a cruel rush, even if he ended up feeling disgusted with himself.

That he was a terrible human being was not in question, but rather why the fucking hell he is feeling so terribly about it.

It is the truth that Sam was feeling stifled in his lukewarm relationship with Sally, and he did try to make her jealous by hitting up Christine and telling her that "this is what happens when you don't put out". He expected her to be angry and tell him off.

What he did not expect, though, was for her to start crying and tell him to get fucked. He did not expect to panic in the whole situation and call her crazy and humiliate her. He did not expect that chill, deep in his bones, to bloom, as if he was suddenly at the middle of the Alaskan tundra.

He knows that he should not care. That it is exactly what he wanted. She is just another girlfriend, someone that he found pretty and spent some time with. He knows that he did not know her well at all, as he would be hard-pressed to remember even her surname.

Maybe that was what bothered him. He had made Sally cry; he had torn her down to feel like he did and he did not even know a thing about her. Sam does not even know her name.

The truth is that he feels at a crossing right at that moment. He does not know what lays deep in either of those paths, but he does understand that, whichever he takes, will fundamentally change his life.

As if a thunder falls on his body, despair raises in his throat. He has to fix this at any cost. He starts to run, ready to comb every millimetre of that school to find her.

Luckily, he did not have to go too far. Sally was sitting under a tree near the football pitch, with her fists clenched at her sides, face down as her bottom lip trembled, her eyes filling with unshed tears that were about to spill over and stain her cheeks.

"W-wait, Sally!" Sam found himself begging as the girl looks at him and stands up to go away. "I'm sorry, please don't cry."

"Get away from me, Sam." She sniffled, shoulder jerking back as he tried to reach for her.

What the hell was he supposed to do to make this right? Before he could come up with an acceptable apology, however, the girl is racing across the lawn towards the girls' bathroom. Her cotton skirt billows out in the wind behind her as she races like a girl fleeing for her very life.

Sam sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. How was he supposed to know that she was so sensitive?

He noticed her existence since middle school. He knows that they attended together, but never happened to fall in the same class. He always found her cute, in a way proper to a blossoming interest in girls, but then again, most of the opposite sex elicited similar reactions.

He singled her out because of her weird friendships. People like tape weirdo Richard, meth-head Jake, poor little rich girl Alicia, drama queen Robbie and even Felicity Browers, for some reason, orbited around her. It was tough to find someone with something genuinely bad to talk about her, aside from "lame" or "annoying". He wanted to know what was so good about her.

In a way, Sam supposes he has figured it out. Sally makes him feel good about himself, in a way that his football successes have not been able to in a while. Now, he is in risk of losing it, and he is not comfortable with that prospect.


Later that day, Sam was standing outside the theatre classroom, back against the opposing wall as he tried to appear casual.

It is not necessarily odd to see a football player passing by, as the large first floor room was a stone's throw away from the locker room attached to their physical conditioning gym.

However, he did feel strikingly out of place. Robbie must have spread the gossip about them, since every drama student that passed through him had a dirty look in their eyes.

When Sally walked out of the classroom, alone for once and with her face clear and fresh again, he turned around so she could not immediately spot him and run away. He did manage, however, to acknowledge that her expression stayed as grim as it was earlier.

As she walks down the hallway, reaching some quieter corners of the school, the quarterback followed her from a safe distance. When he finally called out to her, she froze on the spot, face going pale as she quickened her pace.

"Hey! Wait!" He asked, putting in good use of his numerous leg days of his high school career. "Slow down! Just let me talk!"

Sam chased after the girl, hand gripping her forearm as she stopped running and whipped around.

"You've said enough already, Sam. Leave." Sally sneered at him, as if he is last week's trash.

Ah, there was that fire that was so characteristic of her impetuous and asserting personality. She bared her teeth at him like a furious lioness and he had to remind himself how to breathe.

"I've said too much probably but that has never stopped me from running my mouth." He admitted with a shrug, keeping a tight hold of your arm. "Just let me apologize, please. If you don't want to forgive me, fine."

"Why? Just so you can feel better about yourself?" The juvenile theatre producer snapped.

The blond boy found himself growing frustrated.

"Why won't you just let me fix my wrongs?" He demanded.

Sam pulls her over and begins backing her up against one of the pillars between windows lining the corridors. Sally looks up at him and it demonstrated that the intimidating vantage point he held over her seemed to have no effect.

"Because you don't deserve the satisfaction." She snarled.

"I know I don't, Sally! I know that I don't deserve a lot, that is pretty obvious, even to me. I don't deserve all the opportunities that fall into my lap because I'm a quarterback and I don't deserve the friends I have, even if they are as trash as I am. I don't deserve to apologize and I don't deserve to feel better but I am still going to tell you I am sorry. I may not be a good person but for some reason I… I can't stand seeing you cry and I don't even know you all that well." Sam rambled on, feeling his face flush. "I was a trash boyfriend, and I get why you didn't trust me enough to… Y'know. But I want you to know that I didn't mean to hurt you, I was wrong in going the way I did, and I hope you can forgive me."

The girl paused, his grip loosening on her as she relaxed. She studied him with narrowed eyes but only found genuine regret in his eyes.

"It's fine, Sam." She said, digging the toe of her shoe into the floor. "Don't get me wrong, I'm angry and hurt, but I guess I can take your apology. I appreciate that you came all this way to give it to me."

His eyes locked on hers. "Yeah, thanks. I am truly sorry for making you cry, Sally."

"I know, and you, uh, I don't think that you're that bad. You can stand to be more mindful of others, but I don't think you are hopeless, nor have you been that bad of a boyfriend." Sally said, awkwardly. "Even if you say you don't know me well."

The intensity of the moment begins to vanish as he took a step back and she finally realizes that Samuel Gordon had just had her pinned to the wall while their classmates filtered through the hall. They had forgotten that they were not alone.

Sam nodded, a slim smile on his face as he turned away, now embarrassed by how much he had said, but then the girl called out to him softly, stopping him in his tracks.

"I'm sorry that we didn't work out as a couple, but if you ever think that you'd like new friends, I'm always in the market for that." Sally admitted, giving him a soft smile.

It took bravery to reach out to those who had been cruel to her and show them what a difference kindness could make. It took compassion and heart, and he is taken by a sense of admiration.

"I'd like that, Sally. I'd like that a lot." He found himself answering honestly.

As he responds positively, he could not help but notice how Sally had quite a nice smile when she beamed at him.

Then, Sam finds that he has a new goal in mind. Instead of making that girl cry, he would start trying to make her smile at him like that as often as he could. If he gets another chance in the future, that is great, but if he did not, at least he does not feel cold anymore.