Well...hey. I can't begin to apologize enough, but school and life kicked my ass (as I'm sure it kicked many others) but I am back. I'm gonna try to finish this story out by the end of the summer, I promise. Thanks to those of you that have stuck around.
When the state championship came around, Annabeth was torn whether or not to actually go. Eventually, after some pushing from Piper, Hazel, and Calypso, she agreed.
When she told Luke, he wasn't happy about it until he decided to tag along with her. She wasn't too thrilled about that, and they had an argument about it that made her angry thinking about it later.
"Do you not trust me?" she snapped at him during their phone call.
They'd been sitting together on the phone doing homework when she'd brought up that she was going to the game. "I'm not gonna run down onto the field and into his arms, Luke. Let me be my own person."
He snorted in a way that made her blood boil. "Why are you getting so defensive? If you didn't have a reason for me to not go, you wouldn't be this defensive."
She scowled so deep she was worried her face would stick like that. "I'm defensive because you're being a controlling jackass," she sneered, and she heard him laugh again in a way that reflected everything but humor. "Yeah, whatever. I'll see you this weekend when we go to the game."
The next thing she heard was a click that signified he'd hung up, and she threw her phone onto her bed beside her, still glowering as she stared at her feet.
Sure enough he came to her house that Saturday and the two of them drove to the game together and met up with her friends. It had been a long, tension-filled drive to the game, and she was beyond happy to see them, even if they'd seen each other the day before at practice.
Their own state championship game was coming up the following Saturday, and Kim had finally given them a weekend off so they could rest before a week of hard practices leading up to the game.
They headed into the stadium and found the big crowd of Sharks fans, all decked out in blue and white and plenty excited for the game that was about to begin.
Annabeth sat between Luke and Piper, and she tried to ignore Thalia and Percy's mother sitting a couple seats down. Just seeing Sally made her chest ache.
The more she thought about it the worse she felt, about how everything happened and how everything went down.
She tried to ignore it as best as she could and mostly talked to Piper about how Jason was doing and how the guys on the team were. Whenever Piper mentioned Percy, she could feel Luke stiffen up beside her, which made her roll her eyes. She ignored it for the most part, and her and the other girls continued to talk until the boys came out and the game began.
Despite what had happened the week before, Annabeth still cheered and clapped for her team, along with Piper who lit up every time Jason made a nice pass or run. Whenever Percy's name was announced, Annabeth still felt a little gleam of pride in her chest before she realized that, oh yeah, that wasn't her best friend any more.
She still wished nothing but the best for him, of course.
At the end of the game, when the two-point conversion failed, everyone in the Shark's fan section went quiet. As the Titans began to celebrate, Annabeth's eyes stayed on Percy, who was seated on the field with his head in his hands, and her heart broke all over again. "Oh no," she heard Piper say softly, her hand coming to grip Annabeth's sleeve like a lifeline.
The blonde could only nod in agreement, her lips pursing. She knew the feeling all too well of coming so close and losing it all.
Slowly the field began to empty out, but a lot of the Shark fans didn't move from their seats. They watched the Titans celebrate and the boys in white collect themselves on the field before they all began to trudge off.
She let her head drop as she stared at her shoes, before she felt Piper stand up. "I'm going with Sally, Thalia, and Hazel to see the boys," she tells her friend softly. "I'll uh..." She paused as she took a look at Luke before her eyes flicked back to Annabeth.
"I'll tell Jason you said hi."
She walked off with them and Annabeth and Luke were left alone again. He didn't say much, just stood up and sighed. "We should get going," he said, looking down at her. She nodded, standing as well.
She couldn't take her eyes off of the boy in the white jersey sitting in the end zone, his head in his hands.
Eventually Luke took her hand and began walking off, so she had to follow. Her brow was furrowed and her jaw set the entire walk to the car, and much of the drive home.
She texted Piper to ask how Jason and the other guys were, wanting desperately to ask about Percy but deciding against it. It didn't take long for her to respond.
"Understandably crushed, but there was a bright spot to the day."
Annabeth wanted to ask what it was, but Piper texted her the answer to her question before she could even ask. Annabeth had to read it one, two, five times, and each time she did, the smile on her face grew.
"Percy got invited to Eastern for a visit."
The next week was something out of a nightmare. Luke went back upstate, and Annabeth was filling every waking breath and moment with volleyball. Drills and practices during the day, film at night, tips and tricks during meals, motivational podcasts while she slept - anything that could give her any kind of an edge over their opponents.
The week crawled along slowly, with deliberation.
"You want the weekend to be here, right?" the weekdays said to her.
"Yes! Please!" Annabeth begged.
"Too bad."
The atmosphere among the team got more and more tense as the week went on. Everyone knew what Saturday would bring. Indescribable happiness or a world of pain. Annabeth was going to do everything in her power for it to be the former.
When Saturday finally rolled around, Annabeth felt sick. She was seated beside Piper in the locker room, their knees touching as they laced up their shoes.
"One last go, Beth," the setter had said to her when they entered the arena.
"It's gonna be the best one, Pipes," she'd responded, an arm resting on her best friend's back.
The week had been hard for more reason than one. Not only had it been physically exhausting, but mentally and emotionally as well. Without Percy, it felt as if her life preserver had been pulled from around her body. He'd kept her afloat in the sea of pressures and anxieties that was her life, and when she tried to see who had pulled the preserver from around her, all she saw was herself.
She'd done it, all of it. Intentionally and meaningfully. She knew what she'd done. A blatant disregard for a human being's feelings, a blatant disrespect for their feelings. The guilt ate her alive every single night, every time she got a second to close her eyes, everything weighed her down, especially the guilt. It felt like acid, eating away every single thing it touched.
Like her feelings for Luke.
No matter how much she tried to convince herself it was okay, their relationship wasn't the same. Then came the debates of whether it had actually been good, or if Percy had just exposed the flaws in the woodwork, that the relationship between Luke and Annabeth had never been good.
She was dragged out of her thoughts by Piper's hand on her arm, a look of concern in her best friend's kaleidoscope eyes. "You ready?" she asked her friend, pushing herself to her feet and adjusting her knee pads to the correct location.
Annabeth simply joined her, a tentative smile brushing across her lips.
"As I'll ever be."
