Page 22 of Making It Count
“For letting it go on this long. We’ve both known that this would end at graduation. Even if you stay here, for some reason, we’re too different.” Eliza shrugged a shoulder. “And I wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ for breaking up with you over the phone. You didn’t deserve that on an important night for you.” She stood up. “That’s all I wanted to say. That, and you have stuff at my place, and you have a key. I boxed up what I could find, but you can go through whatever you need in my room or the bathroom to make sure I didn’t miss anything. You know my class schedule, so you can just go in when I’m not there so that it’s not awkward. I told my roommates you might stop by. Just leave the key on the table or something when you’re done and lock up before you go, if you’re alone, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” she replied. “I guess okay, I mean.”
“I did love you; you know?” Eliza cleared her throat. “I wasn’t ever a big fan of the sport you play, and I don’t think you would know this by my lack of game attendance, but I was a fan of you, Shay.” She smiled softly.
“I know. I loved you, too.”
“Not anymore, though, right?”
Shay shook her head no.
“So, this is for the best.”
“Yeah, I think it is,” Shay replied, thinking about the fact that she’d kissed someone else the night before and that that kiss, which hadn’t lasted all that long, had been the best she’d had in a very long time.
“I’ll go, then. Stop by whenever for your stuff. Good luck in the tournament. I hope you win.”
“We won’t. But thanks anyway.” She chuckled.
“Hey, you’ve gotten the team this far, when no one else thought you could, right? Maybe you’ll be that school no one’s heard of that manages to pull it off. You said that was part of the draw for you in coming here, right? Cinderella school?”
Shay chuckled again and said, “Yeah. We’ll see. We still have to find out who we’re up against in the first round.”
“I hope it’s a really bad school for you. Good luck, Shay.”
“Thanks. You too,” she replied and watched her ex-girlfriend walk through the door of her dorm, likely for the last time.
Then, it hit Shay that soon, she’d walk through that door for the last time, too. She sat on the side of her bed and looked around her small room. She had an extra-long twin bed with a navy-blue comforter on it that she should probably wash more, if she were being honest. There was a window next to the desk that was on the opposite wall as the bed. Her books were stowed on the attached shelves. The closet was next to the desk and barely had room for her stuff. The small three-drawer dresser was in front of the bed and had her microwave on top of it. The mini fridge was on the floor next to it. There was a small table by her bed and a trash can. That was it. This room had been hers for the past two years, when she’d been able to move into a single like the other junior athletes, and she’d come to think of it as her home, her one place of solitude where she could, for the most part, block out the noise around her, and soon, she’d have to move out.
She hadn’t planned on a new place to live any more than she’d planned on getting a job, which meant she could end up in that basement apartment that her oldest sister no longer used until she got back on her feet. The prospect of moving back home with her parents was enough to drive her crazy, so instead, she decided to take a shower and try to nap when she got done until it was time to go watch game film with the team in the rec room.
She took off her clothes, put on her robe, and grabbed her towel and her toiletries, realizing then that her shampoo and conditioner were still in her bag. Having unpacked only what she needed, she headed down the hall.
Shay wasn’t a fan of the communal showers in the dorm. They were a little too communal for her taste, with short walls between the showerheads and no curtains or doors on the front. There had once been doors; they could see the evidence that they had once existed. But at some point, they’d been removed for some reason, so the athletes had taken to using the long bar that went down the room near the ceiling to hang robes or, sometimes, even sheets up if they wanted a little more privacy than the short wall would allow.
Shay hung her towel on the bar first and used two clips she carried in her toiletry case to clip her long robe to the bar, which would allow her to shower without being seen. Then, she turned on the shower and began washing the airport and two busses off her body. When her mind usually wandered in the shower, it went to basketball or, sometimes, to Eliza. Since Shay had a single dorm, she didn’t have to take care of anything in the shower like she knew some of the underclassmen with roommates probably had to, but if she was the only one in the shower room and was in the mood, she considered taking advantage of the situation. Today, though, she wasn’t thinking about basketball or Eliza. It was that kiss that had her massaging her breasts probably a little too long before she was going to get started because someone could walk in at any moment. Shay could be quiet, and the robe gave her some cover, but she didn’t like the idea of someone else wanting to hop into the shower next to her and having to stop what she was doing.
Just as her hand slid down her stomach and was about to find its way between her legs, she heard the door to the shower room open, so she halted her hand. She went back to washing her skin, rinsing off all the soap and listening as she heard the sink behind the showers turn on. When she went to turn around a minute later, her hand accidentally moved too quickly and hit her robe, which dislodged one and then the second clip, taking the robe down to the floor and leaving her standing there, exposed.
“Oh, shit,” Shay muttered, grabbing the towel and covering herself up.
Layne had just finished brushing her teeth and looked up into the mirror.
“Sorry,” she said and quickly looked down.
“What are you sorry for?” Shay wrapped the towel around herself.
“I… didn’t see anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Layne hurried over and picked up Shay’s robe. “Here.”
“Thank you.” She took it with one hand and kept her towel wrapped around herself with the other. “You’re brushing your teeth?”
“I tried to take a nap and couldn’t sleep, so I came in here to take a shower, but yeah, my teeth felt gross, so…”
“Felt gross?” She smiled at Layne.
“Like I somehow had airport on them. Does that make sense?”
Shay laughed and said, “Yes, it does. That’s why I’m showering right now.”