Page 26 of Making It Count


Font Size:  

“Oh,” Layne uttered because she hadn’t thought about that before she’d said it. “Yeah. I mean, I did. The few dates I had, they were invited. I picked them up, though, and we usually went to their places.”

“Chivalrous lady?”

“Huh?”

“You picked them up.”

“Oh. Yeah. Well, I guess it just worked out that way.”

“Sure.” Shay laughed lightly, but she wasn’t mocking Layne with it, which was nice.

“Hey, did Coach text you?” Martin asked.

She’d stopped walking ahead of them in the hall, and they’d caught up to her. Layne noticed she was staring down at her phone. Shay pulled hers out of her pocket to check.

“Yeah. She wants to meet.”

Layne pulled out her own phone then and checked her messages. There was one from their coach requesting a meeting, too, which was odd because she’d given them all the day off.

“I guess we should go,” Martin said. “I’ll get everyone that already made it to the cafeteria.”

“I’ll get the stragglers that are behind us,” Shay offered and hurried off.

Layne wasn’t sure if she should wait for Shay to come back for them to walk over together. The campus of Dunbar University was small, and while some of them had cars on campus, they could walk pretty much everywhere they needed to go, and it would be faster than walking all the way out to the parking lot the athletes with cars had to use and then driving somewhere on campus, parking in a different lot, and walking inside wherever they were going. She wasn’t sure if she should wait, but it felt strange to just stand there and assume Shay would return. Technically, there was a door just off the multi-purpose room that Shay and the rest of the team could use that would get them outside faster, so it was likely she’d use that. Layne decided to start walking the rest of the long hall and headed outside when she got to the door.

It was cold, and she didn’t have her coat, but it wasn’t freezing, so her hoodie would be okay for the short walk to the facilities building that was next to the gym. She saw a few members of her team ahead of her and turned around to see if Shay was behind her when she didn’t see the woman in the front. Shay wasn’t in either spot, though, so Layne continued to walk until they made it to the building and walked inside. Then, she took her usual seat and looked around the room. A minute later, Shay hurried in and looked around the space. She saw Layne and looked down.

“Hey, I went back for you,” Shay told her when she sat down beside her.

“What?”

“I went back for you in the hall. You weren’t there.”

“Oh. I thought you’d go out the other door once you got everyone,” she replied, surprised that Shay would have doubled back for her.

“No big deal. I just thought you’d wait for me. I should’ve just told you to come with me or wait there or something. Oh, well.”

Layne swallowed. Were they becoming friends now? Were they becoming more than friends now since they’d kissed? Was she overreacting because Shay had kissed her while drunk the previous night? Yes, she was. Shay’s ex-girlfriend might even be her girlfriend again. The shower Shay had taken could’ve been a post-getting back-together sex shower, for all Layne knew, and now wasn’t the time to worry about that because their coaching staff was walking into the room, and they all looked like they had bad news.

“What’s going on?” Shay whispered to her. “Do you think something happened? Are we out of the tourney or something?”

“We have an automatic bid because we won the conference. I don’t think they can just take that away,” Layne whispered back.

“Yeah…”

“Okay. Sorry for the last-minute texts, everyone,” Coach said as she took her spot in front of the room. “And thanks for dropping everything on your day off.” She cleared her throat and looked around the room. “Where’s Jessop?”

“Anyone know where Jessop is?” the assistant coach asked.

“She didn’t come to watch film with us,” Martin said.

“She never responded to my text. I figured she was asleep,” Hilton added.

“Okay. Well, we shouldn’t wait,” Coach spoke. “Can you call her? Try to get her here? I’ll talk to her myself,” she asked the assistant coach, who nodded, turned, and walked out of the room. “I’m sure you’ve all been hearing a lot about this Coronavirus that’s been on the news and going around. It’s getting worse out there, and it seems to be very contagious, so we’re going to be taking precautions from now on until this whole thing dies down or until the season is over. We’ve got the biggest game of your lives coming up, and I do not want anyone to be out because of this, but I also don’t want any of you to get sick, period.”

“Coach, is it really that bad? I thought it was like the flu,” Ledger shared.

“We don’t know everything yet. I’ve been hearing about it and contemplating when to do this, hoping I wouldn’t have to, but given what we’ve heard today since we got back, we’re going to be smart now and hope we didn’t need to be later. So, here’s what we’re going to do.” Coach looked down at her phone. “When we meet from now on, we’re going to use a different room. We’ll spread out the chairs. They’re saying to wear face masks, so I’m going to get us those, and we’ll wear them when we’re not practicing whenever we’re together. You should all do the same when you’re around people.” She looked up at them. “They’re saying to stand as far apart as you can, but at least six feet.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com