Chapter 11: Frustration

By Friday I was a live wire, aching with the need to smell her, see her, touch her in whatever way she’d let me. My heart buzzed when I caught a whiff of her, but my mood curdled when I realized it was just Coach Murphy’s jacket. I was about to ask him where she was when Coach Hendrix beat me to it.

“Billy, where’s Ellery? She’s not still sick is she?”

“No, not sick, but not feeling up to coming.”

“She’ll be here next week right coach? Right?” Lee seemed to be almost as agitated by the thought she wouldn’t be here as I was.

“She should be. Ellery just needs some time to recover. She’ll be back soon, don’t worry. I’ve known her since she was a baby and she’s a stubborn little thing.”

His casual familiarity with her churned my insides even more. I practiced like a demon. Even though the coaches applauded my hustle I could tell I was irritating my teammates. In case there was any doubt they made it clear during one of our water breaks.

“Man, what is your problem? Today is supposed to be a light workout and you’re playing like it’s game seven of the NBA finals,” Matt groaned.

“He’s missing his girl, right Xander?” Lee asked with a wicked grin.

I took a swig of water to avoid responding.

“Aren’t we all? I mean not only is she smoking hot, but I always feel better when she’s around.” Nick looked away, embarrassed.

“Same.”

“Me too, dude.”

“Literally the only presentations I can get through without wanting to hurl are when she’s in class with me. Hey Matt, do you think your dad could pull some strings and get her placed in my senior project group next year?”

My mouth fell open in shock at the amount of words Grant had just expressed. He wasn’t much of a talker, certainly not about his feelings, preferring to let his athletic skills do the work for him.

He had ice water in his veins as long as he was on a field or court. Everywhere else he was the epitome of shy. I attributed this to the fact that he was a horse shifter.

“Ugh,” Matt groaned again. “I don’t even want to think about those.”

“Do you think she’s sick or like could it be…” Nick gestured to his abdomen.

“You can say period for fuck’s sake Nick.” Matt shot him a warning look then cut his eyes to our teammates who weren’t shifters.

“Gross!” The humans on the team wrinkled their noses.

“I’ve got three sisters, get over it. It sucks for them and shitheads acting like you just did make it worse,” Matt griped back at them. They all looked abashed.

“Why are we talking about her?” I snapped before walking away.

I heard Matt say “I can’t believe he hasn’t figured it out” and Lee responded with “poor bastard.”

I didn’t want to go to practice the next day, not when I wasn’t sure if she’d be there. I forced myself to go just in case she was since the thought of having to wait to see her until Monday made my guts seize up.

My reluctance caused me to run later than I liked, which ratcheted up my irritation. Coach Hendrix didn’t like for us to be late. One of his favorite sayings was “to be early is to be on time, to be ‘on time’ is to be late, to be late is to get laps.” I swung into the parking lot and ran to get inside.

“Guys! She brought homemade cinnamon rolls!” Nick sounded like a kid hollering about an ice cream truck.

As I entered the gym I saw everyone crowded around Ellery: grabbing a roll, thanking her for not only the baked goods, but also the care packages, asking how she was feeling, how she knew that they loved the things that had been in the bags.

She was laughing and smiling, but her face showed fatigue and her shoulders were tense. I waited until most of the others had moved away before approaching.

“Hey, are you feeling okay?” I asked in a soft tone.

She snorted and turned to scowl at me. “Really? You’re going to stand there and pretend to care how I feel?”

I took a step back. “Whoa! What did I do to piss you off?”

“Nothing Alexander, you’ve done nothing, and that’s the problem.” She looked away, rubbing her temples. “Sorry. I’m just tired. Forget I said anything.”

“Okay….mind if I get one of those?” I asked, gesturing to the rolls.

“That’s what they’re here for,” she grumbled as she continued rubbing her forehead. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, the way you’d watch a snake as you edged by it, and served myself a roll, getting icing in a number of places on the fingers of my left hand in the process.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look so good.”

She dropped her hands and raised an eyebrow at me as I started backtracking.

“Not that you look bad, I mean, you could be on death’s door and you’d still be the most beautiful woman on the planet, it’s just, right now, you look like you need to be taken to bed, fuck! No! That’s not what I meant; I meant go to bed, because you look like you need a nap.”

I bit into my cinnamon roll to stop the verbal diarrhea coming out of my mouth.

“This is delicious,” I said with my mouth full. I noticed her body relaxed during this stream of mortifying banter and some of the tension left her face.

“Do you want some?” I asked as I swallowed my first bite before taking another so I’d stop talking.

Ellery sidled up to me, getting close enough that her breasts were centimeters from my chest. She then proceeded to catch my left wrist and raise my icing coated fingers towards her mouth.

“What are you doing?” Warning bells were sounding in my head but I couldn’t move. She didn’t respond and with one last look at my startled face she drew my index finger into her mouth and sucked on it, swirling her tongue around it until it was clean.

“Ahh,” I sputtered, short circuiting where I stood. Ellery looked over my hand before running her tongue up and down the inside of my thumb, and then sucked the tip of my middle finger clean.

“I think that will do me,” she whispered before dropping my hand and walking away, leaving me gasping.

“Jesus. How are you still alive?”

“Holy shit, I need some air.”

“I, uh, need to run to the locker room.”

My teammates’ voices seemed to be coming from some distant place and it was only the shrill blast from Coach’s whistle that brought me back to reality.

“Alright fellas, gather round. We’ve got our first game of the season this coming Friday. It’s a non conference game against Central and Ellery has some information that will help us prepare. Yes, Nick, you can all finish your cinnamon rolls while she talks.”

Ellery had a clipboard and seemed completely indifferent to the fact that she’d almost made me cum in front of sixteen other people. She waited for us to get settled before speaking.

“Right, so Central was moved down to division four two years ago when the schools got redistricted. They have a strong starting five, but their bench is thin, especially at center. Lee and Andy, their big man is a junior and a hothead.

“If you guys can aggravate him in the first quarter he’ll get himself into foul trouble before the end of the first half. Also, you both outweigh him by roughly thirty pounds so you’ll be able to shove him around.” She flipped a page.

“Grant, you’ll need to help Lee aggravate his opponent which shouldn’t be an issue since the guy they’ve got playing power forward is Chris Lennox, the guy who sucker punched you as a freshman when he was still playing for Lincoln. He doesn’t have a better handle on his temper and his skills have deteriorated since then as well. You’ll eat him alive.”

She looked at me with a smirk on her face. “Alexander…” She drew my name out in a way that sent shivers down my spine. “Their small forward is probably their best player and he’s more of Grant’s size. But you’re faster than he is, with a better vertical jump. Plus, he’s got a sinus infection which will slow him down even more. Kick his ass.” She flipped a page.

“Scott,” she looked up at him and smiled “do what you do best when you sub in for either Alexander or Nick. Speaking of Nick,” she paused. “I’ll need to talk to you, Scott, and Ryan about their shooting guard privately. It’s complicated.”

She tapped the clipboard. “Matt and Sam, their point guard broke his left hand back in May so whenever you can, force him left.”

She looked up from her notes. “It shouldn’t come down to this, but for some reason, if the game is close, go to full court press. They won’t have the stamina to withstand that long and it will exhaust them by the fourth quarter.

“We’ve got fouls to give and they don’t, but will. Remember to stay relaxed at the line. Nothing they can say can be worse than what I put you through during tryouts.”

Coach Murphy cleared his throat. “Anything else, Elly? Something significant?

She met his eyes with a glare then said, “make sure you’re getting enough sleep this week and if there’s anything that’s bothering you physically that I didn’t address with my care packages let me know by Monday.

“Andy, you need to let me show you another stretch for your lower back after I’m done talking to Nick, Ryan, and Scott. Since I’ll be keeping book I won’t be able to help out during the game.”

The rest of that practice passed in a blur. My traitor brain kept replaying the experience of Ellery’s lips closing over my fingers. Only the sight of Ellery working on Andy’s back distracted me from my reverie and it left me with seething anger.