And you can say we’re still friends but I don’t want to pretend
Alessia
Alessia avoids Leah the remaining few days at camp. After an awkward conversation with Georgia upon her return to their room about what took so long, she doesn’t wish to have any more people prying.
Alessia had always considered herself not-quite-straight. She could recall a number of childhood cliché crushes on women (Miss Honey from Matilda, Kim Possible and Keira Knightly in Pirates of the Caribbean to name a few…). She had almost exclusively dated men but that hadn’t stopped her from having her fair share of romantic experiences with women. That's what college is for right? After a particularly tumultuous situationship with a girl on her team at UNC during her last summer there, Alessia had sworn off dating, and more specifically dating her teammates, for the foreseeable future.
However, she couldn’t deny how attractive she found Leah. She was the perfect mixture of stern, confident and kind. She remembered details of all of the team and Alessia frequently heard her starting up conversations with even the most shy players with a comment about something that she knew the teammate enjoyed. That was just the kind of person she was.
Alessia knew, however, that nothing could happen. Leah was older and, although Alessia was almost certain that she was gay, she knew for a fact that Leah would never be interested in her.
And it was because of that that she decided that avoidance was the best course of action. Just until her little crush had passed.
She pushes herself in training harder than she ever has before. She wants more than anything to prove that she belongs here. On this team. With these girls.
So she does everything right. She gets everywhere on time, she does twice the amount of required recovery and individual training. And the results are showing in her performance. She is playing better than she ever has in her life and the coaches are taking notice.
She spends the evenings playing games with Georgia and Lucy. Laughing at Mary forcing everyone into tik tok dances. They watch movies to wind down. She keeps her brain so busy that it doesn’t have time to think about the blonde defender that she keeps catching eyes with. She gives polite smiles and then returns to whatever she is doing. No more distractions.