Chapter 30 - Makai - Ocean At School Part 2

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Makai

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When we went to practice I noticed that Ocean was a little upset but he wasn't taking it out on me. I don't know what I said that upset him but I was going to try to brighten his mood. Somehow.

He wasn't being as standoffish today, unlike before. I noticed that he didn't grumble when the coach asked us to swim against each other in the two hundred meter butterfly. That was one of my worst styles of swimming but I know Ocean excelled at it. I wasn't going to lose on purpose but I was going to hope like hell that he beat me.

"Good luck." He said to me just as we got into position. I was momentarily shocked and nearly didn't respond.

"Huh? Uh…..Y..yeah good luck to you too." I smiled at him as best as I could at the moment, but it was hard since I was so needlessly nervous.

Ok, it wasn't needless. This hot ass guy that I was so attracted to that it bordered on obsession was finally talking to me like he didn't hate me. That was fucking major, right? I'm not just imagining things, am I? I'm not still asleep in my bed? I didn't actually die from not knowing what Ocean thought of me and then went to some strange personal heaven, did I? Well, if I did go to my personal heaven they got it almost perfect. They just needed to make Ocean a little nicer to me.

"Rivers!" Coach Dickson called out to me to get my attention. "Get your damn head in the game and pay attention."

I snapped my head forward and prepared for Coach to blow his whistle, signalling the start of the race.

The very instant the whistle blew both me and Ocean dove forward. We were both so used to the process that we only had to hear the first little rumble of the whistle. We hit the water at the same time and began our swims.

Ocean was already pulling ahead of me. No matter how hard I tried to push myself I wasn't passing him. When we reached the one hundred and fifty meter marks he was ahead of me by quite a bit. He had reached that point and was almost back to the edge of the pool as I did my turn around. He was annihilating me this time and honestly, I was overjoyed about it.

When I reached the edge of the pool I heard Ocean talking to the others.

"He let me win. I didn't deserve this." He sounded so upset.

"What are you talking about?" I asked him. "That was the same time that I had at the meet last time. I didn't let you win."

"Huh?" He looked confused.

"He's right, Ocean. His time is almost a perfect match to what he swam against St. Reece's. But this time you swam the race that I knew you were capable of. You earned this victory." Coach Dickson explained to him.

While the coach spoke I climbed out of the water and over to stand in front of Ocean's lane.

"Congratulations Ocean, I told you we need you to win. This just proves it." I smiled and held my hand out toward him so I could help him out of the pool. My heart soared when he actually took it and let me pull him up.

It was just for a brief moment and it was just helping him out of the pool but I got to live through two more small things. I got to hold his hand and I got to pull him toward me. These baby steps were moving faster than I thought they were going to.

Ocean and I raced each other a few more times. Coach Dickson wanted to see what our times were now that Ocean was back to himself. He was neck and neck with me on one of them, we literally tied. In another race I beat him by a tenth of a second and the last race he beat me by three tenths of a second. We were so closely matched that it had made the rest of the team stand and stare at us in awe until the coach yelled at them to get back to practice.

This was good. He will see that I wasn't after his spot as number one on the team at all. Now if only I could get out of the election that someone signed me up for and then convince him that I am in no way shape or form interested in Brittney. If I could do all of that it might make things between the two of us at least passable as a friendship.

I could slowly build and cultivate a relationship that starts with a friendship. All I needed to do was put in the work and effort. This was going to be a long process but we were young, we had a long time.

I was in good spirits that day when I left the pool for the locker room. I couldn't stop myself from whistling and grinning. I was so caught up that I almost didn't catch myself when I was staring at the birthmark that Ocean had. It was funny that it was so similar to mine. That had been another thing that made me think that Ocean was more like me. There was no other way he would be born with a mark like that otherwise, right?

Still, it was confusing. It wasn't the color that I would expect it to be if he were really like me. It gave me a lot to think about as I got dressed and ready for school. I didn't have time to delay right now though. I didn't want to be late considering that I was a little behind on work because of this weekend.. I hadn't been able to do any of my homework at all.