Close Behind || Aaron Minyard

This team sucked. The foxes were a mess. It took Naomi three days to believe this to be irrefutable fact. She was one day away from thinking they'd never be redeemed.

As much as it seemed like the team was fully divided into three groups, the upperclassmen, the cousins group, and the Jostens, that wasn't fully true. The thing was, it mostly came down to whatever heteronormative messy bullshit was going on with Allison and Seth.

They were fighting, had been since day one, which meant the upperclassmen were also drawing temporary lines in the sand. Dan didn't seem to actually like Seth at all and Renee, even if she was the seemingly keeper of them all, also seemed less than endeared by Seth. They sided with Allison without much thought. Then there was Seth, who found only Matt listening to his obnoxious ranting. Even then, Matt was clearly dating Dan, he clearly just put up with Seth because they were roomed together and Matt was the only genuinely nice person on the team.

The worst part wasn't listening to arguments and insults and whatever the fuck came out of Seth's mouth. It was the random days where she'd come to afternoon practice, because even if she couldn't play Naomi was required to attended, and they'd been eating each others faces. It was too much of a headache to figure out when they were in love and in loathing.

Not like there was much difference between the two things, anyway. She didn't want to ever understand what the hell they were doing, not that she ever wanted to be apart of some weird straight people shit.

The whole first week was torture. Naomi would genuinely rather be locked in her father's basement while having her ligaments sliced than watch Seth pretend to be something more than a douchebag.

The only saving grace was that at the end of the fine
morning practice that week, Abby agreed to let her do afternoon practice. She would have to check in afterwards to make sure she was fine before being allowed to do full normal practices.

On the court the hierarchy of everyone was slowly falling into place, as if it shouldn't have already been there from the year before.

Everyone listened to Dan, except Kevin on occasion or Naomi when she was pissed off enough. It only happened once and it ended up with her running three miles as some sort of punishment, which it hadn't been but Naomi wouldn't tell Coach that. Even Andrew followed her orders, with his obvious drug induced snark. It was sort of crazy to see everyone listening to her, she was the first ever college captain after all.

Kevin had lingering authority from being an assistant coach the semester before, and from being, well, Kevin Day. Naomi was quicker to listen to his advice on technical things than she was to Dan. The captain didn't seem offended by that though, at least she never yelled at Naomi for differing to Kevin as often as she did. None of them expected for Naomi to be eggar to be critiqued by Kevin or from Kevin to do more than entirely belittle her.

She had somehow found herself into a position on the team similar to what Andrew. and apparently, Renee were. In the sense that, no one really messed with her for fear of her killing them or something ridiculous. Apparently word of her pulling a knife on Kevin that first day had spread without her knowing. She hadn't pulled it again so they probably didn't know if she had it while playing or not, she did.

On Wednesday Andrew left at some point during afternoon practice without a word and no one but Neil seemed to care. They shared uneasy eye contact before shrugging and moving on.

As soon as the door to the locker room closed, Seth was going straight for Kevin. He had his teeth barred like a wild animal, he was seconds from punching him, until Matt and Naomi reached the scene.

Matt had put himself in the middle and used his pure brute strength to get Seth away from Kevin while Naomi stood firm between them. She had her knife out and it was pointed daringly at the two upperclassman. Someone on the court gasped at the sight of it.