Stress Relief

6: Breeze

WARNING
This chapter contains themes of:
- self-harm
• • •

As per his new after-school routine, Elijah began making his way to the football field. Unfortunately, his wish to catch up on school earlier than expected wasn't magically granted, and so he once again had a ridiculous amount of homework from that day's classes. As tired as he was of the constant strain on his brain, he desperately needed to finish at least some of the assignments.

About halfway down the gym hall, he heard someone running. Looking behind him, to his surprise, it was Matt coming right towards him.

"Elijah! Hey." He said slightly out of breath, finally catching up to him. He wasn't in his gear yet, which was a rare sight to see.

"Hey, what's up?" He asked, once he was at his side they began walking.

The gym hall was nothing special, the same beige, white, and navy blue the rest of the school's walls were, but you could tell the school board or whoever controlled where the funds went picked favorites. "Nothing much, I was wondering where you go to eat lunch?"

"In the library. The cafeteria's too noisy." He's seen the guys in the halls a few times, and they wave at him and stop to talk, but other than that he hasn't talked to them much. He didn't bother to find them in a huge room crowded with people; for one, because he didn't want anyone thinking he was up to something or doing something weird, and secondly hearing so much noise all at once was overwhelming.

Matt nodded, putting his hands in the pockets of the sports jacket he wore. "Well, thanks to the perks of being Coach's favorites, me and the guys all eat and hang out on the field. No one but us is out there, so if you want to hang out just pop in."

Suddenly he was looking for the phones recording them because he could hardly believe that a group of football players would want to hang out with a scrawny shy kid like him. Okay maybe not scrawny, he's started packing some muscle but school makes that hard to keep up with. "Seriously?"

Matt smiled a welcoming smile. "Yeah man, you're always welcome to hang out. I will warn you Alex and Anthony bicker a lot. Diego acts more like a parent which is funny when he's telling them to stop." Matt continued as they got to the doors, "Carson's a lot more obnoxious but he's not overbearing, sometimes we just toss the ball around out there though, so you're welcome to join whenever." He was being invited to hang out with them? What in the fresh hell? He was excited, but this felt so unreal. For people to want to get to know him, instead of talk about him behind his back or call him a faggot. He sent a quick mental Thank you God before tuning back into the conversation. He realized Matt was waiting for him to respond.

"Well, thank you. I'll come hang out Monday?" He offered, beginning to open the glass doors they had stopped at.

Matt nodded, "Sure. We're out there all the time unless it rains, we'll text you if we eat somewhere else."

"Sounds good." He gave him a quick smile before walking out, Matt smiled back eagerly before turning around and walking back down the hall, probably to the locker rooms. The door shut behind him and he realized just how hot it was. Lucky for him the weather was cooling down from the summer. Unlucky for him, he kept sweating in his jacket. So, as he went to sit on the bleachers he scanned the area. Reassuring himself that as long as no one was outside it would be fine.

Once he determined that the coast was clear, he took his backpack off and set it down. Then he slipped his already unzipped jacked off completely, instead of powering through like he usually did. Setting it to the side he relished in the wind hitting his skin and sat down, taking a deep breath at the nice weather.