SOL - New normal

This is not easy for you.

Playing hard, unseating Riley… you don’t want to.

But to purposefully play poorly? That might be even worse. Fortunately, you have until Friday to figure out what you want to do. Things are easy enough on Monday; the whole day is spent practicing and in the classroom, talking about other teams and strategies.

Tuesday is where things get complicated.

It’s another early morning, filled with the things that you are starting to get used to again now that you’re free: half-dressed girls walking around groggily, you waking up with wood, and finding the concentration to make it go down before you get out of bed. Seeing Riley in her sleeping clothes: always a big T-shirt and panties, which isn’t a problem except for in the bathroom, where the first thing she does is brush her teeth. She always leans forward on the sink, toward the mirror when she does this. It causes the shirt to ride up and allow a view. You don’t know what bothers you more: how perfect her body seems to you, or how she doesn’t seem to realize how sexy it is when she does these things.

It's fine. You fend off Sam, who wants to flirt, and try to get dressed.

You pay too much attention to Riley. That’s why you’re the first to notice that she’s worried. She looks at the bathroom door and frowns as she’s tying her shoelaces.

“Where’s Lara?” she asks Sheva as she walks by.

“Dunno,” Sheva replies.

“I thought she was showering, but she should be out by now,” Riley says, standing up. You are a little bit ahead of her. Riley is always bleary when she wakes up, so her first thought was not to check on her girlfriend, but now she’s noticed her absence.

About two minutes ago, you noticed that Lara’s bag was not by her bunk. You sit on your bunk, unable to move. You have a bad feeling about this.

Riley comes out of the bathroom looking even more worried. She grabs her phone and makes a call. The team has noticed that something’s up, and the cabin quiets down. Tiff comes in a moment later, but she senses it too and doesn’t say anything.

“Where are you?” Riley asks, standing there with the phone in one hand and the other on her hip. “What?”

The worst part is seeing Riley’s face as she tries to understand what she’s being told. She looks dumbfounded when she finally ends the call and looks up with the face of a lost child.

“She left,” she says. “She’s going somewhere called Paititi.”

“What?” Tiff replies.

“She left. She was about to get on a plane,” Riley tells her, voice sounding distant. She drops her phone on the bed.