Page 4 of Clichés & Curses

Home plate.

He hit a home run.

The crowd continued to erupt in excited shouts as the commentator’s voice blared through the speakers, ‘And that was a home run hit by a new freshman on the team! A beautiful swing, if I do say so myself. I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing more of him on the field pretty soon.’

And so, Colton’s star athlete reputation was born, as well as my silly little crush.

I’ve always been careful not to crush on any guy that would fall under the ‘cliché love interests’ category—another precaution I had decided to take to prevent myself from falling under the curse, and for the most part, it had been easy.

The whole ‘bad boy’ persona never really appealed to me, at least not in real life. It was fun to read about them in books. My phase of exclusively reading Wattpad books with the ‘bad boy’ trope pretty much explained how addicting they were. But if that fiction ever became reality, I already knew I’d be asking where the exit was.

And in terms of having a rival, whether academically or in other situations, I never did have one. I’d never been competitive enough to earn myself one.

That had left me with one last option, the star athlete, which in my humble opinion was the best one.

I might be biased, but I sincerely believe anyone who grew up with theHigh School Musicalmovies has a default settingof automatically having a crush on the school’s star athlete—courtesy of the one and only, Troy Bolton.

I mean, who could forget the scene, where Troy got knocked down and Gabriella stood up in the bleachers mid-game singing his name to encourage him?

Was it over the top? Yes. Was it just as iconic? Most definitely.

While crushing on the star athlete definitely went against my precautionary rule, Colton seemed like a justified exception. We ran in two completely different circles, pursuing a degree in two very different majors. The chances of us ever crossing each other’s path were slim to none. Almost non-existent.

But of course, it was never zero.

Our furthest—and only—interaction with each other dated back to a brief encounter last semester, when I was still a sophomore.

A run-in that I liked to refer to asthe incident.

It was a late afternoon on a Wednesday. The sun had already started its descent, and the track team was hard at work on the field.

I sat on the bleachers with my close friends, Lily and Claudia, while we waited for Nina—the other part of our quartet, who was also my roommate and my best friend—to finish her training session. That day was one of those rare occasions that semester when I got to witness Nina in action. Her training usually ended hours after my final class, so we would just see each other back in our apartment. But one of my lecturers had decided to hold a replacement class, indirectly extending my stay on campus for the day.

On the other hand, Lily and Claudia had a club meeting that ended at the same time as my class did, and so all four of us agreed to have dinner together, taking the opportunity to hang out, since we were still on campus after all our day’s responsibilities had been settled.

As the track team was wrapping up their training for the day, I decided to make a stop before leaving. ‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ I said to Lily and Claudia, getting up from the bleachers.

‘Okay,’ noted Lily. ‘We’ll just meet up at the entrance then?’

I gave her a nod. ‘Sure. And can you bring my bag for me?’

Once they agreed, I made my way to the bathroom.

There were a few bathrooms scattered around the stadium—including the newly added single-stall ones located on the other end of the building—so I just went to whichever was the closest. Thinking Nina wouldn’t be out for another twenty minutes, I decided to take my time, occasionally stopping to read some of the newspaper headlines of the college’s track team achievements on the bulletin boards.

The bathrooms finally came into view, two doorframes standing right next to each other. I was a few steps away from entering the women’s bathroom when I momentarily paused mid-walk as someone stepped out of the men’s bathroom.

And. He. Was. Shirtless.

But not for long,unfortunately.

He was putting on a shirt as he stepped out of the door, briefly stopping at the doorframe to wear it perfectly. Only when his head popped out of the neck hole did I register who it was.

It was Colton.

And then, it fully hit me.

I had just seen Colton shirtless.

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