Even Heroes Have Scars

[72] It's Not too Late

Jacob's P.O.V.

To be honest, I did miss my sister when she left me with Drew when she would visit Demi in Los Angeles every now and then. But I often pretended I was at Drew's and hung out with my friends instead, smoking weed and drinking a little too much alcohol. I didn't enjoy any of the things I used to anymore. Not that I had a lot of hobbies back then. But now I at least had friends.

And I even had more of a hold on who I was: I was bisexual, and I was proud to admit it. I'd had a couple girlfriends over the years, including Kate towards the end of seventh grade, but I sometimes found myself crushing on Drew. It would come in flashes. Sometimes our hands would touch, or he would look at me a certain way, and I'd melt a little inside, but I knew he didn't feel the same way. I wasn't even sure if he was gay. Hell, I wasn't even sure if he knew if he was gay. But I always pushed the feeling away, ignored it ninety-nine percent of the time. I tried to avoid spending nights at his house because I worried that it would make him feel like he were like brothers when that wasn't the kind of relationship I wanted with him. Plus, we didn't talk too much anymore anyway. That was partially my fault, though. I was changing. A I was growing up and making new friends and trying new things, like weed and alcohol, and he wasn't into any of that. So, yeah, we drifted apart. Sometimes I did miss him a lot though.

I often saw him around school, hanging out with Maddie and everyone. To be honest, it was kind of intimidating seeing all of them together and knowing I couldn't just approach them and sit with them at lunch. But it was okay, because I had my own friends to sit with and to get high with in the bathrooms. So when I was in the halls, I would keep to myself, act like nothing was wrong, like I didn't miss my old friends. And for the most part, pretending worked.

It kind of seemed like the world stopped when I shut my locker at school and saw a now six-foot-three guy coming down the hall. I had to admit, he was attractive, but my heart froze in my chest at the realization of who he was. No, it wasn't Drew. It wasn't anyone that I liked. It was someone I hadn't seen in two years: Cole. The guy who would beat the fuck out of me in middle school for no reason. He called me all kinds of names as he beat the shit out of me. Was he homophobic? Fatphobic? A Demi hater? Who knows. I knew that he hated me for dating Kate and for defending her when he mistreated her, but his aggression towards me seemed a little too extreme to be only that. He got expelled from my middle school, and I heard that he moved to Houston to go to a private school for a little while. So, yeah, it took me by surprise when he showed up at my high school.

A flashback immediately set in from eighth grade.

It was the first time I'd ever been someone's boyfriend. I wasn't really sure how to do it, but I was a couple days into this relationship with Kate, a girl in my friend group with Maddie and Drew, and it had been pretty nice so far. Of course, I didn't have the guts to ask Kate out, so she had to be the one to ask me, but we'd been talking and flirting for a while anyway, so it wasn't really abrupt or unexpected.

It was a brisk January day. Dallas didn't really get a winter, but it was enough for me to wish I wore a thicker hoodie to school that day. Maddie was busy visiting her sister on tour, so everyone was on their own for getting home. I always dreaded the bus because Cole rode my bus, and he was always extra awful to me on the bus since Kate and I started growing closer. I always tried to avoid riding the bus if I could, but obviously that wasn't possible on this day.

The duration of the ride, where I sat beside Kate and Cole sat a few rows back, I attempted to ignore every time Cole landed a ball of paper in the hood of my hoodie, using my head as a backboard. Kate begged me to let her yell at him, but I encouraged her not to, convincing her that if she told him off, he'd just fight back harder – and he'd win, too. It just wasn't worth it.