Because of You

Chapter 12

Jacob

"And Perez sinks the winning basket. Averson High School wins," yelled the commentator.

Up until that point, we'd been tied with the other team.

The crowd roared, standing, shouting, clapping.

My teammates lifted me in the air, patting me on my back.

"Ayyyyeee, good game," Colton congratulated.

I grinned.

"Thanks man," I said.

"Jacob! Jacob! Jacob," the crowd chanted.

I grinned as we shook hands with the other team and walked into the locker room.

"Good game, boys. Keep it up like that and we can make it to districts," the coach congratulated.

"Yes sir," we all replied.

I was the last to finished getting dressed, and found myself just sitting, thinking about things at home.

My life is so fucked up.

After the incident with Aiden, I'd missed a week of school, and today was my first day back.

I leaned my head back against the locker, closing my eyes and heaving a sigh.

"Perez," I heard Aaron call.

I opened my eyes and rolled them, "What man?"

He grinned at me, coming and taking a seat next to me.

He dug through his backpack, pulling out a large stack of papers and placing them on my lap.

"What is all this," I asked, frowning at him.

"The homework from your classes. We have different period, but the same classes, so I dropped by and picked up the assignments for you. And that's also my homework in there, which has the answers to your homework. Also, we had a few projects due, but I put my name and yours down on them so we both got credit. We got A's."

I smirked slightly but let the smirk fall from my face.

"What's wrong," Aaron asked, furrowing his brow.

"Why are you being nice to me? What do you want," I questioned, glaring at him.

He held his hands up in surrender.

"I don't want anything from you."

I scoffed.

"You don't have to lie."

"I'm not. I really do care about you, believe it or not. I always have, even though you beat my ass that time," he chuckled.

I laughed, lightly punching his shoulder, "You still talk shit though, so you ain't learned nothing."

"Whatever," he smiled, shrugging.

It was quiet between us for a moment.

"Where you been, Jacob," Aaron asked.

His hands were crossed and he was leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees.

"What you mean? I was sick," I replied, thinking back to last week.

"No you weren't. Your ass don't ever get sick, and even when you do, you still come to school," Aaron said, "remember that time you had strep and the only reason you left was because security damn near dragged your contagious ass out?"

A slight laugh escaped when I thought about the memory.

"So, what's up," Aaron asked.

"It's just some things going on at home. Nothing I really wanna talk about," I replied, staring blankly at the floor.