“Just be aware of what’s going on around you. And report anything you think is even remotely related to bullying or hazing.” Mom pinned us both with a look that said she meant business.
“We will,” we both chorused. Mom wasn’t oblivious to the things I dealt with at school, but we’d gotten to the point that we didn’t tell her everything anymore. Luke and I tried to take care of things on our own and the other basketball guys kept a close watch as well. I knew they cared and wouldn’t let anything happen to me if they could help it.
It was all just another example of why I didn’t hang out with them on the weekends. Last weekend’s party had gotten out of hand. Luke told me after our basketball game everyone had gone to Devonte’s house. He was one of the football players and they always had a party after their games, home or away. Luke and all the guys went. I knew Luke liked to party but he didn’t get crazy. Jared was usually the one that talked him into stupid stuff and then Noah had to drag them both home. Mom was more trusting than she should be and Luke was her favorite so he never got in trouble for anything.
Anyway, there had been drugs at this party, not just alcohol and people were high off their butts. I hated it when Luke went to those parties and wished they all would just hang out and watch movies instead of doing all that. I asked Luke if Drew had been there, but Luke said he’d gone home after the game. I was relieved.
Drew
It was a rare Saturday night that the guys didn’t have a basketball game. It was late September now and cold so we were all at Mateo’s church. His dad was friends with the pastor and had a key. He’d let us in with strict instructions about how we should behave and that we had to leave at midnight. He locked the door on his way out. If we left, we couldn’t get back in.
“I think we need to ban Thompson, here, from playing with us if he’s not going to play on the team,” Adam complained when we took a break. Everyone was sprawled on the carpeted basketball court.
“Dude, you are fu-, freaking relentless,” I amended, remembering that we were in a place of worship just at the last second. “I’m not going to play basketball.”
“Okay, man, but you gotta admit it sucks that you won’t tell us why. We’ve been playing together long enough now that I think we deserve an explanation.” Zeke threw his empty water bottle at me.
“You don’t deserve sh-, crap.” Dang! I was going to get struck by lightning and whether or not I played for the team would be moot.
“Come on, man, what’s the big secret?” This came from Luke.
“There’s no secret.” Just a bunch of dumb history.
“Is it because of your sister?” Luke asked, watching my reaction out of the corner of his eye.
“What? Why would my sister have anything to do with it?” What the hell?
Luke shrugged. “I don’t know. You never talk about your family. I just wondered if there was something going on there, that’s all.”
Wow. And he wasn’t wrong, I just wondered what brought this all about. These guys were as close as any group I’d ever known and they’d accepted me without any issues, why were they digging into this now?
“Yeah, man, you practically know everything about us and we don’t know anything about you,” Noah spoke up. He laid on his stomach, his arms spread wide at his sides.
“You guys are worse than a bunch of girls. Are we here to play ball or gossip about family drama?” Jeez. Having friends was work.
“So, you’re admitting to family drama,” asked A.J.
“I’m not admitting anything.” Rising to my feet, I picked up the basketball and dribbled around the guys on the ground.
“Let’s get back to the sister thing. How come she never comes around?” Mateo got to his feet as well and we started playing Lightning.
“Well, for starters, she’s only fourteen and I don’t want her young mind polluted by you jerks.” One by one the other guys joined in the game.
“We know how to behave ourselves,” Adam protested.
“Right.” I didn’t believe a word of it. “I heard about the party last weekend.” Apparently, the parties were getting more and more out of control. They kept trying to get me to go to one, but I’d been blowing them off. It was bad enough at school with all the girls hanging all over me. I couldn’t even imagine what a party would be like. Add in the fact that I’d been denying myself any time with Piper and I was a hormonal ticking time bomb.
“That’s parties, dude. Even I wouldn’t bring my sister to one of those,” this came from Jared, who was the least likely to be trustworthy. The guy was out of control sometimes.
“Doesn’t Piper know her?” Zeke asked.
“How did you know about that?” I asked him. I doubted Piper had been gossiping about my sister to these guys.
Zeke shrugged. “Luke said something about it.”
I turned to Luke, who held up his hands. “Dude, you made out with my sister, so you can’t even say anything.”
“What?”
“He made out with who?”
“Drew and Piper?”
The basketball fell unattended on the court as each guy stopped and stared. I glared at Luke, who stood with his fists clenched at his side.
“Man, what is wrong with you?” Stepping up to Luke, I pushed his chest with both hands, causing him to stumble back.
“What’s wrong with me?” Luke wasn’t intimidated. He was back in my face so fast, both Noah and Jared stepped forward, ready to break up anything that might go down. “You can protect your sister, but I’m supposed to stand back and let you take advantage of mine? Screw that!”
I’d never seen Luke so mad, on the court or off. And the thing was- he was right. Sighing, I dropped my hands to my sides and shook them out. The last thing I wanted to do was fight with any of my friends and right now they were all looking like they wanted to kick my ass.
“You’re right. You have every right to stand up for Piper. I wouldn’t have any respect for you if you didn’t. But I am not taking advantage of her.” Anymore.
“You made out with Piper?” Zeke just couldn’t get past that. He had this look on his face that was a mix of awe and disgust. “When?”
I just shook my head. I was not having this conversation with any of them. “That is none of your business.”
“Wait,” Noah held up his hand. “You really did make out with Piper?”
“Yeah, he did. At his house this summer when we all went swimming,” Luke told them, his whole body exuding accusation. I hadn’t realized he’d been holding in all this resentment and I felt kind of bad. Of all the basketball players, I felt like I got along with Luke the best.
Nine pairs of eyes focused on me again. “Jeez, you jerks, I am not going to tell you about this. What goes on between me and Piper is between me and Piper.”
Luke lunged for my neck. “That’s my sister you’re talking about!”
“Luke, man, calm down.” Noah gripped Luke around his waist from behind and Jared stepped between us.
“That’s not what I meant, Luke!” He was still struggling against the hold of both Jared and Noah, his eyes full of rage. “You think I’m going to disrespect Piper talking about that shit in front of everyone!”
They all seemed to consider that and the tension in the room decreased by a level or two.
“That doesn’t make it okay, man.” Luke was still angry.
“You’re right. And I’d be mad, too, if we were discussing my sister.” That gave everyone reason to pause and finally Noah and Jared let Luke go.
“Jeez, man, how did this go from asking Drew about playing basketball to a throw down about Piper?” Leave it to A.J. ask an inflammatory question like that.
“Dude, just shut up.” Zeke smacked A.J.’s head. And that’s all it took, we all started laughing.
“Holy shit, I was hoping for a fight,” Grayson, who’d been abnormally quiet, piped in.
“Stop swearing in my church, man!” Mateo dead legged Grayson.
&nb
sp; “I think this is God’s church, Mateo,” Jared just couldn’t help but point out.
“You telling me you wouldn’t pay money to watch Drew beat the sh-” Grayson shot a glance at Mateo and cleared his throat. “Crap out of Luke? Because I would.”
Luke reared back with a what-the-hell expression on his face. “Dude, are you kidding me right now?”
Adam nodded, considering Grayson’s question. “Yeah, I get that.”
“You guys suck.” Luke folded his arms across his chest and I couldn’t stop the laugh that busted out at that point if my life depended on it. The next thing I knew, we were rolling on the floor laughing.
It was several minutes later before anyone was able to say anything, but I made sure to tell Luke, “I’m sorry, man.”
He nodded. “Yeah, we’re good.” We shook hands slash hugged with bone jarring back slaps.
“But, I swear, you jerk my sister around, I won’t have to kill you, because they will.”
I had no doubt about it.
Chapter 19
Piper
“I know I’ve asked this question before, but seriously what’s with the bag?” Drew gestured toward my overflowing backpack. It’d gotten even worse since the beginning of the year as assignments piled up, books were added to the curriculum, and my lazy kicked in leaving me with a million papers that I needed to weed through.
“My locker is blocked by guard dogs.” I didn’t really want to get into it with him, but it seemed answering Drew straight up was usually easier than trying to put him off.
His gaze snapped from my overfilled bag to my eyes. “What do you mean ‘guard dogs’?”
I lifted my bag onto my shoulder and skirted around Drew to exit Mr. McGowan’s classroom. I didn’t want to be late for my next period. “My locker is sandwiched between a couple of cavemen. I don’t need that kind of drama, so I just avoid the thing altogether.”
Drew pulled on the strap of my backpack and almost dragged me to the ground. “Hey!”
“Sorry, but I know I didn’t just hear you right. Did you just tell me that you can’t use your locker because of a couple of jerks that harass you?” His voice rose with each word until he was practically shouting. “Does Luke know about this?”
I rolled my eyes and started down the hall again. “I don’t need my brother to beat up the bad guys annoying me at my locker. It’s better to just stay away. Besides, I’m almost getting used to the permanent grooves in my shoulders.”
“That’s it. Where’s your locker?” He tugged on my backpack again.
“Stop!” I slapped his hands away. “What are you doing?”
“You can’t keep carrying this thing around,” he said as he removed my bag from my back.
I caught one of the straps before he could sling the thing over his own shoulder. “I got this.” I pulled, suspending my bag between us in some bizarre game of tug of war. “Let. Go.”
“No.” He pulled with enough force I had to take a step toward him to keep from falling on my face.
“Yes! It’s my bag.” I yanked as hard as I could, hoping to surprise him into letting it go. Instead, he held firm and my arms were almost jerked out of socket.
“Where is your locker, Piper?” he asked, his expression stoic in the face of my irritation.
“Why? What are you going to do?” I folded my arms across my chest and gave him the same look my mom gave us when she knew she was right and the argument was almost over. Just like this one. “Fight those guys? Right. That will be awesome. Then you can get ISS or maybe even expelled. It isn’t worth it.”
“It’s absolutely worth it. Are you kidding? You have every right to use your locker. Now, where is it?”
“I’m not telling you.” I wasn’t about to let him get in trouble for something so stupid and so we stood there in this ridiculous stand-off. “Seriously, Drew, give me my bag so I can go to class.”
“No.”
“You can’t do this,” I shouted. My words echoed off the walls since they’d mostly cleared out in the time we’d been having our pointless argument.
“Yes, I can.”
He was serious. I could see in his eyes, he was determined to fix this for me. I recognized the symptoms of misplaced heroism having seen it often enough in my brother. Sighing, I scrubbed at my cheeks with the palms of my hands.
“Okay, can we work out a compromise? I don’t think I could stand to have you getting hurt or being subject to school discipline if you get in trouble for fighting on my conscience.”
The wheels were turning as he considered my question. “What kind of compromise?”
I threw my hands in the air. “How should I know? You’re the one holding my homework hostage!”
The bell was about to ring and I really, really needed to get to class. So did he.
“Yeah, okay.” He dropped my backpack from his shoulder and brought it around so he was holding it between us. “You get what you need for this class and then meet me before lunch right here. I keep the bag.”
“Whatever, weirdo. I just need to get to class.” I unzipped my bag and removed my book and binder for my next class and then zipped it up again before turning to race down the hall without even saying anything else and leaving him to lug my backpack around.
“Back here before lunch!” he called after me.
I acknowledged him with a wave over my shoulder- a wonderfully backpack free shoulder.
Drew
I couldn’t believe Piper had been lugging around this thing for almost two whole months. The thing needed its own directory. I had no idea how she ever found anything she needed in it, it was such a freaking mess. I was livid to find out why she’d insisted on carrying everything she needed for all of her classes around all day. How in the world Luke had missed this bit of information for this long was beyond me.
I made my way to my next class, a plan formulating in my mind. First, I had to come up with a compromise. As much as I wanted to head straight to her hall locker and smash someone’s head, I really didn’t want to get in trouble. My dad didn’t need any other excuses to get on my case. Avoiding a fight would be the best answer.
Plus, Piper and I had sort of developed a truce of sorts in the last few weeks. We saw each other every other day for AP Bio and then there was Kittie’s pottery class. All that to say, Piper and I were finally actually being the friends we’d agreed to be. I still wanted to kiss her, but have had better luck lately restraining my baser self- for both of our sakes. But I was about to rock the boat. And I had to admit, I was excited to see what would happen next.
After class, I hurried back to the Science hall to wait for Piper. I knew she had class on the whole other side of the school, so I was prepared to wait. I’d been getting some strange looks for carrying two backpacks, so I was ready to implement the first part of my plan. Or the only part of my plan.
“Hey, are you ready to give me my bag now?” Piper materialized at my side, cheeks flushed and out of breath. It reminded me of how she looks after making a jump shot. Which was bad, b it was because of that look that I kissed her the first time.
“Nope.” I turned to walk down the hall.
“What do you mean? You can’t keep my stuff, Drew. Why would you even want to?” Her feet slapped against the tiled floor as she raced after me.
“I don’t want to. I just don’t want you to have to have back surgery before you’re twenty because of this thirty pound backpack and since you won’t let me beat up some jerk wads, this is what I came up with.” I stopped in front of a set of lockers and entered the combination for one of them, popping open the door. My locker wasn’t full or messy. There would be plenty of room for her stuff. I opened her backpack and began unloading.
Beside me, her mouth dropped open. “You want me to use your locker?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t really want you to, but I’m willing to let you use it to save you from pre-mature back surgery. So, I’ll keep my stuff down here and you keep
yours up here and we’ll be good. The combo is twenty-three-thirteen-thirty.” I glanced up from shuffling my crap around. “Do you need to write that down?”
She looked like a beautiful six-foot fish again and the thought made me grin.
Chapter 20
Piper
While it was a relief to not have to carry around my backpack, sharing a locker with Drew had its own set of problems. The first of which was seeing way more of Drew.
“Good morning, Piper.”
It should be a sin to be that good looking this early in the morning. It was still a bit of a shock to look at him. He usually wore dark wash jeans and black t-shirts. I often wondered if he had a whole closet full of them at home. He switched the bar in his lip for a ring sometimes and was always messing with it with his tongue. I couldn’t tell if it was a nervous gesture or he wasn’t really used to wearing it and so he was always aware of it. Either way, it was distracting.
“Drew. Why are you so chipper this morning?” I skirted around him to dig my AP Bio textbook out of his locker.
“Chipper? Who says chipper anymore?” He leaned on the locker door watching as I shuffled the crap in my bag around.
“My grandpa does. Ugh, where is it,” I grumbled, searching through the locker for my missing homework packet. I’d finished it the day before and left it in the locker.
“What are you looking for?” He peered over my head into the locker.
“My homework packet,” I answered, opening my binder where I should have put it instead of loose in the locker.
Dating: One on One: Eastridge Heights Basketball Book 1 Page 13