I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

Return to Kassidy's POV

The remainder of the week was uneventful; classes were the same, except now Jared had made the seat beside mine his new place to sit in Math class. To be honest I didn’t mind; Jared was easy to talk to, and he liked to tell jokes. Not always good jokes, but if the joke didn’t make me laugh he seemed to always find a way to have me at least chuckling.
“Hey Kass,” I couldn’t help but grin as Jared greeted me on the way to his seat behind me in English.
“Hey Jared, what’s up?”
“Not much; practice was brutal yesterday but that’s because a bunch of guys skipped out on the one earlier this week,” he replied with a groan, rotating his shoulders to stretch.
“Oh yikes, that sounds like fun,” was my response, not knowing what to tell him. He chuckled to himself, shaking his head at me.
“Not fun at all! So hey, are you coming to our game tonight? Come on, please?” he asked, and again I shrugged. I wasn’t sure if Alanna was actually going to go or not and I was not going to sit by myself for an entire hockey game.
“I don’t know, I still don’t know what Alanna’s doing,” I replied, and saw his smile falter slightly.
“Aww, come on! It’d be really cool if you came,” he urged, but all I did was shrug. I wasn’t going to commit to going and then find out she wouldn’t go with me.
“We’ll see; I’m sure you’ll live if I’m not there,” I reassured him, to which he playfully rolled his eyes.
“”I don’t know; I might die of a broken heart from the disappointment,” he told me, making me laugh again.
“Aw muffin, I’m sure it’s not that bad,” I teased him in a baby voice, until he finally cracked a big grin.
“Pft, that’s what you think Kass,” with that the teacher walked in, so I turned in my seat to once again face the front of the room.
Throughout the entire class he kept bugging me to come to the game, to the point I even considered moving at the two minute break our teacher always gave us halfway through class. But as annoying as he was being it was nicer to have someone to talk to than being isolated.
“Jared! I told you I’ll go if Alanna goes; I’m not sitting by myself for a whole fricking game!” I sighed, exasperated as he followed behind me down the hallway still trying to make me commit to going to the game.
“Come on! I’m sure there’s lots of people from our class going to hang out with? Come on, please? Please? Please?” he knew his rationale wasn’t working so he switched his tactics to annoying me into saying yes.
“Jared,” I raised an eyebrow and got an impish grin in response.
“I just want you to come to the game, that’s all,” he said as he walked beside me.
“Why do you want me to go to your game so badly?” I asked.
“Because you’re my friend, and you’re cool. Oh! We could get pizza after the game! That would be great too, Eric’s always down for pizza after a game,” he grinned, and try as I might I couldn’t keep a similar one off of my face. Psychology class was a break from his insistence, but once math came along he was right back at it.
“Please?” he elbowed me lightly, whispering so Mrs. Drier wouldn’t hear him. Not that she would ever say anything anyways, but still.
“Jared! Can you not drop it for like an hour?” I groaned. He shrugged his shoulders, leaning back in his seat as far as his large frame would allow him to without tipping the desk or something similar.
“I dunno,” he mocked me, raising an eyebrow as he waited to see what kind of a response he was going to get.
“Fine. Two can play this game,” I told him, pulling out my iPod and proceeding to put my headphones on and turn it up, efficiently blocking out any noise he was making. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him trying to talk to me as I pretended to be intently reading my textbook. Finally he let out a huff and turned his attention to his own books, but my chuckle tipped him off.
“There! Fine! I’ll shut up!” he announced as he pulled my headphones off of my head.
“What the?”
“I’m getting lonely sitting here without anybody to talk to,” he whined as his explanation.
“You’re not supposed to be talking anyways,” I reminded him.
“So?”
“Besides, anybody in this room would be more than happy to talk to you,” I reminded him. He gave me a look of disbelief, as if I’d grown a third arm or something.
“You’re full of it Kass,” he finally shook his head.
“Nope. Definitely not,” I said, more to myself than him, but he caught it anyway.

“Hey! Kass; I have a backup plan for you,” Jared came barreling down the hall at me at last break, scaring both Alanna and I.
“What’s that?”
“Well, my parents and my oldest brother and his girlfriend are coming, so Alanna if you didn’t wanna go Kass you’d have somebody to sit with. They aren’t scary or anything; I’m basically the same size as Eric, just skinnier,” he informed me. Alanna raised an eyebrow at me, one that clearly insinuated she thought something more was going on than what I had told her.
“That’s okay; I’ll go,” she shrugged, to which I was grateful. That wouldn’t be awkward at all; Jared and I still hardly knew each other, let alone for me to sit with his family through his hockey game.