cxx. talking to aaron and the game

Aaron and I decided to meet in the library to study one day after school. I had so much homework that I needed to get done, but Aaron didn’t. He wasn’t doing anything really, just playing on his phone and listening to music. Aaron was a procrastinator, unlike me.

“Don’t you have work to get done?” I asked.

“Not really,” Aaron said. “I have English, but I’ll finish that during study hall tomorrow.”

I rolled my eyes. That seemed like a risky plan to me “What if you don’t finish?”

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “I’ll finish.”

I didn’t believe him. “You should probably work on it now,” I suggested.

Aaron groaned. “Fine,” he said. He took out his English book and started working. I continued working on my math homework. I still hated math, but all of the colleges I was looking at required four years of math in high school, and I wanted to get into a good college.

“How have you been?” Aaron asked me.

“Tired,” I said, and it was true. Senior year was exhausting me. I couldn’t wait to be out of here.

“Me too,” Aaron said. “I’m going to miss you and Justin when we go to college though.”

I might miss Aaron and Justin a little bit, so I said, “Yeah, me too.” They would be the only things I would miss though. I couldn’t wait to be out of here. Everything would be better when I left for college.

“Are you going to the football game tonight?” Aaron asked.

“No,” I said. That seemed obvious to me. I couldn’t stand football, and I didn’t understand why high school revolved around it. It was just a bunch of sweaty boys tackling each other. Besides, there were so many people there. I would be overwhelmed like I was at prom.

“Oh okay,” Aaron said. “Do you want to go?”

“No,” I repeated. I wasn’t going to change my mind on this one.

“That’s too bad,” Aaron said.

I shrugged. “I’m just not into football.”

“That’s okay,” Aaron said. “I’ll just go with Justin. I’d rather go with you though.”

“Sorry Aaron,” I said. “I’ll go with you to something else.”

“Really?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah, of course,” I said. Maybe Aaron and I could go do something fun sometime. I just wanted to make this up to him since he seemed so disappointed. All I ever wanted to do was make people happy, but it was difficult not to compromise my own happiness.

“Great!” Aaron shouted. He grinned and looked back into his English book. I went back to math. Why did this have to be so difficult? I hated math. Nothing ever made sense when it came to numbers. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to take math in college, because I really didn’t want to do that.

I glanced back at Aaron. He still wasn’t really focused. I shouldn’t worry about him so much. I went back to doing homework and absorbed myself into that.