Classic.

i.

Someone insecure ruins good things because somewhere inside they believe they don't deserve them.

It's what they always say, "We accept the love we think we deserve."

Funny how things work that way.

He feels like he didn't deserve love at all. He had been such a jerk to everyone and he knew it. He wasn't really a jerk, that's not how he wanted to be, but he pushed people away because he didn't want anyone else ending up hurt.

He was self conflicted, thoughts jumbled up inside.

What do I deserve?

Did his parents even love him? He tried so hard, but felt like he never amounted. Where was the love? Why wasn't it there when he needed it? Why weren't they there?

So he surrounded himself by bad people and did the things they did because he felt like that's where he really belonged.

Captain of the varsity basketball team and still the most insecure of them all.

TJ Kippen knew he ruined everything beautiful he touched, so he strayed away and kept with what he was good at and had much time to practice. Basketball and being the biggest jerk to anyone below him.

Classic. It was classic. Undeniably the first thing that would ever happen.

Couldn't his parents just accept him? Notice him?

No. They weren't home and he was alone. Sitting in sorrow for himself, staring at his math homework like it would magically do its self.

That would be a miracle, he thought.

A learning disability, how embarrassing. Like no other. Everyone else could focus, everyone else saw the right numbers. He just had to be that one who couldn't.

He didn't want a tutor. How great would that be? If someone found out he got a tutor, he'd get laughed at, he knew that for sure.

Oh, the big bad boy who couldn't see numbers right, not so tough, can't even do his math homework. Wonder when the teacher would notice that he was always failing. The disability acted up more when he was stressed and God he was stressed right now.

It made him anxious, bouncing his knee as he sat at the desk and became frustrated. The numbers were jumbled and he was getting tired. Worried about being sat out of the game because of his dropping grade. The team would hate him, TJ had to play. He was their best player, besides Buffy, the new girl, well not necessarily new, she had actually played the past years before too.

TJ didn't like Buffy at all, she stole the spotlight, the only spotlight he had, the one where he actually had the attention.

It took time, but even he accepted her into the team and apologized. He felt awful about it. She didn't deserve that. He knew she didn't, she was innocently taking it away, she couldn't have known it was actually hurting him. No one could've actually. They weren't exactly friends after that, but she did appreciate his apology, it really did seem sincere and it made her wonder.

So he didn't hate her and he learned that she was actually pretty nice and they played one on one from time to time.

TJ liked the attention. It was to put up with the lack he got at home. His parents were always so busy and he even forged his mother's name onto a paper so he could get a job and work somewhere, just to distract himself from home. It's not like they'd notice anyway. He often thinks his parents even forget they have a kid. Was he that unimportant?

Just like that he fell asleep on the desk, horrible for his neck and he figured as such when he woke up at midnight, cursing to himself about the kink in his neck. The unfinished homework just made the rumbling anxiety in his stomach worse. Overthinking about how bad this was gonna be in the long run.