For The Love Of Football #2

Chapter 1 ~ New Beginnings

"You never know when you're gonna meet someone, And your whole wide world in a moment comes undone."

~ Daughtry, Start of something good ~

The ball tapped against Lucas's feet and he grinned. He wasn't very good at football. He kept his eyes on his feet instead of ahead of him, but he was happy and who was Sky to tell him otherwise?

She and Tyler were bringing out jugs of juice and a whole crate of ice creams to cater for the entirety of Clarke high schools- now retired- football team. They were spread out playing a football game in the Turner's back garden.

Harper, ever the girly-girl,  was sat threading daisy chains into Peyton's hair whilst in turn, Peyton read a hard back book aloud to her. Scott and the rest of the team were playing football with Lucas and Skylar smiled when Scott lifted Lucas up onto his shoulders after Oscar let the ball roll past him and into the goal.

They paraded him around, laughing and cheering. "Ice creams guys!" Tyler yelled out to them and it was only moments before the whole team were crowding around the large picnic table on the back porch. Scott stood behind Sky, wrapping his arms around her middle before planting a kiss on her cheek.

Scott had gathered up the courage to finally ask her out a week after their final game. They'd been together for almost four months and it had been one of the hardest, but happiest, summers that Skylar and her family had ever had.

It had taken a while, but Skylar had finally started to feel normality seep back into her life. Of course, living in the care home was a whole life away from how she had lived before, but she was trying really hard to see past that and enjoy the silver linings that living in the care home offered. She was fed for a start; she didn't need to go starving even once and she had a whole room to herself where she didn't need to share with her Mother stinking of alcohol.

Returning to the real world also meant that she needed to figure out what she was going to do about school. Grace, along with her care worker Mrs Randell, had managed to get Skylar enrolled in the local sixth form. Clearly, with everything that had happened, Skylar hadn't done a single one of her exams. That was all under control also. Sky had met with the head of the sixth form and they had come to the agreement that if she went to their summer school and took all of her exams in September, they would count as her GCSE's.

When they had spoken about which A Levels she would be taking, Skylar distinctively remembered telling the man "nothing with numbers" quite vigorously. In the end, they'd come up with PE, psychology, and English literature which surprisingly, Sky didn't mind at all; she was fast becoming just a good a reader as Peyton. Scott constantly teased them about starting up their own book club when he'd catch them sat in silence, reading.

They would all be starting sixth form in three days time. Skylar was nervous about not having any of her friends with her; the rest of the team were split between two or three much fancier schools. The kind that you need a certain amount of A's to get into- of course they weren't for Skylar. She tried not to concentrate on that. Instead she turned in Scott's arms and wrapped her own around his neck.

She was glad for being tall in moments like these, so that neither of them needed to crane their necks in order to see each other. It had taken the two of them a couple of weeks to get used to the whole 'relationship' idea after they had spent the past year supposedly hating each other. The pair bickered about most things and neither would back down in an argument but any one of their friends could tell that they'd found their perfect match. They challenged each other. They were both stubborn and scarred and although neither of them would admit it, they needed one another.