Autumn Unlocked (Summer Unplugged) (6 page)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amy Sparling is a Texas native with a passion for young adult literature. In her free time she participates in an unhealthy amount of Xbox playing, attends nerd conventions and reads books with her daugh
ter. Amy Sparling is a pen name for author Cheyanne Young.

You can tweet her @Amy_Sparling or visit her at
www.AmySparling.com

Want this eBook autographed? Check out Amy’s Authorgraph page where you can request a FREE digital autograph!

http://www.authorgraph.com/authors/Amy_Sparling

Want more of Hana and Ash at
Mixon Motocross Park?
Check out Motocross Me, a YA Contemporary Romance novel by Cheyanne Young.
Available on Amazon for $2.99

Check out Amy’s other books with these excerpts:

CHAPTER ONE

"Why do you kiss me like this if you're not going to have sex with me?" I ask, exhausted of the same making out after school routine. Elisa's eyes flicker and she looks away, ashamed.

Dammit.

I guess I shouldn't have said it like that, but it's too late now.  I didn't mean to hurt her feelings, but it's just so damn frustrating. We make out every day until her Mom gets home, but that's just it. I'm so sick of second base. When will she let me get to third? Or at the very least – short stop. 

"I'm sorry," she mumbles. Our legs and arms intertwine as we lay on the futon in her bedroom. She's lying on the inside, up against the corner. I lay on the outside, one arm under her head and the other on her hip. Her cat whines and scratches from outside her door. We've long since banned him from our time together, but he never gets the hint to go away. Elisa thinks it's mean to keep him out there but I think it's awkward to make out with a cat purring nearby, watching our every move. It's all sorts of wrong.

Of course the meowing and scratching on the door doesn't make it much better. I take Elisa's chin and force her to look at me. She gives me one of those smiles that look like a frown.

"You're mad at me," she whispers. I kiss her forehead because she likes that kind of thing; pull her to me even though we are already touching as much as psychically possible. "Lis, I told you we don't have to do it until you're ready."

She grips my arm tighter. "But you're
mad
, I can tell." I shake my head. "No, I'm not mad. We just can't make out this intensely anymore." I adjust myself through my jeans so she will get the hint.

"You're gross!" she says, pushing me away.

"It's not my fault, babe."

We sit up in an effort to cool ourselves off. I grab the remote off her nightstand and turn on her TV. A basketball game is on, so I flip to the sports channel to clear my mind of sex. She groans because she hates sports. She hates them so much that she hasn't even gone to my last three home
games. I guess after six months of dating you get comfortable enough to quit making sacrifices for each other.

Of course, God forbid she gets comfortable enough to sleep with me. Ugh. I shake the thought from my mind and focus on the game.
The Rockets are leading by thirty points, which kicks ass.

I throw my arm around her and kiss her hair. It smells like coconut. Her arms are crossed and she's staring out the window, either in a daze or deep in thought – I can never tell. But just in case she's sitting here steaming about me watching sports, I put the remote in her lap. "You can pick something to watch," I say with an innocent smile that means
please don't be pissed at me.

She takes it and flips through the channel guide, pausing on each individual channel listing, even the stupid ones. She's definitely lost in thought.

"What's the deal?" I ask, chuckling and nudging to her arm. She shrugs, still not looking at me. I hate when she does this. The whole "get quiet, don't talk to me and force me to pry whatever stupid and trivial thing she's harboring over out of her" thing. "If you're going to act upset and not tell me why then I'm leaving," I say, moving to stand up. I don't actually stand because this fake threat works every time.

"No!" She grabs my arm. "Don't leave, please." Yep, works every time.

"Why are you suddenly sad?" I ask. "We just made out – you should be stoked." I pop my collar even though I'm just wearing a T-shirt. "I know I'm stoked."

Usually she laughs when I do stupid shit like that, but this time she doesn't. She just looks down at the buttons on the remote. The highlights in her hair have grown out an inch already and I wonder if it's really been that long since her birthday when I paid for the dye job. Grabbing her hand, I lift it to my lips and start kissing her head repeatedly like some kind of crazy kissing monster. Eventually, it gets a laugh out of her.

She pushes me away, fixes her now messy hair, and frowns. "I just feel really bad that you want sex so much and I keep denying you." Her bottom lip curls out, her little force of habit that always makes me feel bad.

I don't want a deep-ass emotional talk right now.

"Well then stop denying me," I say, making this exaggerated wink so she knows I'm kidding and won't tear into me for being insensitive. She cracks a tiny smile and I continue, "Look babe, it's not a big deal." Actually, it is a big deal because I'm the only guy on the team who's still a virgin but I lie anyway. "Whenever you're ready for sex, just tell me. But until then, it's fine."

"Really?" she asks, settling on a cooking show.

"Really."

We watch the Food Network until her mom gets home with a pizza. Her mom is kind of religious and doesn't allow us in Elisa's room alone. We end up spending a fun-filled family evening in the living room with her annoying little preteen sister. Sometimes I wonder why I put up with these things. But then her drunk dad – who everyone pretends isn't really a drunk – stumbles and falls flat on his face, making the afternoon worthwhile after all.

I'm expected to leave exactly at nine. When the dreaded time comes, Elisa and I stand in the doorway under the porch light in what turns into a ten-minute goodbye. Crickets chirp and cars zoom down her busy road. We hold each other and make out standing up, a fun little routine we do every time I visit her.

The little seductress bites my lip and I shudder, a tingle going from my lips down through my toes. I run my fingers under the back of her shirt, up her spine and bring them forward to just under her breast. She pulls me closer, tighter, to her body. I freeze, unable to move for fear of losing control and ripping off her clothes right here on the stone entryway to her house.

"I wish you didn't have to go," she whispers, since our faces are incredibly close.

"Me too, baby," I say. It's a strain to speak under all the built up sexual tension in my body.

We break loose from each other and I literally shake myself a bit to bring me back to reality. She looks so hot in the shallow glow streaming down through the dusty porch light. I lean down, kiss her forehead and tell her goodbye.

"Wait," she says a few seconds later. I stop walking and turn back to her. She hesitates, chewing on her bottom lip.

"What is it?" I ask.

"This Friday," she says.

"What about it?"

She bites her lip and in the moonlight I can see her blush. "I'm ready."

Buy Deadbeat on Amazon for $0.99

Excerpt from Phantom Summer by Amy Sparling

CHAPTER 1

This is the wrong part of town for a teenager to be waltzing around at midnight. But I'm not wearing anything valuable, just my Joe's Diner uniform and beat up flip flops. All the sweat from tonight’s shift has undoubtedly washed off all my makeup and since the smell of grease and cigarette smoke isn’t appealing, I'm probably fine. But just in case any crazies from the ghetto are creeping in their low riders thinking of mugging me, I tighten my jaw and walk like I'm some kind of deranged woman seeking revenge in a Quentin Tarantino film.

No one messes with that type of woman. And no one's going to mess with me.

A dark figure sits on the sidewalk up ahead. He's some kind of punk emo kid, dressed in all black with a black hoody pulled up over his head. His bangs, dyed black probably, swoop over his forehead, blocking most of his face. He's sitting there holding his iPod, swaying his head all slowly to the music, like it's filling up his soul with every beat.

He notices me as I get closer to him. "Hi," I say, surprisingly cheerful for this time of night and
with this somber mood I've been in all day. Maybe I feel compelled to put some happiness in this loser's life. Maybe I'm just delirious from lack of sleep. Maybe I’m the loser, not him. "Great night, huh?"

"It is never a great night," he says, glaring at me. At least, I think he's glaring but the shadows bounce off the brick wall he's leaning against and cover the half of his face not hidden by his hair. I'm not even sure a mother could love
a face so filled with cynicism.

"Yeah, have fun with that way of thinking." I smack my gum and leave him to wallow in a puddle of his own self-pity.

The pawn shop has a smoky haze permeating throughout the room, covering guitars, exercise bicycles and old video game systems. The source of the smoke drifts off a cigar in the hand of an obese middle-aged man with a laughable comb over. I imagine myself as Uma Thurman in Kill Bill as I slip the velvet box out of my pocket and put it on the glass counter in front of us.

"How much will you give me for this?"

His chubby fingers open the box and take out the ring. He studies it under a magnifying glass. The only sound for a long time is his wheezy breathing. "I'll give you five hundred, just cuz' you're a pretty little thing."

"I want two thousand." I clench my jaw to avoid inhaling his gross cigar smoke, but also to maintain my no-nonsense façade.

"Two thousand?" He laughs, a rusty old man laugh. "You must be all beauty, no brains. I ain't givin' you two thousand."

"It's appraised at thirty-two hundred." I reach across the countertop and put my hand over the ring box, afraid he may steal it or something.

"This ain't no jewelry shop. If you want two grand, you shoulda gone somewhere else."

"Nowhere else is open at midnight," I say, sliding the ring box closer to me. He stares at me, either lost in thought or spacing out from years of drug use. The neon pawn shop sign buzzes over us, making the silence unbearable. I slide the box into my pocket and turn to leave.

"Wait a minute," he says so quickly that he bursts into a gurgly smoker's cough. "Let me see it again."

I take it out of my pocket, open it and place it in front of him. The one-point-four carat diamond sparkles under the fluorescent lights. I wish it were daylight so he could see how beautiful it truly is. The man holds up his dirty magnifying glass and examines it again. I look at the rings on display under us; none of them even compare to mine. My stomach tightens. I should have waited and gone to a real jewelry shop.

But I don't have time to wait.

He takes it out of the box and puts it on his finger. The gold band only goes as far as his yellowed fingernail. "How did a girl like you get a ring this nice, anyhow?"

"Inheritance."

His eyebrows come together. "You can't pawn an heirloom. That's just wrong."

"And I'm supposed to believe your moral character, why?"

He grunts. "It just
ain't right."

I cross my arms. "My grandmother was divorced. She wouldn't care." I can almost see her face up on her Heaven cloud, nodding in approval. That lying, cheating bastard, she'd say. Sell it.

"I'll give you fifteen hundred. Final offer."

"Two thousand."

"Nineteen hundred."

"Nineteen hundred plus one hundred more."

I don't look away as we stare at each other for an uncomfortably long time. He pushes a button on the cash register and the drawer pangs open, slapping him in the gut. "Fine."

I revamp my Uma Thurman impression as I leave the pawn shop with an extra two grand in my pocket. I add in a little
Chyna, that jacked female wrestler from back in the day. Now fully confident, and somewhat manish, I head back to the Ford, which is parked at Joe's Diner two blocks away. That emo kid is still on the sidewalk.

He sees me coming and tosses his head back to rest on the wall behind him. His eyes are closed and he's really feeling the groove of his music now. His fingernails are painted black too. I should do humanity a favor and kick him in the balls right now. It's not like he has any, or he wouldn't be sitting here wasting away his life.

"What are you so sad about?" I say, all cocky-like, like I wanna bang our chests together and hoot and holler. Yeehaw!

Emo
kid lifts up his head. "Wouldn't you like to know."

"Nope," I say, kicking a crushed Coke can out of my way. "I don't give a shit about your problems."

He stares at me now, shaking his head like I'm such a fool for disregarding him. Like he has all the answers in life, and he'd be happy to share them with me, but I wouldn’t want to hear it. Because he thinks the world is a low and sad place, not accepting of people like him.

Truth is
, he doesn't know anything about anything. I bet he goes home to his loving parents and sleeps in his warm bed and works at Starbucks on the weekends for money to buy more music. I bet his emo gig gets him a lot of attention from other attention-starved emo girls.

What's he trying to prove by acting all sad? I bet he's never truly been sad in his whole life. You don't know what sad is until you do something really bad. Like if you accidentally kill your best friend. And once you've known sorrow like that, you don't have to wear all black to prove it.

I'm not.

Buy Phantom Summer on Amazon for $1.99