My Fake Summer Boyfriend (11 page)
Read My Fake Summer Boyfriend Online
Authors: Ann Herrick
"I was pretty happy to see you
too," I said. "How did we ever get so messed up in one short week at the end of such a great summer?"
"Well, I almost hate to tell you this."
Alex paused. "It might hurt your feelings."
"Now what?"
"Nicole confessed—she and Logan worked together to break us up."
"Oh, that." I giggled with relief. "She bribed
Logan to flirt with me. Logan told me."
"And you
're not upset?"
"Well," I admitted, "for a second or two it was a blow to my ego. But we parted friends."
"Hmmm. I'll bet," Alex said. He gave me a wry smile, then continued. "When Nicole sent me to the turret to persuade you two to go for a walk with us, I should have suspected she was up to something. It never occurred to her that Logan might actually find you attractive and get carried away."
I fingered
Alex's collar. "I could have taken care of the situation myself, you know."
"Are you sure? I think you need me to keep you out of trouble."
"Sounds like a good idea," I said. "How about starting now?"
In one motion I was in Alex’s arms. He held me tight as we melted into each other. His lips touched mine, soft at first, then harder
, until I felt swept away on a soft and wispy cloud.
It was the perfect start.
The End
Other
Books We Love Ltd. books by Ann Herrick
How to Survive a Summer Romance (Or Two)
Life, Love, and Surviving High School
About the Author
Ann Herrick grew up in Connecticut, where she graduated from The Morgan School and Quinnipiac University. She now lives in Oregon with her husband, who was her high-school sweetheart. Their wonderful daughter is grown, married and gainfully employed, and has given Ann her only grand-dog, Puff, a bloodhound-rottweiller-beagle mix. While she misses the East Coast, especially houses built before 1900, she enjoys the green valleys, fresh air and low humidity in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Ann loves cats, walking, the Oregon Ducks and working in her back yard. In addition to stories and books for children and young adults, Ann also writes copy for humorous and conventional greeting cards. She loves to hear from her readers and can be contacted through her web site:
http://annherrickauthor.com
Note from the Publisher
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Best Regards and Happy Reading, Jamie and Jude
Books We Love
http://bookswelove.net
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Sample Chapter
Li
fe, Love, and Surviving High School
Chapter One
I'm the only one basically ignoring the sailboat stocked with Cute Guys straight out of central casting.
It figures. I haven't been on the same page as my friends since just before the start of middle school. I don't know exactly how things got so different. Not different in some edgy, gritty, I'm-a-rebel way. More of a
Yes, I'm a dork
way. Which makes it all the more amazing that while other friendships crashed and burned all around us, the four of us have managed to stay Best Friends Forever. Luckily, because in a group I can hide from my own
I will never get life figured out
fears.
Thing is, do my Best Friends Forever still really like me? Or is there just some leftover loyalty going on? You know, the way I keep Sammie, my matted, scruffy teddy bear. I guess Sammie "should really be thrown out" (according to Mom), because he
is
a total mess. But he was always there for me when I was little. I mean, the
reason
he's so matted and scruffy is because I spent the vast majority of my formative years either drowning him with my tears or practically asphyxiating him with my hugs (not that he actually could breathe, but you know what I mean).
Anyway. My Best Friends Forever and I are all first-borns. We all live on
Chittenden Street, which has the most architectural diversity in Franklin, Oregon. Students from the School of Architecture at the university come to study it, because even though there are different styles of houses from different eras it all works together. Just as Randi, Tanya, Nina and I used to. (Dad calls us the Vowel Sisters, because, you know, our first names all end in vowels.) For a while now I've felt as if maybe I need remodeling, updating, or maybe a bunch of architecture students writing a thesis about me on how to fit in anymore.
For one thing, Nina, Randi and Tanya love reality shows. I, however, have no patience for the phony drama on those programs. There's more than enough real-life drama. (Okay, so mine is mostly internal and self-inflicted, but still.)
Then there's the whole
Looks
thing. I was just as cute as any of them up until, you guessed it, middle school. Then my jaw got a little too square and my nose got a little too pointy and suddenly I was off center from being cute (Tanya Moreau), pretty (Randi Volmer) or beautiful (Nina Olsen). I'm not even interesting-looking enough to qualify as exotic or mysterious.
I no longer bring up the stuff I still think is fun. Horses or bike riding, for instance. Nina, Randi and Tanya went straight from that sort of thing to hair, makeup, clothes and guys. Not that I'm totally
not
interested, more that I never seem to get any of the first three right, which leaves me feeling less than comfortable around the opposite gender—as Mom insists on putting it. "Sex is what people do," she says, "gender is who they are". Whatever. Sometimes I still ride my bike. It's not so much fun by myself, though.
Then there's the fact I always think summer's never going to fade. Until, of course, it does.
Like now—Labor Day. Boats, swimmers and splashing kids churn the surface of Pine Crest Lake. People soaking up the last rays of summer litter the grassy area of the park like refuse from the overflowing trashcans. Cute Guys in the sailboat circle like sharks on the trail of hemoglobin.
Nina, Randi, Tanya and I stretch out on our towels on the thin strip of rough, pebbly grit that doesn't quite make it as a beach, but which I like to pretend is the white sand of Hawaii (not that I've ever been there). Did I mention that given a twelve-week stretch of warm, sunny school-free days I can imagine I live in a tropical dream world? While I'm pretending summer is going to go on forever, Nina, Randi and Tanya are talking about Wednesday,
The First Day of High School
, which they've been looking forward to and I've been (silently) dreading all summer.
"I so can't wait!" Randi reaches up to comb her thick brown hair. She arches her back to stick out her boob region, and watches every guy within a fifty-foot radius check out her B-cups. I mean, guys must think they're holding conversations with boobs, because that's where they focus their attention.
"Yeah." Nina twists the tiger's-eye ring on her middle finger.
"Ooh, nice ring," Tanya says. "Did you make it?"
Nina nods. Not only is she beautiful, she's creative. She has a rock-polishing machine she got off the internet for almost nothing, and uses inexpensive semi-precious stones with twisting wire for the settings. She sells some of her jewelry to girls at school and occasionally at the Outdoor Market that's held downtown every Saturday. "I'm ready for some decent art classes."
Note: The closest I come to art is doodling in class.
In the boob department Nina's not so much, but she's so amazingly beautiful guys actually gaze into her face, or maybe
stare at her with longing
, as romance novels would put it. Sometimes it's hard to believe someone so beautiful has to work for everything she has, from her clothes to her rock-polishing machine, earning the money by babysitting, dog-walking, jewelry-selling and yard work.
"I'm ready for more
guys
." Tanya flicks her sleek wealth of black hair off her shoulder as she sits cross-legged, almost finished knitting the sweater that was originally going to be the first of a matching pair for her and Colin, her boyfriend all through eighth grade. While Randi and Nina usually have guys buzzing around them, Tanya is the only one who wore her boyfriend's T-shirt, went to movies with him every week and called him to come over and walk her to wherever she wanted to go all the time. She's totally entertaining when it comes to her endeavors of domination of the male species.
Colin's dad got transferred to upstate
New York in early August, however, and off Colin went,
poof,
just like that. He and Tanya were going to stay a couple and go to the same college, thus the matching-sweaters plan. But New York turned out to be too far from Oregon for a long-distance relationship for Tanya. Really, another school district would be too far for her. She wants a boyfriend to be elbow-to-elbow at all times. I think she thought she'd have hooked someone new by now, but it didn't happen. Despite being a little on the chunky side, she
is
cute enough to get most guys to look at her more than once, especially since some of that chunkiness is in the exact right location, if you know what I mean.
"More guys, for sure." Randi says. She shakes her hair so the sunlight bounces off the shiny chestnut tones, because she sees the Cute Guys in the sailboat sliding slowly by again, ever closer to shore. "But, also, high school is when your parents still take care of you financially, but you don't have to spend that much time with them."
"I want to skip right over high school and jump straight to twenty-two. By then, I figure, I will have gotten through my first date, first kiss, passed my driver's test, taken the SATs, filled out all those college applications, somehow survived living in a dorm and gotten my college degree," I don't dare say, because I don't want to anyone to know how dorky I am. I mean, I'm a good listener when it comes to others baring their entire inner selves, but I prefer to keep my own feelings bottled up.
However, even though I don't say it out loud, if I
could
skip right to my twenties I would, so all the stress of high school and college and all those firsts would be behind me and I'd be ready to cope with life.
I think.
I hope.
***
Though my stomach feels like a butterfly sanctuary, Mom insists, "You need to eat
something
, Becca."
So I stick some whole-wheat bread into the toaster. White bread has been banned from the household. "No nutrition," Mom says. I stand there, staring at the red coils, willing the bread to toast faster, while Dad rattles his newspaper as he turns a page.
"I'm thinking of getting a boob job." Mom smears flax-oil spread on her toast.
If I were holding anything, I'd drop it.
Dad, however, doesn't miss a beat. He's cool about Mom's proclamations. Without even looking up from his paper, he comes back with, "I'm thinking of getting penis enlargement."
"Gil, I'm being serious."
"And you think I'm not?" Dad lowers the newspaper a little so he can peer over it at Mom. "I get dozens of emails every day saying that's what I need to do to 'please my woman.' You want to be pleased, don't you, Jess?"
Ewww.
I wish my parents would edit their conversations!
Mom lets out a little
tsk
, sips her coffee, eats a bite of her scrambled egg-whites, then says, "Those wench costumes we wear at The Colonial Inn are very low-cut and I've seen which waitresses get the biggest tips. Breast size affects earning power."
Rumor is that there used to be a bordello upstairs at The Colonial Inn, but that was nearly a hundred years ago. Still, the wench costumes that the waitresses wear seem to be a current reminder of that long-ago business. I'm sure that's what the manager had in mind when he selected them. I mean, on the one hand, the place promotes itself as a respectable place to have business and "ladies club" lunches and romantic dinners, but the red-flocked wallpaper gives another impression, at least in my mind.
Mom jabs her fork in the air. "Plus, the manager thinks that busty waitresses bring in not just big tips, but the big spenders."
Dad closes the newspaper, folds it and puts it next to his plate. "Jess. You have a career with your catering business. You don't have to wait tables too."
Catering business is kind of an exaggeration. Mom bakes cakes for all occasions—wedding, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Thing is, she doesn't advertise except with flyers at the library public-notice board, so she might be busy one week, then go several weeks without anyone ordering a cake. I've suggested she post on some online sites or something, but she's afraid that only weirdoes would respond, no matter how I try to convince her otherwise.
I realize my toast is starting to burn. The setting part of the toaster is broken. I think we should get a new one. Mom and Dad, however, say it can just be fixed, so we don't add a "perfectly good appliance" to the landfill. Okay, except it never gets fixed.
I spread peanut butter on my toast, hoping to cover up the burned taste. After I pour myself a glass of orange juice, I sit down at the kitchen table, thinking the boob/penis/job conversation is over. I think wrong.
Mom points her fork at Dad. "You know my cake-baking income is not steady. I want some money I can count on every week. We have two kids to put through college.
"Besides," Mom adds, "baking doesn't get me out of the house every day." She points at Dad just as he starts to open his mouth. "
And
…after having two kids, my boobs just aren't as round, firm and fully packed as they used to be."
Ew
.
Ick
. I take a sip of orange juice, hoping to disappear behind the glass. I should be used to Mom's and Dad's weirdo conversations, but I'm not. They were college sweethearts, so they've had years and years to develop their routines.
"I think your breasts are great." Dad wiggles his eyebrows.
"I'm going to school!" I jump up so fast I almost knock over my chair.
"In a hurry much?" Ray bursts into the room.
"Only to get away from you!"
As kid brothers go, Ray's actually not completely horrible, especially considering that he is eleven, but I point my tongue at him just because, which, of course, prompts Mom.