First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances (17 page)

Too many thoughts raced through me, too many feelings pounded through me, too many drum beats out of sync made my brain hurt.

“Get a room,” growled a familiar voice.

Amy pushed me back, turning. Her turn to wipe her mouth. “Joe,” she whimpered.

“It’s final ceremonies,” he said, looking at both of us and then just shaking his head, turning away.

It felt like being an inmate on death row, and being told it was time. I knew what they were going to say. Amy wanted to hold my hand walking back, and I knew I should, but the part of me that wanted to be a dick was starting to come out. The part that needed to go and sit with headphones on, and blast music and drum along, and drown out the world, was starting to emerge. I wished I had time, I wished I had space.
 

I wished I could go for a twenty mile run, or drum for three hours, or take some kind of drug that would just get me out of my own mind, but I couldn’t. I had to walk, step by step, next to her down the linoleum floored hallway. I had to turn and step on the carpet in the auditorium and look at the expectant faces of my teammates. I had to break contact from her, and nod and pretend everything was going to be okay, even as a knot formed in my stomach and my skin buzzed at the thought of going home.

My phone rang. I ignored it. I knew it was my dad, calling to find out. If he really cared he’d be here, right? Right? What he cared about was the surface, not the depth. Amy could be deep. Right now I just didn’t give a fuck about anything anymore. I wanted it all to go away. All of it.

Mr. Feehan whispered something about what I thought the final rankings would be, and I turned to him and said, “I think I lost.”

“Everyone thinks that,” he said back, bright blue eyes twinkling, bags under his eyes a swollen pink. I know he was trying to make me feel better, but it just added to the cacophony.

The final ceremonies dragged on, the Lincoln-Douglas results toward the end. If I had been sitting next to Amy, by the time we got to the announcements of our names, well,
her
name, I probably would have had her in tears because I was shut down. You could have gotten more emotions out of a slab of granite.
 

Talia Sheridan’s name was first, Mike Zendo was second, and when they went to announce number three my team looked at me expectantly, everybody holding their breath, the freshmen with their fingers crossed. So much energy erroneously focused on me because I knew, God dammit I
knew
. When the coach who gave the announcements said “Amy Smithson” I stood up and walked out, scores of eyes on me. Including Amy’s.

Dick move? Hell, yeah.

Then again, I am my father’s son.

Amy

2 months later

I stared at my prom dress. It was perfect. Peach with a slight copper undertone to it that set off the occasional topaz flecks in my brown eyes. Princess perfect.
 

Tonight, I was supposed to be a princess and Sam was supposed to be my prince. I knew I was supposed to be kind of jaded and hard edged and not talk like that. I was supposed to be all
Gossip Girl,
and smooth, and edgy. But really, even smart, above-that-crap girls could be allowed to be a damn princess on prom night. For prom night, I was supposed to put that dress on. I was supposed to have someone come to my house with a corsage, drive up in a limo with a group of friends all paired off for the night, either with boyfriends and girlfriends, or just going as buddies. Tonight, I was supposed to dance in Sam’s arms, marvel at how handsome he looked in the tux, look into those eyes, feel his arms around me, sense the comfort.

Tonight, I was supposed to sneak off to a hotel that everyone knew we would get, that our parents would turn a blind eye to as long as we didn’t drink and drive. Tonight, I was supposed to lose my virginity in a glory of cliché.

Instead, here I was, sitting in my bedroom, staring at the dress. The dress my mom helped me pick out long before I had a prom date, when I was hopeful and optimistic that I’d have fun going stag with my friends and maybe get to be that perfect princess. The shoeless dress. I never went out and bought anything to go with it. No jewelry, no shoes, no matching nail polish, or perfect earrings, nothing. Because I hadn’t seen Sam since the day he walked out of the auditorium when they announced my name. Hadn’t heard from him, hadn’t—
anything
. Nothing. The cold reality of the past months of silence, emptiness, and despair meant that I’d be throwing good money after bad if I assembled any sort of fashion plate for myself. My friends tried to convince me to go. Even Erin showed up at the last minute, pulling me along, literally yanking on my arm and trying to convince me that I could still go stag.

“You’re crazy,” she said.

We’d been best friends since kindergarten. She was going with her boyfriend, Jonathan, captain of the football team. A guy who looked just enough like Tom Brady to make you wonder if he wasn’t his bastard child. Her dress was slutty—her word, no judgment from me—in a really good sort of way. They’d have fun, I knew. It was easier to be immobile and immutable than to let the tiniest crack of hope seep in and make me think that maybe—just maybe—I should go.

Mom was almost inconsolable. She couldn’t believe that her little girl wouldn’t go to prom. “There are so many other boys you could ask,” she said.

No, Mom
, I thought,
there aren’t
. I asked the only one I wanted to go with. So, instead, my date would be Ben and Jerry’s. Who knew? A threesome. And a movie, something from Judd Apatow. I needed a good laugh. Maybe I’d even watch
Fanboys
again. That would be my night.

It felt a little bit like paying penance, as if I’d done something wrong and needed to be punished. Being ignored by Sam was punishment enough, no question there.

Making it to Nationals meant that in a few weeks, after graduation, I’d be on a plane to some Southern state I didn’t care about to compete in an event that had no real impact on my future. It wouldn’t get me more money for school. It was just a feather in my cap. A very expensive feather in my cap. It cost me a guy I could have loved. Who am I fooling?

A guy I already loved a little.

I wondered what he was doing. Was he hanging out with his buddies? He went to a different school and I knew that their prom night wasn’t the same, so to him this was nothing, just a throwaway night. Like I was a throwaway girl.
 

Why the hell did he walk out of that auditorium and never say a word to me again? I got his cell phone number from Joe Ross and texted him. Nothing. I wasn’t going to try anything else. I looked him up on Facebook, but couldn’t bring myself to push the Friend button, because what if it hung out there in limbo?

With debate season over, my Saturdays were free again, and instead of feeling an opening in my life, it felt like something had closed. The feeling of his arms around me, of his lips pressed against mine, of the potential that rested in our touch, had swirled down the drain the moment we shook hands and that debate had begun.
 

And yet, if I could turn back time, I don’t know if I would do anything differently. If I’d pulled any punches along the way it would have been false, and Sam would have hated that. If
he
had condescended to
me
, I wouldn’t be pining away for him right now, that’s for sure.

I can understand being mad at me. I could understand being embarrassed, or pissed, or frustrated, but the silent treatment, being able to just push aside what we had? It’s so unlike the Sam I thought I knew. I wanted to storm over to his house, barge in on him, make him talk to me. Instead, I sat here on my bed, my phone turned off, staring at a bunch of peach cloth. I stood up and pulled the dress out of the closet, then threw it on the bed like a blanket. It was perfect for a perfect night that never would happen.

The doorbell rang and I ignored it. Evan hollered up, “Liam’s here!”

Liam? I’d known Liam McCarthy since we were, well...
babies
. He was popular. His parents had divorced years ago. He lived with his mom over in the same school district that Joe and Sam went to, but his dad lived next door, still in the house, so he was over here constantly.

He bounded up the stairs, came through the door, all blonde and tan and Godlike. My friends all wanted to date him. Half of them wanted to fuck him. But to me he was like a brother. Except I hadn’t seen him much this past year and he looked
nothing
like my brother.

“Sam never called?” Liam was a straight shooter. He was dressed in soccer shorts, a v-neck short-sleeve shirt made of the same lightweight material, and he smelled faintly of a mixture of Old Spice, Polo and oranges. My head swam for a moment as he stretched his long legs out, easing onto the bed beside me, a serious look on his face. Blond, curly hair peppered the tanned skin that stretched out for miles in front of me, my eyes trying so hard not to drift up the black, silky shorts that covered his middle. His shirt was the same color and his eyes were a bluish-green, like looking at the ocean as it met the sand dunes in Truro, on Cape Cod, just after a storm.

My pulse needed a minute to recover. My heart was still stuck on Sam. My body, though, knew exactly what it wanted—and recovering wasn’t it.

“Nope.”

“Asshole.” He sat on the bed next to my dress and fingered the hemline.

“Yup.” They were in the fledgling band that Trevor Connor and Joe Ross had put together this year. They had a weird name I couldn’t remember. That meant Liam saw Sam regularly, and my heart soared—not just from Liam’s hot skin so tantalizing on my bed, either.

“Did you talk to him about me?” I tried to keep the hope out of my voice, but failed miserably.

Uncertain how to answer, Liam seemed to struggle with his words. This was not his normal state; the guy was confidence itself on legs. “Sure. Told him he was crazy to give up a chance of tapping you. Fresh virgin meat.” A predatory smile made my knees go weak and a wet warmth spread from my—

Pressing my hands over my heart, I said, “Like words from Shakespeare.”

“I aim to please.”

My laughter came out like normal, at first, and then settled into a strange braying sound of half sobs and half giggle. Liam looked at me with alarm and sat up, his body impossibly big and beautiful, right in front of me where Sam should be.

“Amy?”

Waving my hands in front of my face like I was swatting a bee, I said, “I’m fine! I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m pretending to be fine! I’m pretending to be fine!”

“That makes two of us.” His face fell, and in his pain I could see the man he would become. It was jarring.

Yet I knew why he winced. “Charlotte, huh?”

He leaned back, folding his hands under his head, and sighed. I swallowed, hard, as the soft cloth of his shirt rode up at the waist, showing a thickening of those golden curls right where it would lead down to—

“I miss her,” he huffed, not quite convinced he should tell me.

“I can imagine,” I squeaked, feeling like an adulteress to the memory of Sam. How stupid! This was
Liam
. The guy who launched spitballs in my hair on the bus. The one I took baths with when we were kids. The dude who kissed my cheek at our first co-ed party when we played Truth or Dare. The guy who was like a brother to me in a way that my own brother barely was.

And also? I owed no allegiance to Sam or my imagined reality with him.
Go away, Sam. Get outta my head.

“Why’d you break up with her?”

He sat up fast, like a wrestler doing quick sit ups, his flat stomach muscled in ways that made me want to reach out and touch him for the pure joy of touching a body that could
do
that.

“Because.” His voice went cold.

“Gotcha. I’ll shut up about it.”

He stood quickly and walked over to my prom dress. “You would look good in this. Why don’t you go?”

“Where’s your tux?” I joked.

A look of confusion, then a kind of dawning horror, spread across his face. “Aw, Amy, I never even thought about it!” Then pity. “Of course I would have taken you.”

“NO!” I shouted, jumping to my feet. “
No, no, no, no, no
, that’s not what I meant! I don’t need a pity date.”

“
So
not a pity date, Amy,” he answered, eyes combing over me, then the dress. “I’d have been honored.”

Tears came in a giant wave then, the power overwhelming me, my stomach clenching in one hard wall of anguish. “Why won’t Sam even talk to me?” I wailed. “Why am I the weirdo stuck at home on prom night?”

And then Liam was holding me, arms wrapped around my sobbing self. His body felt so good, and comforting, and hard. Not like a brother, suddenly.

Like a man.

“I am so sorry,” he crooned into my hair, the vibration of his deep voice making my neck tingle. “At least there are two of us. You’re not the only weirdo.”

I half-laughed, half-sobbed into his shoulder. My hands slid across his back and he held me closer, lips touching my earlobe with the briefest of kisses. Was he...was this...did he want...?

In an instant, he put my questioning to rest by pulling back, his hand at my cheek, soulful eyes taking mine in. “I wish everything were different.”

And then another hug.

“I know you miss Charlotte,” I whispered, faltering as I tried to think of what to say. He stiffened.

Wrong thing.

“I don’t want to talk about Charlotte,” he murmured against my cheek. In a breathtaking split second his lips were on me, and Liam—the same Liam who had teased and tormented and played and cajoled as kids, the one I’d captured fireflies in a jar with, who had gone on camping trips with my family when we were little—was a muscled wall of man above me, hovering over me and doing to my mouth, my body, what Sam was supposed to be doing this very moment.

Sam.

Tears formed at the corner of my eyes and slid down the edge of my face. Liam felt it as he kissed me tenderly, and wiped one away. “Amy, I—should I stop?” He froze, starting to roll off.

Gratitude mixed with frustration and I pulled him back to me.