#LoveToHateThatBoy (#BestFriendsForever Book 2)

by Yesenia Vargas

  That got everybody laughing.

  Ella’s mouth fell open, and Lena shrieked, “You kissed Tommy?”

  “Was it any good?” Rey asked, a huge smile on her face.

  Harper leaned in. “Yeah, who was the best kisser?”

  I put my index finger to my chin. “Definitely Jacob Miller.”

  After several more seconds of giggles, I sat up, glad I had agreed to this night of fun. I hadn’t realized how much I needed it. “Okay, okay. Moving on. Ella, truth or dare?”

  She covered her face with a pillow. “I hate this game. Fine. Truth.”

  Harper smiled. “Truth is always more fun.”

  I thought of a good question. “Tell us your most embarrassing moment.”

  We all waited in eager silence for her answer, but it took her a while.

  “I don’t know,” Ella said, looking around the room. “Well, this one time, when I was with Jesse…”

  She paused.

  Rey nudged her on. “When you were with Jesse…?”

  Ella’s face turned a rich shade of pink. “I, uh, accidentally ran into him.”

  Pause. We blinked back at her, confused.

  “With my butt,” she finished.

  Harper gasped, and we all burst into loud peals of laughter.

  I tried to catch my breath. “Wait. What? How?”

  “It was when we first started going out. We were at the movies, and I had never even been.”

  Not surprising, considering she had been living under her stepmom’s thumb back then. Plus, Courtney and Lindsay had been real pains back then to everyone, but especially her.

  Ella went on, and we listened with bated breath. “It was really dark, and when I came back from the bathroom, I couldn’t see a thing. So I tried to scoot in because my seat was on the other side of him. And I think he tried to get up and let me go by at the same time…and then my butt totally hit his face.”

  We all laughed again. Lena dabbed at her eyes.

  “Wow,” I said. “That is pretty embarrassing. Congratulations, you win this game forever.”

  We went on like that for a while. By the time it was my turn again, Rey had prank called her older brother and his best friend, and Harper had revealed that she had a huge crush on Emerson, Westwood’s main bad boy. That garnered quite a shocked reaction from everyone.

  Lena stared at her. “You, Harper Lee West, think he’s hot?”

  “Oh, everyone thinks he’s cute,” I said. “That’s a well-known fact. But girls know to stay away from him.”

  “Well, it’s not like I know him or anything,” Harper said with a slight blush. She stared at the shaggy carpet on the floor. “I just think maybe he’s misunderstood.”

  Lena went for a dare and texted a picture of herself in her best double chin silly pose to everyone on the soccer team. Guys and girls.

  Harper smiled. “My turn. What should we ask Tori?”

  Rey raised her hand. “If Noah Thomas asked you out right now, what would you say?”

  I did my signature eyeroll but did my best to keep my cool and answer. “Hmm.” I pretended to think about it. “Yes, I guess I would. It would definitely beat going out with someone like Gary. But we all know that would never happen because he hates cheerleaders.”

  Ella supported her chin with her hands. “I don’t know. The way he looks at you sometimes in the cafeteria…I’m not sure he hates all cheerleaders, if you know what I mean.”

  Harper winked in my direction. “Oh, I know what you mean. You should see the way he looks at her in lit, even now.” She sighed.

  I threw my pillow at them and missed. Then Lena threw her pillow at me, and then everyone was throwing pillows and stuffed animals and laughing and screaming.

  When it was over, we decided we were hungry and wanted pizza. Ella and Rey asked for supreme, but Lena insisted on Hawaiian.

  I led them downstairs to the takeout menu drawer, glad the subject had turned away from Noah. And that I was finally spending some much-needed time with my best friends, even if a piece of my heart still ached for that boy I loved to hate.

  After another week of long cheer practices and not a word from Noah, Emma and Isabella hung out again the following weekend.

  While I was still bummed about Noah, Isabella seemed happier than ever. Even my mom noticed that she wasn’t her usual quiet and reserved self. She’d always been that perfect little girl who did as she was told and hardly made a peep at the dinner table. Lately, though, she had finally come out of her shell.

  I liked the new change and the distraction, especially when a part of me—a small part of me, way deep down where no one could ever find it—kind of missed Noah.

  This time, both my parents were home, and Noah offered to bring over Emma. I opened the front door to find him standing behind his sister. The car I’d seen several times at their house was still running several feet away in our driveway.

  Emma practically jumped and down. She had a heavy-looking backpack over her shoulders. “Hi, Tori! May I come in, please?”

  I smiled back at Emma. “Of course! Isabella’s already waiting for you upstairs,” I said, stepping aside.

  She ran past me and straight up the stairs, her backpack not slowing her down for a minute. I marveled at her energy and then turned back to Noah.

  His easy-going grin was missing from his face. Instead, he could have passed for a mannequin at the mall. “Thanks again for having Emma over. I’ll pick her up at eight?”

  I nodded, hardly meeting his eyes. “That’s fine. Any time is fine, really. I’m sure they’ll have a blast.” Why was I rambling?

  My mom came to the front door, and I introduced them.

  She slyly looked Noah up and down, surely noticing that his sneakers and clothes weren’t exactly brand new or brand name. Her eyes stopped on the mess of hair on top of his head. “So you’re Emma’s big brother. And Tori’s classmate?”

  She glanced at me, and I nodded. “Noah’s new at school this semester. We’re in the same literature class.”

  Noah held out his hand. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. Rodriguez.”

  She hardly took it before pulling her own back. I recognized the fake smile on her face. “Well, we’re very happy to have Emma with us tonight for dinner. I’m just ecstatic they’ve become friends. Our Isabella has always struggled in that department. Tori never had that problem, however.” She laughed, and it reeked of fake. “She’s always been very popular at school.”

  She said it like I had won the Presidential Medal of Honor or something. Meanwhile, I ached for this torture to end.

  Noah offered a false smile of his own then looked at me for a second before turning his gaze back to her. “Yes, she’s definitely…well-loved by everyone at school.”

  My mom gave him a tight-lipped smile.

  He took a step back. “Well, thank you again for having Emma. I’ll be back to pick her up later. Good night.” With that, he turned and left for good.

  My mom closed the front door and made her way back to the kitchen. I followed her, and we went back to prepping dinner.

  “Well, I suppose he seems like a well-mannered boy, but I hardly saw this Emma on her way up the stairs. Where did you say they live?” She began chopping up zucchini.

  I kept my eyes on the boiling pasta. “I’m sure you’ll like her. She’s nice. And so is he.”

  Ignoring the searching look on her face, I turned off the burner and drained the pasta.

  “I’m sure they both are,” my mom said.

  But my mind was already on Noah and the way he’d hardly looked at me earlier. I hadn’t realized how much it would hurt not to be his friend.

  Close to nine o’clock, Noah showed up for Emma.

  My mom was already upstairs doing her pre-bedtime routine. My dad was still jet-lagged from his latest trip, so he’d barely made an appearance at dinner before going to their room.

  Emma came outside with Isabella in tow. Noah was already waiting for her at
the car door.

  “Do I have to go home already? I want to stay a little longer.” Emma whined, her cheeks flushed.

  Isabella gave her a big hug. Her cheeks were just as red, and sweat made small wisps of hair cling around her forehead.

  “It’s bedtime, nugget,” Noah said. He hardly met my eyes. “Sorry, I’m late. My mom…just got home. She had the car.”

  I nodded. “No worries. We had fun, didn’t we girls? We’d love to have you again soon, Emma.”

  Both of you, I wanted to say. I miss our movie nights with Bruce Willis and Nicholas Sparks.

  But I didn’t say that. Instead, I kept my eyes on anything and anyone besides Noah Thomas.

  They were already in the car when Emma cried out that she’d forgotten her favorite Barbie doll upstairs. Isabella went back with her to help look for it.

  The minutes passed and still no Emma or Isabella. The quiet silence became awkward fast. The sky quickly turned dark, the only light coming from the porch light ten feet away. My eyes wandered up to the twinkling stars far above us.

  A small cough from Noah had me glancing at him. He leaned back against his mom’s old, gray Honda.

  “Are you going to give me the silent treatment forever?” I blurted out.

  He met my eyes. “I’m not giving you the silent treatment.”

  My brows furrowed. “Then what do you call this? You not talking to me, hardly looking at me, and pretending I don’t exist.”

  “That’s what you wanted, remember? You finally open up to me like an inch, and then it’s like you slam a door in my face, and you only want to give me the same fake Tori I met that first day.”

  My chest rose up and down quickly, reflecting the turmoil going on inside. “I just don’t want to talk about the other night, okay? Why can’t we just leave it in the—”

  “You can’t even talk about it,” he said. “So you needed a shoulder to cry on. We all need that sometimes. It’s okay to let someone in, Tori.”

  More silence. I tried to figure out how to respond, but my brain felt scrambled.

  He went on. “You know what? If you’re gonna keep acting like this, and things are gonna be weird between us now—”

  “It’s not that. I just—” I pursed my lips, my heart beating fast, but only because panic was setting in.

  “What?” Noah said, standing up straight. “Or is it that you just don’t want me seeing the real you?”

  I blinked back at him. “What?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe it’s just that you think I like you—as more than a friend—and you don’t feel the same way. Is that it?” His eyes pleaded with me for the truth, for what he desperately wanted to hear.

  I opened my mouth, carefully considering what I was going to say next. “What if I don’t…like you like that?”

  He exhaled, his eyes kinder than ever. “That’s okay,” he said, his voice hardly audible. “It’s still okay to let me in. As a friend.”

  Now my heart pounded fast, but for a different reason, the panic completely replaced by something else. “What if I do? Like you like that?”

  Noah bit his bottom lip, and my eyes went there. I closed the distance between us in two steps. Then my arms went around him, pulled him close. Closer than ever before so there was nothing standing between us. Noah rested his hands around my waist.

  I tilted my head to the right and closed my eyes, letting my mouth touch his.

  He felt like a breath of fresh air after being under water too long.

  Unlike a lot of first kisses, ours was not delicate, soft, or unsure. Instead, it was like we needed each other, understood each other somehow, more than anyone else we knew.

  His hair touched my forehead, and I sunk into our kiss even more.

  I never wanted it to stop, but a familiar voice reached us from behind.

  “Eww! My brother is kissing your sister!” I heard.

  We pulled away, and I spun around, wondering if my face looked just as guilty as Noah’s. Then we laughed.

  Emma had her hands on her hips, and Isabella had her mouth covered with her hand to stifle the giggles. Noah and I looked sheepishly at each other.

  I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but Isabella beat me to it.

  “Are you guys girlfriend and boyfriend now?” Her face looked unsure, and I had no idea if she thought it was okay or not.

  I glanced at Noah. “Um, maybe?” I tried to gauge his reaction to her question.

  His mouth turned up at the corners into an unwavering smile. “I think it would be awesome if Tori was my girlfriend. If she wants to be?”

  Now everyone looked to me, but all I could do was jump into Noah’s arms, surprised by how happy his words made me.

  He caught me and chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  My feet touched the ground again, and I looked at Emma and Isabella. They jumped up and down, clapping and squealing.

  I looked at Noah. “I’m guessing they’re pretty psyched about it too.”

  He came in close again and brushed his hand on my cheek. “I know I am.”

  Nineteen

  Noah and I kept our newfound relationship quiet.

  Our little sisters were the only ones in on our secret, and they turned out to be pretty good at it, other than their obvious big winks behind my mom’s back.

  Cheer was still my number one focus, and Noah knew it. Boys were off limits now that we had a real chance at nationals, and I couldn’t risk anyone finding out about us. Not until after. And not when everyone else had put things on hold with boyfriends for the sake of the team.

  So we stuck to talking on the phone, texting at all hours of the day, and hanging out on Friday nights after practice. Emma slept over again, but we agreed it was probably not the best thing for Noah to stay the night too. Even though I really wanted to spend time with him.

  “It’s the gentleman thing to do,” he insisted after our movie. “Wouldn’t want to set the wrong example for Emma and Isabella, now would we?”

  With nationals closer than ever—and practice taking up all my time—we didn’t see each other much. We saw each other from afar in between classes and at lunch and talked in literature class. But we couldn’t draw too much attention to ourselves.

  Meanwhile, Noah longed to hang out more than once a week at my house. He wanted to take me out on a real date and hold my hand on our way to class. I could tell that part of him wondered if it was because I was popular and he was anything but. All I could do was insist that it had nothing to do with social status, only with cheer.

  “It’s just until after nationals are over,” I assured him. “Things will settle down then. Mia said we can’t be swooning over guys right now.”

  Noah bit the corner of his lip but nodded. “Swooning, huh?”

  I hit him with a pillow after that.

  He pushed the boundaries of our little pact in class, though. When no one else was looking, he’d place a small, folded-up note on my desk. Then I’d open it up, read it, smile to myself, and write something back, looking up and down the rows of desks to make sure no one was paying attention to what we were doing.

  Sending notes was way more fun than texting. I saved all of them. They were hundreds of times more precious to me than our texts back and forth because they were forever.

  My favorite was the one that said, Do you like me? In big sprawling handwriting like we had back in fourth grade. There was a checkbox for yes and a checkbox for no.

  I still remembered the couple of times I got notes like that as a kid. I had checked no on most of them.

  But Noah’s had been a resounding and definite yes.

  I looked for the right moment to tell Ella, Lena, Rey, and Harper, but it never seemed like the right time. I definitely couldn’t tell the cheer squad until after nationals. With them, a hot piece of gossip like Tori Rodriguez, head cheerleader, and Noah Thomas, the new boy at school, becoming a thing would circulate the school like wildfire.

  Nope, I defi
nitely wanted us out of the spotlight as much as possible until after nationals. I’d deal with the weird or judgey looks and rumors then.

  Just not now.

  The Tuesday before nationals was an early release day, which meant I had some unexpected free time before cheer practice. So Noah took my hand and dragged me to the soccer field behind the school.

  We kissed in the shade of the trees on the other side of the fence, beyond the stands. No one could see us from there.

  But we didn’t count on the soccer team taking advantage of the free time to hold a boys vs. girls scrimmage.

  With well over a dozen students watching and cheering.

  Noah and I pulled apart when we noticed the crowd of people getting bigger.

  “Um, I thought you said they’d be gone in no time,” I said.

  Noah glanced at me before turning back to the sounds of cheers and the ball getting kicked clear across the field toward us. “Yeah, I was wrong. I’m not sure how we’re gonna get back to the school without anyone seeing us. Maybe it’s time everyone found out?” He gave me a wink.

  “No way,” I said. The fence running around the field caught my eye. “What if we just walk back along the fence but stay close to the woods? I bet no one will see us.”

  He looked down at my shirt. “You’re wearing a bright yellow top. I’m surprised no one’s seen us already.”

  I stepped behind the tree, our current hiding spot, and groaned.

  The ball sailed over the fence and rolled toward us.

  “Oh, great!” I said, hiding completely behind the tree with Noah, but it was hard since it wasn’t a very big tree. “This is just perfect.”

  Noah smiled down at me. “I think it is. What are you so worried about? So what if everyone finds out?”

  I kept my eyes on the ball quickly approaching us. It came to a stop just a few feet away. Someone in short black soccer shorts and a bright orange tank top hopped over the fence and jogged toward us. I recognized her tall, lean frame, bronze skin, and long, black hair, up in a ponytail for the game.