Solving for Ex

by LeighAnn Kopans

  Copyright 2014 by Leigh Ann Kopans

  Cover art and design by Hafsah Laziaf

  Developmental Editing: Jamie Grey

  Copy Editing: Becca Weston

  Formatting: Cait Greer

  ISBN-10: 1492819689

  ISBN-13: 978-1492819684

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  “Amazing! If you like Sarah Dessen you will LOVE this.”

  ~ Emma Pass, author of Acid and The Fearless (Random House)

  “Putting a modern spin on a Jane Austen classic, Solving for Ex proves that brains can be sexier than brawn. In this complicated equation of high school drama, mean girls, mathletics, and romance, LeighAnn delivers yet another beautifully written young adult novel that authentically captures teenage emotions while also capturing the reader’s heart.”

  ~ Nikki Godwin, author of Chasing Forever Down, American Girl on Saturn,

  and the upcoming Falling from the Sky

  “Ashley is the kind of girl you want to root for, smart and capable and self-assured, despite of, or maybe because of, her vulnerabilities. And in Brenden, LeighAnn has crafted a boy worth of such a girl. Through all the heartbreak and angst of high school, their connection is undeniable and pressing. It’s elementary, dear readers—Solving for Ex is one must-read romance.”

  ~ Jenny Kaczorowski, author of The Art of Falling (Bloomsbury 2013)

  “If you only read one book in 2014, make sure it’s Solving For Ex! I sincerely doubt that you’d regret reading it; it’s intelligent, hilarious, intense and touching… Honestly one of the most amazing books I have ever read. “

  ~ Luciana Scath, blogger at Figments of our Imagination

  For my daughters, who I hope, like Ashley, always make their best judgment their first consideration.

  We have all a better guide in ourselves,

  if we would attend to it,

  than any other person can be.

  ~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

  the means of settling well

  If every problem had as clear and quick an answer as those on the Mathletes exam, I would have been winning at life. Too bad things didn’t work like that, and Brendan, the guy I was hopelessly in love with, reminded me of the fact every day.

  I could almost hear the smirk on his face from behind me on the rickety metal grated walkway at the top of Squirrel Hill’s water tower. “If a is less than b, and three squared plus four squared plus five squared plus twelve squared equals a squared plus b squared is satisfied by only one pair of positive integers, what is the value of a plus b?”

  I yawned. “Eighteen.”

  “Damn, Ashley. You didn’t even write that down.”

  “I did in my head.” I grinned, lining up my shot.

  “Doesn’t count. You’ve been practicing, haven’t you? We swore we wouldn’t practice. Now you’ll be faster than me!”

  “Not possible. And I haven’t been practicing. Not that much.” Only a couple of hours a day.

  “I knew you were awesome, but man. That’s fast.”

  My heart seriously skipped a beat.

  I was in love with Brendan because he was Brendan, and I was me, and we were perfect for each other.

  We weren’t together because I didn’t have the balls to tell him.

  “So. You’re psyched to be back, right?”

  “Was there ever a question?” The truth was, wild horses couldn’t drag me back to my old school.

  It was the last Saturday morning before classes started for the year at Mansfield Prep, and in Squirrel Hill, Pennsylvania, summer had overstayed its welcome. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn the fog was steam. It draped itself over the sleepy Pittsburgh district like a blanket, conforming to the curves and angles of every street lamp, late-summer rose, and porch swing. And whoever sat on them. Including me.

  Even though I knew sitting up here would make the top layer of my freshly straightened hair frizz, I loved the feel of the warm wet air on my face. I loved the mountains pushing up all around the moat of rivers that cradled the city of Pittsburgh. I loved how the fog diffused even the harshest summer-morning sunshine and cast the glittering skyscraper windows in a magical mist.

  It was a welcome change from the farming town of Williamson, where my parents lived. Where I’d lived, until eight months ago.

  Brendan nudged his shoulder against mine. “So you finally learned to use that thing?”

  “Yeah, I actually really like it. I’m glad your parents got you such an expensive and completely inappropriate gift for no particular reason.”

  He laughed. “What’s new, right? And couldn’t we have looked at foggy trees a little closer to the house? Or a little later in the morning?”

  I shook my head and jutted my chin out toward the landscape. “Carpe diem, and all that. Don’t tell me you don’t think this is gorgeous.” Brendan yawned loudly. “Okay, point taken,” I said. “I owe you, okay? What are you so exhausted for, anyway?”

  “Late night. Mom was out with friends and I wanted to wait up for her.”

  “Your dad out of town again?”

  He shrugged, confirming it, but telling me it was no big deal. “I was messing with you. I know how important the sunrise is.”

  “I’ve missed this view,” I said. I’ve missed you.

  He smiled that soft smile of his, the one that made the corners of his eyes crinkle in that way that melted my insides. That was the biggest hazard of hanging out with Brendan every Saturday morning. As if subjecting myself to pining for him every weekday at school wasn’t enough, I had to do this to myself on the weekend, too.

  He slung his arm around my shoulders, catching my neck in the crook of his elbow, and pulled me to him. I was thankful that he was so tall, because my face tucked neatly into his shoulder and he couldn’t see the way my eyes fluttered shut as I breathed him in—shampoo and grapefruit and a little bit of aftershave. Summer or winter, indoors or out—my Brendan.

  “I can’t believe you’re the first person to ever convince me to climb up here.”

  I stared at him. “Don’t tell me you’ve never climbed the water tower.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Don’t tell me I remind you of those delinquents who have nothing better to do on a Friday night.”

  “Oh, please. It’s hardly breaking and entering. I just want to get some good shots. The sun’ll be up soon, and then I’ll have missed the foggy sunrise.” I shifted my weight to the side to wedge my foot beneath me for a steadier angled shot. The whole rickety walkway trembled, and Brendan grabbed my forearm, digging his fingers in. I was already sweating in the summer morning’s wet heat, but as soon as his skin touched mine, a whole new kind of heat ran through me.

  “Trying to cuddle with me?” I attempted a laugh, but my voice just shook.

  “Shut up. You know it’s the height.”

  Brendan was deathly afraid of heights, which is why it was that much crazier that he was even up here with me. “Well, if you made it up here, I’d say you’re doing pretty well. A few more times and it’ll be a piece of cake.”

  He stared out at the horizon while he caught his breath. “It’s your fault I’m even up here, anyway. Your aunt would kill me if I let anything happen to you.”

  “True.” I metered, fired another test shot, and winced at the result.

  “You’ve been making faces at that thing for five minutes now. Why don’t you put it on auto, get the shot, and we can get out of here? I
’ll even buy you breakfast.”

  “Hush,” I said, pressing my eye to the viewfinder again. “You’ll buy me breakfast anyway.” I fired another shot. Dammit. Still dark. I clicked into the data readout to check the settings there.

  Something bony dug into my collarbone. I turned my head and almost ran my nose straight into Brendan’s—he’d rested his chin on my shoulder and was staring at the LCD. My heart stopped. His lips were so close to mine that one quick move would have them pressed together. And of course, I suddenly couldn’t move a muscle.

  “How do you even read that?” he asked, jabbing his finger at the histogram, before he sat up and leaned back on his palms. I started to stammer a response, but he’d already stood up on shaky legs and reached a hand down to me. “C’mon, Ash. Let’s get out of here. I’m starving.”

  I grabbed his hand and smiled back, telling myself it didn’t really matter what we talked about after a long summer apart. Hell, I was happy just to be hearing his voice. I’d been in touch with him a lot over the summer, but it was mostly through email. The camp where I worked for nine weeks every summer didn’t get cell phone service and I could only really email him a couple of times a week without looking like a stalker. Then, for the few weeks I was bored out of my mind back home, he was on some crazy European cruise with his family.

  It sucked not being able to talk to him, especially since we’d seen each other every day since I’d first arrived in Squirrel Hill. I’d been sitting inside the house sniffling and sobbing for the past twenty-four hours, and it was clear that Aunt Kristin and Uncle Bruce didn’t really know what to do with me anymore. That January morning, I’d been sitting in the front yard, frigid though it was, and had kept right up with my crying. The tears rolled down my face like my eyes were fountains—they flowed out like they were a natural and permanent part of who I was. I wasn’t even really aware of them anymore.—Depression’ll do that to you. Everything was black and cold and stupid and hopeless and it was hard to tell how much of that was real or only inside my head.

  Brendan had been walking his Great Dane and had come and sat next to me, made the dog sit next to him, and handed me a tissue. We’d sat there together, watching cars go by, for a couple minutes. And then, still looking out across the street, he’d said, “Why did the cookie cry?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why did the cookie cry?”

  “Um…”

  “Because his best friend was away for so long.” He snorted.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t…”

  “Get it? A wafer so long?”

  I turned to look at him then, and he was already looking at me, with a goofy grin on his face, flashing impossibly white teeth. He had a square face, floppy hair, a solid jaw, and the biggest, most unreal deep blue-green eyes I’d ever seen. As upset as I’d been a few minutes earlier—pretty damn upset—I started giggling, then full-on laughing. He’d laughed too, and then I found I couldn’t stop until I started crying again.

  “Hey, hey. Don’t do that. This is Pittsburgh. Your tears’ll freeze on your face. Do you think breakfast would help?”

  “Actually…maybe.” I don’t know what made me think that having breakfast with a total stranger was okay, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that he was the only person who’d been able to make me laugh in the last four months.

  That first Saturday morning breakfast with Brendan, I’d finally started to pull myself out of the black hole of depression that had been my life, and it was his hand that dangled over the edge, waiting for me to grab onto it.

  The diner hadn’t changed a bit since that freezing January morning, but I had. I could laugh and smile again, and I mostly owed it to him. As I settled into my seat in our usual booth and let my mug of hot coffee warm my hands, I knew I was exactly where I belonged. Brendan doused his pancakes with half the pitcher of syrup and spoke through a half-full mouth. “So, are you ready for your second first day at Mansfield?”

  “Way more ready than I was last year. Yeah. And you can swallow before you speak, you know. That’s gross.” Even with his stunning lack of table manners, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

  He rolled his eyes and gulped down the pancakes, never missing a beat. “To be fair, you weren’t ready for anything last winter.”

  He was right. Last Christmas, I was nothing but pissed about moving in with Aunt Kristin and Uncle Bruce. But there was no way I would have been able to go out for breakfast back home. In such a small town, when a girl is the cause of such a big high school scandal—sleeping with the lacrosse captain when he was going out with the captain of the cheer squad—that girl can barely show her face outside of her car to pump gas. I would have owned up to it, taken the social knocks for breaking up the prom king and queen like a champ. If I had actually slept with Carson Barret. But I hadn’t. What I had done was refuse to do his math homework for his girlfriend’s best friend. She’d done the initial rumor-spreading herself, and the cheer squad had gleefully taken care of the rest.

  In the space of a week, I couldn’t set foot inside the school without getting something messy and rotting thrown at me, or having my stuff vandalized. It was when my tires got slashed and my car got spray-painted with the “Ashley is a Whore” in angry red letters that my parents finally let me stay home for the rest of the year. My grades were good enough that I could quietly finish the rest of my homework and exams after Thanksgiving break in the safety of my own bedroom.

  I snorted. “Yeah, that’s true. I wasn’t even ready to talk to anyone, let alone make friends. But,” I said, raising my eyes, “I’m glad you came over and said hi. Really glad. No matter how hideous the angsty sobbing made me.” My heart tripped and stuttered as I waited for his response.

  “Me too. Besides, it’s not like I minded having an excuse to have breakfast here every week. You’re just party to my Pamela’s pancake addiction.” He grinned at me, and my heart completely stopped for exactly two point one five seconds. “And you could never look hideous, Ash.”

  I took a deep breath, smiled, and struggled to compose myself.

  If he had an idea how much those breakfast dates helped me, he never showed it. A week and a half before Christmas, Kristin and Bruce had invited me to live with them in Squirrel Hill, a sweet suburb on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. But they had been the only people I knew here. Breakfast dates with Brendan were literally the only reason I ever left the house for non-school reasons, especially considering that it had taken a Spartan regimen of Xanax and Lexapro to get me to agree to getting out of bed every morning.

  If he had any idea how much not being able to tell him how I felt killed me, he never showed that, either. But Brendan was the only reason being the new kid at snobby Mansfield Prep in the middle of sophomore year hadn’t dragged me even further into the horrible cycle of depression. Even though I would have much preferred holding hands as we walked down the hallway instead of bumping shoulders, and sharing kisses during movies instead of just popcorn, I was happier being his best friend than I’d been in years. Given that, the status quo of our relationship was just fine with me.

  Until it suddenly, horribly, wasn’t anymore.

  motives of vanity

  It was our first day back at Mansfield Prep, and I hadn’t seen Brendan at all since we’d gone our separate ways at the front door. Still, everything was going as well as could be expected for a first day—classes interesting enough for the most part, and at least the ones that weren’t had teachers that would leave me alone. I was headed to Brendan’s locker before lunch when everything turned upside down.

  The freaking goddess Aphrodite walked down the hallway, right toward me.

  There were plenty of pretty girls in our school. It was easy enough when everyone was rich, and when almost every girl had a ton of cash to get a professional makeup consult, wardrobe designer, even a diet plan or nose job, to fit into this school’s image of “pretty.” Big, bouncy hair, petite nose, big eyes and lips. Exactly
the right shoes, bag, and watch to go along with the school uniform. So, yeah, I saw pretty all around me every day.

  But this girl? Was beautiful. She had bouncing waves of chestnut-brown hair, sky-blue eyes, and a dimple that could kill anyone on sight. Flawless skin, and toned legs that stretched to eternity. When she walked down the hallway, you could see the guys stop, gawk, and drool in a wave of patheticness.

  When she passed me, I discovered the worst part of her—the way she smelled. God, she smelled amazing. Like she rolled in a field of flowers every morning and stuffed her bra with them in the process, so that the perfume followed her everywhere. I bet she even smelled good when she jogged. Because she definitely jogged. No way she didn’t with a body like that.

  A guy about four inches taller than she was walked next to her. I almost gasped when he turned back and looked at me. With his high cheekbones and solid, chiseled jaw, pouty lips and rich deep brown eyes all topped off with a mop of golden-brown curls, he was literally stunning.

  Thankfully, Brendan’s sister Julia, who was also one of my only other friends at Mansfield, didn’t notice my own patheticness when I stopped for a second, just to take a longer look. When I turned to her, I realized it was because she was staring, too. “Hey,” I tugged on Julia’s sleeve, “Do you know who the new kids are? Did she bring her own boyfriend?”

  “Nope! That’s her brother. Twins.” She stopped in her tracks, too, but she stared at the guy instead of the girl. “Isn’t he incredible?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met him.”

  Julia rolled her eyes, still smiling that same stupid smile. “You know what I mean. Gorgeous. Absolutely…”

  “Oh my God, is that all you ever think about? You’re a freshman, it’s your first day, and you have a boyfriend. Try to control your drool, okay?” I smiled and nudged her side with my elbow. I hoped it didn’t come out sounding as annoyed as I felt. She did have a boyfriend, though. Captain of the lacrosse team. Probably why I watched him so closely around her. “But seriously. How do you know him?”