Rumor Has It (Jock Star Book 1)

by Caterina Campbell

  My eyes expand. I’m envisioning an ugly girl with cash, because I thought all guys wanted sex. Well, maybe he’s so hot he has to turn them down on occasion for sleep. “She had to convince you? You gotta tell me how that worked.”

  “We were at her house, parents in the living room, brother next room over. I kind of liked my balls where they were. You know what I mean?”

  “Those are pretty high stakes. How’d she convince you?”

  “She dropped her skirt.” He covers a rare grin as he looks down into his lap and back up at me as I laugh with him. “Didn’t take much. How ’bout you? What gets a girl in the back seat?”

  “As if you don’t know.”

  “I don’t know what it takes to get a girl like you in the back seat.”

  “Two beers and a Big Mac.” For that, I get a fleeting smile, which I return.

  “Shit. That was funny. But I don’t believe that for a second.”

  I smile, appreciating his confidence that I valued my virginity more than that. “Thanks.”

  My phone whistles and I ignore it, but Vance tells me to get it before someone calls beach patrol over my disappearance. He’s probably right so I check, groaning as I see Bristol’s name:

  Bristol: Where are you?

  Me: With Vance. Be back in a bit.

  Bristol: Hot guy Vance?

  Me: Yep. Gotta go.

  Bristol: I was coming to meet you and you ditched me for him?

  Me: Ditching would imply you didn’t make me wait forever. Gotta go.

  My phone rings and I silence it quickly, shoving it into my back pocket where it sticks halfway out.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Perfect.” With him, every second of this night has been perfect. But I’ll be lucky if Bristol doesn’t bring this up in the eulogy at my funeral, so it’s also a loaded answer.

  “Do you need to go?”

  “After the sunset.” I nod in the direction of the setting sun, still a few minutes away from perfection.

  Minutes later, the sky is on fire and the ocean looks like the trail of gasoline igniting it. Vance puts his hand in mine and squeezes. No words. No sounds other than the ocean. And I breathe in, content.

  On the drive back to The Seam, we’re both quiet. There is no talking at stoplights. No idle chatter between my directions or laughter when I grip him tighter around a corner. Once, and only once, he drops his hand to mine on his abdomen and squeezes, but no words narrate his thoughts, leaving mine to question the gesture.

  Vance pulls into a spot a few spaces down from The Seam. It’s Saturday night, so premium spots are harder to come by. I pull away from him, hands on my thighs. A twilight chill present in my skin heats up beneath his hand as he attempts to assist me off the bike.

  “Do you want a beer?” I ask, forking fingers through my hair to relax it. “That and a shot of Jameson are a part of the Milagro Beach tour.”

  Probably trying to read something in my invitation, he doesn’t drop his eyes. “I was hoping it would be.” He climbs off the bike, adjusts his T-shirt, and grabs my arm before I step up the curb.

  I look up at him as he brushes my hair off of my shoulder so that it falls down my back and then brushes a light knuckle over my cheek. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “The tour. The laughs. You. This.”

  I swallow, shift on feet that shake, and lean toward him, rising on tiptoes before hesitating briefly to stare at the lips I’m about to press mine against. They’re full, with a perfectly dipped cupid’s bow that fills me with anticipation.

  When I finally touch my lips to his, my heart races ahead to embrace the feel of his breath on my face and his lips on mine. It’s a tender kiss. One I might get practicing on my own mirror, but then his hand curves around my neck and he kisses me back, losing himself briefly before pulling away.

  I open my eyes to see him looking at me, and I cover my lips with a few fingers. “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Don’t be sorry.” It’s whispered, meant to ease my embarrassment no doubt, but falls terribly short.

  “Are you coming in?” Bristol shouts from the open door of The Seam, and I look at her, questioning her timing and feeling confident it’s not a coincidence.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Using Bristol’s untimely interference as an exit strategy, I walk ahead of Vance, leading with a fast pace he’s not trying to thwart. He either senses my urgency to get inside, or he is content with moving forward like nothing major just happened.

  The Seam is full, baseball on every available television except one, and that one is broadcasting MMA. Vance lowers his ball cap, the brim tilting low over his eyes as Uncle Rodney greets us both with a smile. It’s a far more pleasurable welcome than the scowl from Bristol four feet away. Mom is behind the bar tending to Mr. Davidson and oblivious to our arrival.

  “Have a good time?” Bristol’s tone is deliberately snotty.

  I don’t reply, but Vance clears his throat to respond in my place.

  “Yeah. Sorry if I messed up your plans. It was spur of the moment.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet it was.” Bristol’s pissiness is meritless. If she’d been on time, I wouldn’t have been around when Vance showed up.

  Uncle Rodney’s glare hits Bristol before he addresses Vance. “Grab a stool. I’ll get ya a beer.”

  Vance looks at me first, gesturing with his head for me to join him. Reluctantly, I follow, taking the stool on his right since Bristol occupies the one on his left. Uncle Rodney sets a beer and a soda in front of us, not realizing that our family staple of Jameson whiskey is the only thing that has a chance of sneaking past the cluster of butterflies in my stomach. But he’s a stickler and won’t part with the 80 proof until I’m twenty-one.

  “Where’d you go?” Bristol questions Vance.

  “The Lookout,” I tell her, looking past Vance and into her accusatory eyes, daring her to say what she’s really thinking.

  “Can he not speak for himself? Or are you two already finishing one another’s sentences?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s—”

  My mom’s shriek cuts off my reply and draws unwanted attention toward us. “Brenna Frank! Bristol Charles! Backroom! NOW!”

  The backroom is filled with boxes of liquor, supplies, and a brownish, hairy couch I’ve spent hours doing homework on over the years. I take a seat beside Bristol at my mom’s insistence.

  She prattles on about the comings and goings of boys, and sisterhood, and all I can do is think about how many times she has chosen a man over our objections. And now she wants to preach the importance of our bond over the temporary pleasure of a man? What the honest fuck? “You’re young,” she continues. “There are going to be many young men interested in you. You can’t fight over them all.”

  I pinch my lips together so I don’t bite through my tongue as I’m sure Bristol already has. As quiet as she’s been through this spiel, she’s probably choking on tongue blood right now.

  Obviously, she didn’t bite hard enough, because she finally interjects, “You can have him. I don’t want him now. But if you’re expecting love from that guy out there, think again little sister. He’s probably already cheating on you with his girlfriend.”

  “You don’t know shit about him and obviously not enough about me if you think I’m already in love with him. It was one drive. One.”

  “A drive? Is that all it was? Looked to me like he was sucking the lipstick right off your face.”

  “Look at you two.” My mom paces in front of us in short strides no longer than the length of one cushion. She stops, bends at the waist so she’s eye level with us, and looks first at Bristol and then at me. “What happened to that silly vow of not letting a boy come between you?”

  “We were ten,” I snap. And we also promised to live with one another forever. What the hell did we know?

  “And tired of having men chosen over us,” Bristol adds.

  I backhand her thigh, thinking her comment
too cruel, but my mom glosses right over it like it wasn’t aimed directly at her guilt sensor.

  “Well, anyway, until you know it’s forever, I wouldn’t start a precedent of fighting over men. It will become easier and easier to forget the pact.”

  “Didn’t you just say it was silly?” I ask it, but Bristol and I both look up in solidarity.

  “I called it silly because it’s unrealistic, not because it isn’t a good idea.”

  “Unrealistic, how? It seems pretty simple to me.”

  “Bristol, baby, at some point a man is going to sweep you off your feet and he’ll be all you want and need. You’re going to need Brenna less and less, and vice versa when Brenna finds someone. I don’t know if it’s this guy or not, but there will be someone someday.”

  “Bullshit!” Bristol gets to her feet. “I’m not you!” “You” is spoken bitterly, like she can’t stomach the taste of it in her mouth, and I swallow, getting to my feet to stand united with her but also to spare my mom if I need to. “I will never be you!” She glares hard. Every moment my mom disappointed her is fueling her argument and cementing her stance. “She will always come first. No guy will ever be more important than her.” Bristol’s anger is pointed and delivered with as much bitter sincerity as I’ve ever seen from her. “Maybe if you’d chosen us one time other than at birth, you’d get that.”

  Bristol turns to me, leaving our stunned mother with her mouth agape and her eyes brimming with tears. I don’t know what is bringing this out. I didn’t accept a marriage proposal, for fuck’s sake. It was a kiss. “The second you start turning into her and choosing him over me, I will make sure you remember our ‘silly pact.’ I’m tired of being chosen last or not at all. You’re supposed to be different.” She brushes past me, shoulder-checking me as she does so, and storms out of the storage room, leaving a wake unlike anything I’ve ever had to wade through.

  I stare blankly for a second. For me, it was one ride with a boy. For Bristol, apparently a whole lot more. In her defense, it’s easy to feel overlooked when your parents continually choose other people and other things over you. Even the boys she’s dated chose her reputation and not necessarily her. But none of that means I don’t get to have a life. Does it?

  My mom waves me off, shooing me away as I try to give her a hug. “I’m okay. Go. Just be careful.”

  Reluctantly, and with too many reservations to name, I rejoin The Seam crowd. Uncle Rodney is cheering on the Renegades much louder than anyone else, and Vance watches quietly, beer between his hands.

  Bristol, barely concealing her hostility, takes off, and I stand by myself hoping I look better than I feel. After a minute, I return to the stool beside Vance, to find my soda mostly clear and bleeding all over my napkin.

  “You good?” Vance asks it in such a way that I believe it encompasses the kiss, Bristol’s behavior, my response, and my mom’s intervention. Holy fuck, when I said he wasn’t ready for my baggage, I didn’t know how much weight I was actually carrying.

  I nod, sip from my watered-down soda, and reply, “Perfect. You?”

  “Perfect.”

  My mom reappears looking more put together than I feel and takes her place behind the bar like nothing happened. She’s a damn chameleon, far more acclimated to fights with us than with her boyfriends.

  “Mom?” I speak up to get her attention and she looks at me, smiling like she’s on painkillers. “I meant to do this earlier. This is Vance. Vance this is my mom, Teresa.”

  Vance directs a brilliant smile toward her, stopping my heart with its intensity as he reaches across the bar to offer her his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  She takes his hand with the same look Uncle Rodney got the first time he met Vance. “You too. Sorry about the scene.”

  He adjusts his hat, grinning with so much charisma I may need a cold shower. “Didn’t even notice.”

  Uncle Rodney delivers two shots of Jameson like he read my mind and lost his. I grab hold of one, ever thankful for his timely understanding . . . that I’ve apparently misread, because he stops me with an even timelier two-finger smack to my wrist.

  “That’s mine,” he states with authority and a grin I’m partially convinced is boastful satisfaction.

  I glare, no words necessary.

  “One week, love,” he whispers with a wink. “One week, and I’ll proudly serve you your first shot.”

  Holding his beer with two hands, Vance watches our exchange but doesn’t intervene until we appear done with our disagreement. “So, Brenna Frank, you going to tell me that story?”

  I nod at their glasses. “Take the shot first. It’s the last stop on the Milagro Beach tour, and who better to take it with than Uncle Rodney.” I manage to minimize my grumble, which dissipates anyway when Uncle Rodney looks so satisfied draining his alongside Vance.

  I answer Vance while he recovers from a shot he doesn’t look used to taking. “It’s my Pop’s name. Charles, Bristol’s middle name, is my other grandpa’s, on my dad’s side.”

  “Do you not have grandmothers?”

  Full of chuckles, despite my argument with Bristol and my mom, I answer him in the middle of one. “Brenda and Crystal. My mom was groggy from the drugs I guess, and my dad signed the birth certificates thinking my mom had said Brenna and Bristol. Thus, our names were born.” He winces with a whistle.

  I shrug. “Eh, it makes for a funny story.”

  He grins, looking too lost in his own thoughts to care about the origin of my name. “So, she left you again?” He looks around for Bristol.

  “High and dry,” I reply, without inflection but quick enough to be funny.

  “Is she coming back?”

  I feel like we’ve had this conversation before. “No. I’m on my own. She’s probably at home changing for the party at Toolbag Carl’s.”

  “Toolbag Carl? Honestly, Toolbag?”

  “A friend. He’s five-eleven with more brawn than brain.”

  He nods knowingly. Everyone has a friend with more gym hours than sense.

  “Can I give you a ride home so you can get out of your work clothes and still make it to your party? I am the one that kept you.”

  I just want fresh air that he isn’t trying to breathe too. I need to focus. I need to regroup and get my heart flutters under control. “I can manage, but thank you.”

  Vance waits on me to lift my attention from my hands, and looking as serious as I’ve seen him yet, responds to my rejection. “I want to.”

  Fuck. How do I refuse that?

  Outside, ahead of Vance, I breathe deeply and blow it out as he speaks my name and the door to The Seam closes behind him.

  I close my eyes and turn to face him, my embarrassment tucked shrewdly beneath my Sloan confidence. I’ve endured worse. I’ve survived worse. I can certainly survive the hottest guy I’ve ever seen, let alone kissed, telling me it’s him not me.

  “Can we talk?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Somewhere other than here, I mean?”

  Bristol suddenly pulls up beside two cars, the passenger window visible between the hood of one and the bumper of another, a break in Ocean Avenue traffic giving her a minute to yell at me through the passenger window. “Get in if you’re going. I grabbed you a change of clothes. You can change at Toolbag’s.”

  I groan, holding up a finger to gain a minute, and she pulls forward to park behind Vance’s bike.

  “I’m sorry. I already pissed her off once—”

  “It’s okay. I get it. Maybe tomorrow? If you’re free?”

  I groan again because my plans are already set in stone with Bristol, Tori, and Tracy. “I have plans, but I’m free on Monday.”

  He smiles. “I’ll see you Monday. Okay if I meet you here?”

  I nod, struggle with my next action, and go for broke, kissing him on the cheek. “See you Monday.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hungover from Toolbag’s party and sporting the anti-glow of having slept on his pull-o
ut sofa, I pray the two Advil and Red Bull I downed for brunch will appease the empty stomach screaming at me. I skipped feeding it so I wouldn’t be late to the semi-torturous but beloved tradition I wouldn’t give up even for Vance.

  Bristol and I don’t have traditions. Christmas and Thanksgiving have been a distorted version, I suppose, given that we always celebrate them on the day the calendar says we should, but no two have ever been alike. So, after being butthurt about not having what everyone else had, Bristol and I, with our two best friends, Tori and Tracy, started an annual Thrift Store Dressing Room Swap. When we started it six years ago, we had no idea it would morph into the can’t-miss tradition it’s become.

  At our first Dressing Room Swap, the concoctions we made from all the rejected clothing were supposed to be for our eyes only and maybe a few lucky shoppers, but of course that changed the second Bristol stopped laughing and started plotting. On her dare, that very first year, we ended up at a volleyball game looking like a flamboyant cruise director, a seventies bridesmaid, and two colorblind housewives. It turned out to be one of the best nights of our lives. Tori, sheltered from life by two doting parents, grew up on a short leash and needed clothing approval before leaving the house. It was a miracle her parents allowed us to be friends. Tracy shops on Rodeo Drive with an assistant and until meeting us didn’t know thrift stores had dressing rooms. But thanks to the Swap, despite our vastly different backgrounds, for a few hours a year we are all judged equally by the rest of the world. We are all unified under one umbrella of crazy, and we love it.

  We arrive at Belvedere’s Attic thrift store seven hours after they’ve opened to ensure the dressing rooms will be full of discarded clothes. I thought this wonderfully bizarre tradition would be made slightly less humiliating by the wide array of choices I’d have until I see what’s waiting for me in my dressing room, and then I’m thinking I’d rather sleep on nails.