Playing the Enemy: The Trouble With Tomboys #1

by Dallen, Maggie

  Mouth gaping, I watched as he strode gracefully through the parked vehicles in the lot all the way to the front door without even a backward glance.

  How dare he!

  Buzzing with impotent rage, I marched back to my car with visions of slashing his tires and keying the word ‘thief’ in his door, but since the school monitored the lot with cameras, I had to satisfy myself with dreaming about it as I drove to the now only available parking spaces at the back of the lot furthest from the doors.

  Jerk!

  Well, he better believe Jordan Parks wouldn’t let him have her spot tomorrow. No, sir-ee. I’d make sure of it. In fact, I hoped he had to lug his stupid guitar from the street all the way to the door.

  Who was that guy, anyway? I’d never seen him before, and believe me, I would have remembered. Just goes to show a pretty face didn’t always mean a pretty person. And anyone who stole my parking spot wasn’t a pretty person in my book.

  “What’s got you in an uproar this morning?” my friend, Natalie asked, as she fell into step beside me in the hall.

  Hannah and Alex were my camp besties, but Natalie and Kelly were my go-to girls at school.

  “Some jerk took my parking spot!” Right then I was glad I wore a tank top. Summer temperatures would soon be a thing of the past, but it wasn’t the heat outside making my armpits damp.

  Natalie’s eyes widened. She knew! She got it. Here it was my senior year. That parking spot was an institution!

  “Probably someone new. No one else would park in that spot. Is swear people are still afraid Bobby’ll pound ‘em if they park there.” Natalie shuddered, but I knew she had a mild case of hero worship when it came to my brother. Heck, everyone did. The guy was a freaking legend in these parts.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Our other friend, Kelly, caught up as we entered the hall where all the senior lockers were located. Kelly swam for the swim team and had early morning practice. The scent of chlorine followed her around from September through the end of October. Natalie, on the other hand, played volleyball.

  Yeah, I rounded out two sets of tomboy trios.

  “Some douche parked in Jord’s spot,” Natalie filled her in.

  Kelly’s eyes widened. “Must be someone new. Who was it?” Kelly looked around as though the guy would materialize out of thin air.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before. He had a fancy car, though. And a guitar case.” No one carried a guitar case. We had the usual band geeks who lugged around tubas and piccolos, but no guitars. Did school bands even have guitars?

  “What did he look like?” Natalie asked.

  I knew she’d asked me that. And I knew my face would turn beet red when she did.

  Natalie grinned. “That good, huh? Do you see him now?”

  I’d kept my eyes peeled for the guy since I walked into the school. No sign of him. “Nope. And it’ll suit me just fine if I never see him again.”

  “It’s just a parking spot, Jordan.” Leave it to Kelly to be the voice of reason.

  “I know. It’s just, I don’t know.” But I did know. That parking spot represented a piece of my brothers and I missed them. I thought I’d be overjoyed about the boys moving out, but the truth was, I hated them being gone. Parking in Bobby’s spot made it feel like he was still around looking out for me. And if not him, then Joe. For the last two years I’d pulled into that spot and held onto my identity as Bobby and Joe Parks little sister. Nobody messed with them, nobody messed with me.

  Like Kelly said, it really was just a parking spot. Anyone had a right to park there and I just needed to get over it.

  I didn’t see my friends again until lunch. We used to have an open campus where students could leave at lunch for an hour and then come back, but a couple of years ago a kid died in a car accident during lunch and the school board voted to not let students leave anymore. It kind of sucked even though I understood why they did it.

  The worst part? We only got a half hour to eat because only half our class would fit in the cafeteria at once, and even then, it was a tight squeeze.

  “Ahh, I hate this,” Kelly groaned as we headed toward our table, the same one we’d been sitting at for the last three years.

  Except, it wasn’t empty.

  As we approached, I noticed a newly familiar figure hunched over his lunch tray, the only person at the otherwise empty table.

  Of. Freaking. Course.

  Natalie and Kelly exchanged glances once they saw him, brows raised. Even from a distance, the guy was gorgeous. I had a feeling he couldn’t look bad if he tried.

  “Let’s sit somewhere else,” I said before I could think better of it. But one quick glance told me what I already knew, there was nowhere else. We didn’t have assigned seating, but everyone tended to gravitate toward the same tables year after year. With so many students and so few tables, they filled up fast.

  “No way,” Natalie hissed. “Is that him? The guy who parked in your spot?”

  I nodded, feeling foolish. Honestly, I’d made a idiot of myself that morning. The heat in my cheeks hadn’t cooled for hours. The last thing I wanted was to confront him again. Apparently, I had no choice if I wanted to sit beside my friends because they’d left me standing in the middle of the cafeteria staring at the side of hot guy’s head while they tried to act all casual setting their trays down on the table across from him.

  Crap.

  Hot guy’s head shot up. It was obvious he hadn’t hear them approach. Working to school my expression into something bland or at least disinterested, I noticed he wore a pair of wireless earbuds. Friendly much? Definitely not a good way to meet people.

  From Nat and Kelly’s expressions I knew I wasn’t the only one who thought the new guy was spectacularly good looking. Both of my friends stood, their mouths hanging open, comically motionless as though someone had pushed the pause button on them.

  “H-hi,” Kelly finally breathed, staring at him like an emoji with hearts in her eyes. Natalie wasn’t doing much better.

  Hot guy glanced between them before settling his gaze on me, his expression quickly morphing from wariness to annoyance.

  “You,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Summoning every ounce of don’t-give-a-darn I could muster, I peered down my nose at him. “Hi.” A witty rejoinder, I know.

  I set my tray beside Kelly’s and tried not to stare. He didn’t make it easy. Under any other circumstances I might have surreptitiously taken a picture of him with my phone and had it printed up poster sized to hang on the wall beside my bed.

  “Can’t you girls sit somewhere else?” he asked, not even pretending to be nice.

  “Sorry. No can do. This is our table.” I plopped down in the seat directly across from him as Natalie and Kelly slowly lowered themselves on either side of me.

  Hot guy sat back, his eyes narrowed. “Your parking space. Your table. Anything around here not yours?”

  You, the thought came without my bidding. Thank goodness my filter was firmly in place. How humiliating would that have been? Almost as much as the expressions on my best friend’s faces. Ignoring his rude comment, I kicked Natalie’s foot under the table.

  “Oh, um, hi, I’m Natalie and this is Kelly.” She jabbed her thumb in Kelly’s direction without looking away from the new guy. “And I think you already met Jordan.”

  His eyes strayed back to me. “Jordan?”

  “Yep,” I replied, popping the ‘p’. “Jordan.”

  “Now, I know what name to look for when I park,” he glanced down. “Or sit.”

  Ooh, he thought he was funny. I opened my mouth to come back at him, but Natalie beat me to it.

  “What’s your name? I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. Are you new?” She sounded breathless and I wanted to kick her ankle again. Hot or not, this guy didn’t deserve us fangirling over him.

  Hot guy’s jaw clenched. I got the feeling he wanted to ignore her questions, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Natalie had
that effect on people. It was impossible to be mean to her.

  “Asher. And yes, I’m new here.”

  Asher. The name fit him.

  “Welcome to Lakeview High. How are you liking so far?” Kelly asked. At least someone had manners.

  Hot guy, I should start thinking of him by his name or I might accidentally embarrass myself further by calling him hot to his face. Asher shot me a look. “Not really the most welcoming place, but it’s alright.”

  My cheeks burned again. Okay, I deserved that, but geez. What a jerk.

  Kelly laughed nervously, her eyes darting between me and the new guy. Asher. “Well, hopefully we can change your mind. Right girls?”

  Natalie nodded eagerly, but all I could muster was a grunt.

  Eyes tight, Asher pushed his chair back. “Nice meeting you, but I should get going.”

  I glanced at the clock on the wall. We still had over fifteen minutes before the bell rang.

  “See you around,” he said before taking his tray and striding across the cafeteria.

  The three of us watched him walk away like he was a blockbuster movie.

  “Wow,” Natalie breathed once he’d moved out of sight.

  “You can say that again,” Kelly murmured, fanning herself with her hand.

  “Oh, stop it. You act like we’ve never seen a good looking guy before.” I rolled my eyes with an extra dose of exaggeration.

  My friends both turned their gazes toward me, eyes wide. “Good looking?” Kelly deadpanned. “You call that ‘good looking’?”

  Natalie shook her head. “If he’s good looking, Shawn Mendes is just mediocre.”

  “Oh, stop. He’s not all that.” Lies. He totally was.

  “You keep telling yourself that, Jordan, because that boy is hot with a capital,” she licked her finger and put it out like she touched him then hissed, “tssss.”

  That might be true, but I still thought he was a jerk.

  To keep reading, check out Playing to Win

  About the Author

  MAGGIE DALLEN IS a big city girl living in Montana. She writes romantic comedies in a range of genres including young adult, historical, contemporary, and fantasy. An unapologetic addict of all things romance, she loves to connect with fellow avid readers. Subscribe to her newsletter at http://eepurl.com/bFEVsL

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