This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2015
A Kindle Scout selection
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Contents
Chapter One Family, Carnivals, and Best Friends
Chapter Two Fall Fun Fest
Chapter Three Miscommunication and Coffee
Chapter Four What a Small World
Chapter Five Meet the Parents
Chapter Six Tickle Torture
Chapter Seven A Double Date
Chapter Eight Confessions
Chapter Nine Awkwardness and Invitations
Chapter Ten Belle of the Ball
Chapter Eleven Friends with Feelings
Chapter Twelve Sick
Chapter Thirteen Returning the Favor
Chapter Fourteen Thanksgiving
Chapter Fifteen Just Desserts
Chapter Sixteen What Just Happened?
Chapter Seventeen Cloud Nine
Chapter Eighteen Unaccepted Apologies
Chapter Nineteen Isn’t She Lovely
Chapter Twenty Which Side Are You On?
Chapter Twenty-One All Mixed Up
Chapter Twenty-Two On a Pedestal
Chapter Twenty-Three Making Amends
Chapter Twenty-Four The New Year
Chapter Twenty-Five Valentine’s Day
Chapter Twenty-Six His Side
Chapter Twenty-Seven Making Up
Chapter Twenty-Eight Epilogue (Six Years Later)
Chapter One
Family, Carnivals, and Best Friends
My bedroom has always been something of a sanctuary to me. It’s where I go to escape from the real world. Where I can swim in my own thoughts, listen to music, do my homework, read . . . anything really. It’s decorated perfectly for my tastes too. Which is good considering that I started redecorating three years ago, when I turned fifteen. I began going to swap meets, antique shops, yard sales, Goodwill, and other secondhand stores. My family is only middle class, so, although we aren’t too tight for money, redecorating a room would be pushing it.
After years of hard work, I’ve finally turned a space that was once filled with pink and butterflies into a bedroom any eighteen-year-old would be proud to call her own. The walls are a dusty, pale gray-blue. The floor is the same white wood it’s always been. A shaggy rug that matches the walls lies by my bed. The white, cushioned headboard is tall enough for me to lean against it comfortably and my sheets are white with a green quilt on top. A purple crocheted blanket that Mom made for me while she was pregnant goes over the quilt. When I get cold, there’s a white and gray patterned duvet that is folded at the end of my bed until I kick it to the ground at night. Beside my bed, there’s a green nightstand that matches my quilt, and on it sit flowers I replace every week, a candle, and a clock. A lamp hangs down over the nightstand like a chandelier. My room is simple but pretty. I love it. Another thing I absolutely adore about my room is the slanted ceiling. The wall across from my bed, where my dresser and desk rest, goes up about three-fifths of the way before tilting inward. It makes my rather spacious and empty room look cozy.
I’m lying on my stomach, reading a book for English class and listening to my iPod, when I feel somebody tap my foot. I jump and scream, turning to see who just tried to scare me to death. It’s my older sister, Lena. She’s nineteen and goes to a local art college. Even though it irritates me, I can’t even be mad at her when she starts laughing hysterically. I know how ridiculous I just made myself look, but I’ve never been good at handling surprises.
I sigh impatiently when she doesn’t stop laughing. “Did you come here for a reason, or were you just trying to scare me?” I ask, pulling out my headphones.
Once she can breathe properly again, Lena says, “Mom and Dad want us in the living room. I think it’s time for the carnival again.” I nod and follow her downstairs.
Mom works at an elementary school teaching third grade. Every autumn they have a Fall Fun Fest and Mom always volunteers us kids to help. We’re usually happy to, until Mom gets anxious under the pressure, goes crazy, and acts like the carnival will fail if any of us are even a minute late. But eventually she cools off and realizes how insane she is.
“Hey, guys.” I say, sitting down on the opposite side of the couch from my brother, Matthew. He’s fifteen, almost sixteen, and thinks he’s way too cool to have me as a sister. He’s probably right, but I don’t care that much.
“Hey, Anna.” Matt murmurs, concentrating on the TV. There’s some sports event on. Football, I think, but I’m not sure if it’s college or professional. Does actual football even start in October? I wasn’t built to be athletic, so I wouldn’t know.
Mom walks into the room with a few sheets of paper and hands them to us. They’re consent forms, basically telling the school that if we get injured, we won’t file a lawsuit against them. Everyone that works the carnival has to sign one.
“Okay, guys. The carnival is next weekend so I need to know what booths you’re planning to work on.”
“Well, Smith and I really liked working the ring toss last year,” Lena says. Her boyfriend, Smith, helped her last year. The stand has about two hundred two-liter bottles of soda laid out on the floor, and children use swimming rings to try to catch a bottle around the nozzle. If they hook one, they get to take it. The game is a big hit for little kids.
“Ro and I can take the bottle toss,” I offer. My best friend, Aurora, has no idea that I’m signing her up to help with the carnival, but she probably won’t mind. The bottle toss is a bunch of tin cans or glass milk bottles, stacked in a pyramid, and kids throw balls at it. They get three tries to get all ten bottles or cans down.
Mom’s been nodding along with us, making notes. At the mention of Ro, Mom grins a bit and hands me an extra consent form. Mom is all about self-expression and loves Ro’s outgoing personality and flaming purple hair. She says Aurora’s got charisma. I’m not sure my mom’s ever been more proud than when she found out I’d made a friend like Ro.
Mom’s been teaching at the elementary school since I was little. She absolutely adores children. When she sees babies or toddlers, she instantly devolves into a jumble of baby talk and silly faces.
Dad is Mr. Fix-it. Our cars never get taken to a repair shop because he can do it all himself. He seems rough on the outside, but as soon as you get close to him, you know that he’d do anything for you. Matt and Lena tell me I’m his favorite, but I’m not. We just communicate better than the others.
Like I said earlier, Lena goes to a local art school. She’s always been in love with photography. I wish I was half as good at anything as she is at taking pictures. Lena met Smith in her junior year of high school and they’re coming up on their second anniversary. They make such a beautiful couple. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous. Lena’s always had everything I wanted: beauty, friends, and talent. Maybe it’s sibling rivalry, but I feel like I never compare to her.
Matt is your typical little brother. He can be totally obnoxious and eating at my last nerve one moment, and then my sweet best friend the next. He doesn’t realize his full potential. He could do so much more with his life, but he’s fifteen and convinced he knows better.
Last year, some
things happened at school. Suffice it to say, by the end of it, I was lonelier than I’d ever been before. That’s when I met Ro. She completely turned my life upside down and, for the most part, I don’t care what others think now.
“Do I have to help?” Matt asks, still staring at the TV.
“Yes, Matty,” Mom replies in her “I’m not arguing about this” voice.
“Fine, just sign me up for something easy.” He pauses for only a moment. “And that doesn’t mean watching over the kids playing Duck, Duck, Gray Duck like last year.” We all laugh, remembering how Matt whined for days after getting that station at last year’s Fall Fest.
Mom stands up, walks to the kitchen, and says, “All right, well I guess we’re done here. Before any of you go back upstairs, I want chores finished.”
We all groan but we know better than to argue.
***
“Hey, Ro,” I say, walking up to the purple-haired girl I call my best friend.
“Hello, Anna,” she says, laughing at me.
“So, guess what you’re doing this weekend?”
She gives me a look. “Going to work and then going home to chill on the couch?”
“Nope! You’re helping me out at my mom’s Fall Fest!” I proclaim, trying to make it sound way more fun than it really is.
“No, I am not.” She narrows her eyes at me.
I bite my lip. “I may have already signed you up.”
“Anna!” she practically yells. “Why would you sign me up for something like that?”
“’Cause I wanted to do it with you!”
She gets a salacious smile on her face. “Everybody does.”
I burst out laughing when she wiggles her eyebrows at a guy walking past us.
“I think that kid just pissed his pants,” I say, watching him do a running walk to get away from us.
“Eh, what can I say? Sometimes the excitement gets to be too much for the young ones.”
She shrugs modestly as she loads more books into her backpack.
I purposely waited until now, at the end of the day on Friday, to tell her about this weekend, but I’d spent the week making sure she wouldn’t be busy. I’m just sneaky like that. I knew that if I told her about it before now, she’d make plans to get out of it.
“Anyway, please help out. It’s really not that bad and we got a pretty easy booth,” I say, pouting a little.
Her nose wrinkles and a sigh escapes her lips before she nods. “Fine. I’ll go, but I’m not looking forward to it.” I squeal and throw my arms around her shoulders. “You owe me cookies or something,” she adds.
I laugh and nod before backing up and heading down the hallway. “I will see you tomorrow morning,” I call out.
“Yeah, yeah. Just go!” she yells back, laughing.
Chapter Two
Fall Fun Fest
I think my greatest pet peeve is waiting. I hate having to be patient for people. And yet, I’m sitting here, tapping on the steering wheel of my cherry-red Toyota Corolla, waiting anxiously for Ro to come downstairs. She lives in a little two-bedroom apartment with her alcoholic mother who regularly has strange men over. Which I guess is why Ro spends a lot of time at my house.
I called her twenty minutes ago to meet me downstairs and she told me to give her five minutes. Ro’s never on time, no matter what. I know that, her professors know that, her boss knows that. Everybody knows to depend on Ro showing up late. I think most of us have learned to tell her things a few minutes, or hours, early in the hope that she’ll be ready by the real deadline. That clearly wasn’t happening this morning.
After another ten minutes, I honk my horn. Finally, a flash of purple darts out the door and into my car. “Oh my god, you were supposed to be out here, like, an hour ago,” I complain, pulling away from the curb.
“Oh hush, it wasn’t that long,” she says, pushing down the visor to look in the mirror.
I roll my eyes.
“It took you forever and you’re not even ready?”
“Um, does it look like I’m ready?” she asks, turning to look at me.
I burst out laughing when I see that she’s only got makeup on one eye.
“You look so pretty!” I grin.
Ro grumbles something under her breath and turns back to the mirror.
After fifteen minutes, and the completion of Ro’s “flawless” makeup, I pull up to the large courtyard the school rented for the fair. We get out and head off to find my mom. It doesn’t take long since she practically attacks us, going on and on about how late we are and that the Fall Fest officially begins in less than twenty minutes. Ro and I just laugh as we follow her to our booth. There are three boxes full of cans and bottles stacked along the side. We also spy a few garbage bags full of stuffed animals and other small trinkets for prizes.
Aurora and I immediately begin stacking everything and setting out the prizes. Within ten minutes, we’re finished and looking on proudly. A little boy around seven years old walks up to us, carrying a crate full of whiffle and softballs. It probably weighs more than him.
“Do you need any balls?” he asks in a squeaky voice.
I elbow Ro before she can come back with a dirty response and nod my head, “We definitely do! Thank you very much.” I give him a large smile as he hands six over.
Time passes quickly and before we know it, the carnival is in full swing. Unsurprisingly, the line for my side of the booth is longer than Ro’s. Not only am I pretty good with encouraging children, but Ro looks like she’d rather be anywhere but here. When there’s finally a pause in customers, she walks over to me.
“Everybody likes you best,” she pouts.
I raise an eyebrow. “Aurora, you have bright purple hair, piercings, and a shit ton of makeup on. Do you honestly expect children to just automatically warm up to you? You’re not even smiling. I’d be afraid of you too.”
She huffs, “Well sorry if we can’t all be Mary freaking Sunshine with happy rainbows arching out of our asses.”
I’m about to respond when another voice cuts in, “Whoa, ladies . . . Sorry to interrupt this catfight, but my nephew wants to play the game.”
We both turn to see someone who is possibly the most gorgeous someone I’ve ever seen. He’s got slightly shaggy dark brown, almost black, hair. His eyes are nearly as dark as his hair, but you can see the energy in them. I think the most brilliant thing about him is his smile—his teeth are perfectly straight and white and his grin brightens his entire face. Much to my horror, I can feel myself start to blush.
“Yes, of course. Sorry about that,” I grumble, looking down.
I notice a little boy holding his hand so I bend over the counter a little.
“Hey there, what’s your name?” I ask, feeling some of my awkwardness dissipating.
“Zandew,” he murmurs shyly.
I put my hand out for him to take.
“Well hi, Zander, I’m Annie. Are you going to knock some bottles down today?” I ask happily.
He nods his head, a little smile growing on his face.
“Yeah! Yeah! Unco’ Bway’s gonna hewp me!” he says excitedly. “Idin’t dat wite, Unco’ Bway?”
“That’s awesome!” I tell him genuinely. “How about we get you up here?”
I pat the counter, knowing that the little boy can barely see, let alone throw something, over it. “And we’ll get you started.” I move to grab the bottles and begin setting them up in a way that should be easy for him to hit. I grab a foam ball that’s bound to bounce off something and knock them down.
I hand him the ball and lean down a little to talk to him. “Okay, you get five chances to knock down three bottles, all right?” I say, holding up my fingers when I say five and three. Zander nods and looks doubtfully at the pyramid.
“Unco’ Bway! You do it, I’w miss.” He pouts sadly, trying to pass the ball over to his uncle.
It nearly breaks my heart and I have to stop myself from saying “awwww.”
“No way
, kiddo, this is your shot. I know you can do it!” Mr. Gorgeous encourages, his smile widening.
Zander looks nervously at the pyramid. He takes a deep breath and throws the ball with all his might. I nearly cry when it misses. I grab it and hand it back.
“It’s okay, buddy. That happens to everybody on the first try. I’m sure you’ll get it this time,” I promise emphatically.
His little lower lip is puckered out a little, but he takes the ball anyway. This time he doesn’t chuck it quite as hard and it goes a bit lower, taking out the top three bottles. I yelp with joy.
“Way to go, bud. You did better than I ever do!” I tell him, slightly embarrassed that I’m telling the truth. “Which prize do you want?” I ask, pointing to a line of the medium-size animals. Zander was just too sweet for a little prize.
“I wanna monkey!” he exclaims.
I nod my head. “Then a monkey it is.”
I lift up onto my toes and struggle a little to reach the animal. When I finally get it down and turn to Zander, he’s in the arms of another guy who’s nearly as gorgeous as the first one. His eyes are gray and he looks a little older, but I can certainly see the resemblance.
Zander is talking animatedly about how he got the bottles down on his second try and the guy is smiling proudly and nodding along. I feel warm from the adorableness and walk over to hand the monkey to the kid’s uncle. “Here you go,” I say politely.
He stares at me for a moment and the scrutiny was more than awkward. I already know I’m not his type. Guys like him go out with petite cheerleaders with tiny waists. I am definitely not that. I clear my throat, still holding the monkey out to him. He blinks and his smile returns before he takes the animal. “Thanks.” His voice gives me goose bumps over my entire body.
“I’m Brayden, by the way.” He leans forward to rest his arms on the countertop.
“You’re welcome,” I murmur, mute with shock.
I didn’t expect him to actually talk to me.
“Oh, and this is Zander’s dad, Landon,” Brayden adds when a tanned elbow finds its way to his ribs.
“Nice to meet you,” Landon says.
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