Dating: For the Assist

by Stephanie Street

  Contents

  Invitation

  1. Dannika

  2. Luke

  3. Dannika

  4. Luke

  5. Dannika

  6. Luke

  7. Luke

  8. Dannika

  9. Dannika

  10. Luke

  11. Dannika

  12. Luke

  13. Dannika

  14. Luke

  15. Dannika

  16. Luke

  17. Piper

  18. Dannika

  19. Drew

  20. Piper

  21. Drew

  22. Piper

  23. Noah

  24. Drew

  25. Mia

  26. Dannika

  27. Dannika

  28. Piper

  29. Drew

  Author’s Note

  Find Stephanie Street

  Also by Stephanie Street

  Invitation

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  1

  Dannika

  I hated parties. Why did I let Piper talk me into this? Oh, right, because she was my best friend and this party was at her boyfriend’s house.

  Drew’s family had money. And lots of it. His house was enormous and now that it was spring, people were taking advantage of the gorgeous, heated swimming pool in his back yard. Piper and Drew were probably making out in the private hot pool at the top of a fountain that fed the main pool. It was their place and they escaped to it whenever they could. Which was why when Leah Kane, a girl I was barely friends with these days, latched onto my arm, I didn’t complain.

  “Come on, Danni. Don’t be such a spoil sport,” she begged, pulling on my arm.

  “Kissing games? What are we in middle school?” We weren’t. In fact, we were only weeks from graduation.

  Leah leaned into me, her pretty brown eyes sparkling mischievously. “Guess who’s playing?” she said, pumping her brows up and down. Now I remembered why we weren’t good friends anymore. Leah was such a gossip queen.

  I didn’t even fight my eye roll.

  Leah lifted one brow, challenging me. She knew I wanted to ask who was playing spin the bottle. Especially considering the only guy I cared about was Luke Hines. Who had a girlfriend. But other than Luke, I had no idea who she could be talking about. There must be something good going on I hadn’t heard about yet.

  Shaking my head with a huff, I gave in. “Fine. Who?”

  Leah grinned. “I have something to tell you.” She grabbed my hands and pulled me toward the staircase leading to the basement of Drew’s house where the music played softly compared to what was going on outside and people played pool and air hockey. A sectional couch in front of a large flat screen television held several couples locked in embraces better suited for a more private location. They didn’t seem to mind.

  Halfway down the stairs, Leah stopped. The stairwell was empty and dark. She leaned into my ear. I wanted to push her away. We weren’t in fifth grade anymore.

  “You’ll never guess what I heard.”

  I wasn’t in the mood. “Leah, just tell me or I’m going back upstairs.”

  I knew she didn’t want that. One, because Leah hated being alone. She was forever hanging on the arm of one of her friends, the simple-minded ones who didn’t mind her ways. Two, she loved knowing something you didn’t and holding onto it as long as she could until you just wanted to slap the information out of her. I was three seconds from doing just that.

  “Guess!” she squealed, squeezing my hands.

  I squeezed back threateningly. “Leah!”

  “Okay, okay. Jeez. You are no fun at all.” Leah took a deep breath before finally spitting it out. “Luke and Abby-” she paused for maximum drama. “Broke. Up.”

  I frowned. “What?” I searched her face. Leah was a gossip, but she wasn’t mean.

  It was no secret, the crush I’d had on my best friend’s twin brother for most of my life. I met Luke Hines only seconds after switching sandwiches with Piper in third grade. She’d been holding the tuna fish sandwich on white bread as far away from her nose as possible with an expression of pure disgust on her face while the scent had my mouth watering. One glance at the turkey on wheat in my lunch box and I knew what I had to do. Once the switch was made, our satisfied groans filled the space around us as our teeth sunk into our respective sandwiches.

  Of course, Luke, who’d been sitting at the next table over had to lean across the ecru tiled floor to let his sister know he was telling their mom as soon as they got home. Piper stuck her tongue out at her twin, but my own had been tied.

  Luke Hines. Was. Adorable. Even back then, he was the cutest kid I’d ever seen. I remembered thinking how lucky I was to be Piper’s best friend. Not that I was friends with her because her brother was cute, that was just a bonus. But still, I got to be around him more than any other girl who also thought he was cute since I was at his house more than my own.

  But all that was beside the point. Luke had never seen me as anything more than Piper’s best friend. And an annoying one at that. He barely tolerated me. The worst part was he knew I liked him. Apparently, everyone did, even though I’d done my level best to ignore my unrequited feelings for Luke for the better part of the last three years.

  A girl could only take so much heartache.

  And rejection.

  Mooning over a boy who acknowledged my existence with the same enthusiasm he did a common house fly was not at all attractive. I’d like to say hiding my feelings for Luke had miraculous results, namely him finally waking up and realizing I was actually the girl of his dreams, but it hadn’t. Instead, he’d gone from outward loathing to grudging acceptance.

  It was fine.

  Leah’s voice pulled me back to the present. “Luke and Abby broke up! Today. She dumped him for that hottie on the baseball team, Aiden St. Clair.”

  “Aiden St. Clair?” Abby had dumped Luke Hines for Aiden St. Clair? “You have got to be kidding me.”

  Who would dump Luke Hines for Aiden St. Clair?!

  Leah frowned. “What’s wrong with Aiden? He’s super cute.”

  He was super cute. But he was no Luke. Nobody was Luke. Only Luke was Luke. And he was my Luke.

  Or, I wanted him to be.

  Struggling to keep up, I shook Leah’s hands which still held onto mine. “Wait a second. Are you telling me Luke and Abby broke up and Luke is down there playing kissing games?”

  Leah grinned. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” She raised one brow. “You in?”

  Was I? Kissing games were ridiculous. Usually just an excuse for people to kiss without any kind of expectations. I’d kissed exactly four boys in my life and three were because we’d been playing kissing games. Only one of those four actually wanted to kiss me and hadn’t required a kissing game to do it. Will Atkins used to like me back when I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. He’d graduated last year with Noah and Mateo and all those other guys from the basketball team. He was cute enough and I liked him. But I didn’t like him. We kissed behind the gym after one of his JV games and it was nice. He was probably a good kisser. I just didn’t feel…anything. It was like what I would imagine kissing my cousin would be like. No spark.

  I felt more sparks sitting beside Luke at the dinner table than I had kissing any one of the four boys I’d kissed and Leah was telling me he was downstairs right now participating in a juvenile game of spin the bottle?

  Oh. My. Heck.

  A grin so big it made my cheeks hurt split my face. “I am so in!”


  Leah squealed again. “Yes! I knew it. Let’s go.”

  The basement was dimly lit. Like every other time I’d been to a party at Drew’s, couples were kissing on the sofa and a few more were slow dancing to the music playing softly from a stereo set up in the corner. At one end, a group of guys played pool while a handful of girls sipped from plastic cups as they watched. The air hockey table wasn’t being used and on the floor beside it was a large circle of people sitting criss-cross applesauce. Boy. Girl. Boy. Girl.

  And just as Leah had promised, Luke Hines sat between Heather Hills and Gemma Lowe.

  This was a bad idea. Stopping short, I turned back toward the stairs. “I can’t do this.”

  Leah yanked on my arm, keeping me from going anywhere. “What?” she hissed. “Are you kidding? This is your chance. It’s the first time Luke hasn’t had a girlfriend all year.”

  “What difference does it make?” I shook my head. “He hasn’t noticed me once since third grade. What makes you think now, at the end of senior year, anything I do is going to change all that?”

  Leah grabbed me by my shoulders. “Girl, you have one shot. One last chance before graduation to win the man of your dreams and you’re going to chicken out! Now?” She shook her head. “No way. Come on! Where’s the Danni who put a love note in Luke’s locker in sixth grade?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I signed it ‘secret admirer’.”

  “So? You still did it. And what about that time you snuck into Luke’s room during a sleepover with Piper and pretended you were mixed up and went into the wrong room?”

  My cheeks burned. “I wasn’t pretending!” Much. I had been really tired that night.

  Leah gave me the side eye. “Right. But that isn’t the point. The point is you, Dannika Harper, are not afraid of a little kissing game!”

  I wasn’t?

  No.

  I squared my shoulders. Leah was right. I was not scared of a little kissing game. Was I really going to let a little matter of spin the bottle and my lifelong crush, who was now girlfriendless, get me down?

  No!

  I wasn’t!

  “You’re right. It’s just spin the bottle. No big deal. It probably won’t even land on me.” It would. I’d never played a game yet where it hadn’t. But that was a long time ago. This was the first time I’d been to a high school party where anyone was playing kissing games.

  I just hoped I didn’t have to kiss anyone gross.

  Because that was the gamble. It could land on me, but what were the chances it would then land on Luke?

  2

  Luke

  Parties were kind of annoying. The only reason I’d even come to this one was because my girlfriend of the past eight months had just dumped me and I didn’t want anyone thinking I was at home licking my wounds.

  Even though that was exactly what I wanted to do.

  How could she do it? Dump me for that baseball player? Didn’t she know who I was? Luke Hines, two time State Basketball Champion, for crying out loud! I was a freaking god!

  Okay, I wasn’t. Not really. That particular title was reserved for Drew Thompson, my sister’s boyfriend and the best high school basketball player in the nation right now. If it wasn’t for the rule that players couldn’t sign with a professional team until a year after graduating high school, I had no doubt Drew would have gone straight to the pro’s.

  As for me, I’d just been happy to ride his coat tails. Two straight State titles? Uh, duh. Of course, I was happy we had Drew on our team. And I was even happier he was already disgustingly committed to my twin sister, Piper, which left all the hot girls for the rest of us. And Abby was a hottie.

  A hottie who apparently only wanted the guy at the top. So, she settled for me since Drew was taken. But basketball season had ended five weeks ago, and I guess I’d lost my new State Champ smell or something because Abby moved on to greener pastures. It was baseball season now and that jerk Aiden St. Clair was as green as they came. The baseball team was hot right now, undefeated in their first three games. The whole school was buzzing about Aiden, the pitcher, and how much he’d improved after going to some pitching camp with a couple of ex-pro’s last summer.

  Pssht.

  I went to basketball camps hosted by professional players every summer. Drew might be the best player in the nation, but I didn’t suck. I wasn’t chopped liver! Two! Two State Championships!

  Stupid Abby.

  Stupid me. Because I still wanted her.

  Abby Fontaine.

  Abby moved to Eastridge Heights when we were still in elementary school. She’d been in my fourth grade class and I could still remember thinking she was cute. For a girl.

  I’d forgotten about her in middle school until she showed up in my eighth grade science class. We had to dissect earthworms together. It was cute how she was too grossed out to cut the worm open. I remember feeling like Superman when she clung to my arm as I stabbed the stinky thing with a scalpel and sliced it’s body open. What a hero!

  Still, I wasn’t into having girlfriends back then and once I reached high school, I sort of stopped growing for a while and kind of had a backwards slide as far as my coolness factor. It didn’t help that Piper wasn’t also experiencing the same stunted growth and was taller than me for a couple of years. I knew she was sensitive about her height and I didn’t blame her. As much as it helped her on the basketball court, it wasn’t as much of an asset amongst our peers. In fact, Piper had been the object of ridicule most of her school career. Things didn’t get better until they first got worse.

  Last year, before basketball started, this douche, Jack Fawcett, and a few of his friends from the football team threw Piper in the back of a van as she was coming out of work at the art center in town. She was supposed to meet Drew to play basketball at the neighborhood court, and when she didn’t show up, he called me. I’d never been so scared in my life. Luckily, Drew had the presence of mind to think of the GPS app that linked my phone to Piper’s and we were able to find her. I thought Drew was going to end up in jail himself for killing Jack once we arrived at Jack’s house where he had Piper tied to a chair. Who knows what those A-holes had planned for my sister, and thank goodness, we never had to find out. Jack and a few of his buddies ended up in juvie and Drew and Piper have been inseparable ever since. Nobody messed with her now. Ever. And for that, Drew had my loyalty for life. I’d do anything for that guy.

  Anyway, back to Abby.

  Once I started growing again and spent some time in the weight room, I gained a little confidence. Plus, we’d won State last season. I was feeling pretty good about myself over the summer. Drew invited us to swim all the time. I had a tan, toned body and I was ready to wow all the ladies and get myself a girlfriend. Freaking everybody was pairing up and I’d begun to feel a little left out.

  That’s when I ran into Abby again.

  It was a another party, here at Drew’s, in fact. A back to school shindig. I was late getting here because I had a stupid piano recital that day. I tried to get out of it, but Mom insisted she wasn’t paying a third of her paycheck for my fancy piano teacher for me to ditch my recitals. Needless to say, I’d had to rush from the auditorium downtown afterwards and change out of my suit at stoplights to get to the party before nine. Whatever. Things didn’t really get going until later anyway.

  And by get going, I mean I struck up a conversation with Abby in the pool and sparks were flying, if you know what I mean. She was looking hot. I was looking hot. And I snuck her up to Drew’s private pool where a few more sparks flew.

  We were pretty much inseparable after that.

  Until Aiden.

  And the worst part of it was Abby didn’t even have the guts to tell me in person. I had to find out by finding them… sparking. As angry as I was, I was hurt more. And the sad truth? I still liked her. I still wanted her. We were good together. We had fun. She was gorgeous. And I liked kissing her. A lot.

  My ego was bruised. And all I could thin
k about was how to get her back.

  Hence, the insane circumstance of me sitting in a circle with a bunch of people from school playing spin the bottle. Nothing better for making someone jealous than to show you were moving on, right?

  Right.

  It didn’t matter that I hadn’t played any kissing games since middle school. At least there weren’t any trolls in the circle.

  Wait.

  That wasn’t nice. But seriously, all the girls were at least passably pretty. I’d kiss any one of them if the bottle so deemed it. All in the name of getting my girl back, of course.

  Anyway, I somehow found myself sitting cross-legged on the floor of Drew’s basement surrounded by lovey-dovey couples who suddenly made me want to punch something, sandwiched between Heather Hills and Gemma Lowe. They were both sitting just a little too close. I tried not to squirm. Just because Abby didn’t want me anymore didn’t mean no one did. I just wasn’t ready to face that reality quite yet and Heather and Gemma seemed a little too anxious.

  We’d played one round where I’d had the unpleasant experience of watching my best friend, Jared Castle, swap spit with the captain of the debate team, Justine Russo. I loved Jared like the brother I never had, but the guy was sloppy. Poor Justine actually had to wipe her lips after kissing him across the center of the circle. I wanted to punch him and then remind him this wasn’t the time for making out. Spin the bottle was all about flirtations. It was play time. Hot and heavy was not appropriate. And neither was that amount of tongue.