Tru Love (First Love Book 1)

by Rian Kelley

  Tru Love

  by Rian Kelley

  Rushing Wind Publishing

  Next up in the First Love series:

  Victorious Love

  Chasyn Love

  Chapter One

  Genny closes her calculus book and stretches out on Hunter’s bed. She solved both problems while listening to Green Day’s American Idiot CD and Hunter’s drum moves on top of it. There’s an open audition with a band who has an actual record playing on the alternative radio stations and Hunter plans to line up at the crack of dawn Saturday to have his chance. Until then, it’s all about the music.

  She props her chin in her hand and watches Hunter roll through a series of beats, ending with a crash of symbols. Then he flips his sticks into the air, spins on his seat, and catches them. When he looks at her, he’s smiling and she can see the fire in his eyes. For Hunter, it’s always been all music all the time. Even she makes more of an impression in the songs he writes than in his life. And she’s OK with that. Sort of.

  She probably shouldn’t be. Sometimes she wonders if they ever really progressed from friends to boyfriend-girlfriend. It’s almost two months since their first kiss and she still has trouble thinking of him like that.

  “Hey.” Hunter rises from his drum set and crashes on the bed beside her. “You’re frowning,” he says. “It wasn’t bad, was it? I practiced that song for hours. I mean, that’s the song.”

  “For the audition?”

  “Yeah. Every drummer gets one song.”

  “I think it’s great. I like ‘Bleeding Love’ better, though.” Her cell phone is set up to play the Leona Lewis tune instead of the standard ring.

  “Because it’s a drippy love song,” Hunter says. “I need a song with the moves that will show my style.”

  Loud, thunderous songs, she thinks. Genny likes the ballads he writes, even if they sound angry, rather than soft, and the words sometimes make her feel like she’s balanced on the tip of a knife, waiting.

  She realized a few weeks ago, listening to Hunter perform his latest love song, that she was waiting for him to declare his feelings for her. But so far his songs are all about how temporary love is, how the human heart seems “to have wings, like a bird/cutting through the sky/the distance between you and I/a frayed and snapping ribbon.”

  The words really bothered her. Still do. Which only means

  that she’s conflicted. She wants him to love her. And then she doesn’t. She wants to be someone’s girl, but maybe not his.

  “Why don’t you use one of the songs you wrote?” she asks.

  He’s shaking his head. “No way. I don’t want to blow this.”

  “Your songs are good,” she insists.

  “But Green Day is better,” Hunter says. He rolls over and wraps an arm around her waist. “And you’re the best.”

  He lowers his head and presses his lips against hers. It’s this moment Genny wishes she could change. Shouldn’t I be burning up with passion? Shouldn’t I feel something? Something other than the brush of his whiskers against my cheek? Something on the inside that makes me want him?

  “Hey, you with me?” His face is just inches from hers. His blue eyes are cloudy.

  No, she’s not with him, but she wants to be.

  She doesn’t like disappointing Hunter. They’ve been friends for so long. . .

  She pulls his head closer, until his lips, cool and full and soft, meet hers. Why doesn’t the room feel like an oven? She wonders. Why can’t I want him like that?

  Hunter deepens the kiss, rolls her onto her back and pushes her lips open. His tongue feels like a tongue. Wet and warm and totally not what she wants in her mouth.

  Hunter is her first real boyfriend so she has only what she’s heard other girls say to go on. And this definitely isn’t it. Serena, her BFF, says Victor’s kisses give her fever.

  Hunter is bolder today than ever before. She feels his hand move from her hip and over her blouse. When it makes it to her breast, she waits for her blood to heat up. One beat, two, ten, but her pulse continues to move along with the speed of a tortoise.

  I am not an ice princess. She knows some of the boys at Fraser call her that behind her back.

  She is saved from finding an excuse to push out of his arms by his mother’s voice. She bellows Hunter’s name into the small apartment, then the front door closes with a slam. There is nothing quiet about the woman. Hunter’s mother is thin and stands about five feet two, but she has a chip on her shoulder the size of Nebraska and doesn’t mind sharing it every chance she gets. This includes a long-winded whine about the job she wishes she had to the lengthy hours her toes have spent pinched inside her pumps.

  Genny breaks loose and rolls off the bed in one fluid motion. She pushes her feet into her sneakers, her hair out of her eyes, and practically vaults to the window, where she pauses for a moment and looks back at Hunter. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed; confusion makes his face soft.

  “Your mother’s home,” she says, but it sounds weak even to her.

  “You don’t have to leave,” he protests.

  She pushes up the window. “It’s almost nine o’clock,” she points out. “I can’t be late again.” She swings a leg over the sill and ducks outside. The metal beneath her feet is rusted but sturdy.

  Hunter makes it to the window and sticks his head into the open air. “You OK?”

  “Yeah.” She nods, but wonders if Hunter can see that what just happened between them moved her about as much as an ant could move Mt. Rushmore. What is wrong with me? “But I need to go.”

  The fire escape is nothing new to her, but she admits, to herself, anyway, that this is the grandest act of avoidance she’s committed since she started dating Hunter. She’s never left his place through the window, but, other than a few kisses, Hunter’s never touched her before.

  And it doesn’t feel right.

  She descends the three stories smoothly, riding the ladder to street level with her sneakers glued to the bottom rung. She’s had a lot of practice—she’s been free running for four years, rooftop to rooftop, high above the city. Hunter will never join her. In addition to his fear of dying young and tragically—all the greatest musicians do—he has a genuine fear of heights.

  Genny is as graceful as a ballerina and as strong as Paul Bunyan and she likes it this way. Being the offspring of a super model and a professional home run slugger should have its advantages. The clothes are great—she’s wearing a fifteen hundred dollar Versace blouse right now and the color is the truest match to her purple-blue eyes that she’s ever found—but the physical attributes she inherited from her father are better. She’s captain of her high school volleyball team and can throw a curve ball that makes the boy’s baseball coach scream.

  She laughs as she hops off the ladder and lands squarely on the sidewalk.

  She thinks she might try bungee jumping this summer. Solo. Hunter might watch, a safe distance from the edge of the bridge. Her mom and dad think the sport is suicide. Serena doesn’t do anything that will mess up her ‘do.’

  “Hey!”

  Genny looks up. Hunter is smiling. That was the first thing she noticed about him, the first day of ninth grade—he grins and it takes up his whole face. Not many people are that committed to happiness.

  His blond hair, curly and long enough it gets in his face, catches the light from the street lamp and looks like sunshine.

  “What?”

  “Bring your guitar to school tomorrow?”

  “Really?”

  She’s no good at playing the guitar. Hunter taught her a few chords, mostly so that she can play harmony to his crazy drum moves, but her limited skill doesn’t seem to bother him.

 
; “I have a new song I want to try out,” he explains.

  She shrugs. “OK.”

  “Hunter, come away from that window!”

  His mother’s voice reaches all the way to where Genny’s standing at street level.

  She smiles and waves at him, then turns and heads down the street.

  Hunter lives in a small, two bedroom apartment on the corner of Bush and Hyde Streets. Not the best neighborhood to walk after dark, but the bus and the cable car hold no allure for her. At seventeen, she should have her driver’s license, but after borrowing her father’s Porsche Carrera when she was fourteen, and smashing it into a median divider, she has to wait until she’s eighteen before she can even apply for her learner’s permit. It was the best deal their attorney could get. And Hunter doesn’t have the money for a car. He’s saving for a set of Tama-Remo drums.

  She crosses Polk Street, ignores the prostitutes and drug dealers hanging out in front of the all-night pharmacy, and makes it to Van Ness without anyone offering her anything.

  Must be a busy night, she thinks.

  She looks up at the sky. Inside the city, it’s impossible most nights to see the stars behind the haze of lights and fog, but she knows they’re there. If she doesn’t study sports psychology in college, it’ll be astronomy. Sometimes she wishes her math was strong enough she had a chance at actually touching the stars or walking on the moon, but she’ll settle for naming a comet or discovering proof of an entire parallel universe.

  Of course, regular people—rich people—are buying seats on the space shuttle. But she doubts even her parents can afford it.

  A city bus comes to a stop at the corner, its air brakes shrieking. She ignores it, pushes her hands into the front pockets of her jeans, and waits for the traffic light to change. She feels the arrival of another pedestrian behind her, standing too close, and shifts forward, the toes of her sneakers tipping her weight over the curb.

  “You shouldn’t walk alone after dark,” he says. His voice is deep and accented. “Not in this neighborhood.”

  She looks over her shoulder. A guy around her age. Tall, so she has to look up, which doesn’t happen a lot. Intense eyes. He’s frowning and actually looks concerned, so she doesn’t blow him off.

  “It’s safe,” she says.

  They’re standing in front of a bookstore, its walls mostly window. Fluorescent light bathes the sidewalk and makes his hair look like fire. Across the street the glass doors of a diner are standing open and a small group of people emerge, their laughter drifting toward them.

  She gazes around them as if to say, ‘See. Plenty safe,’ but when she looks to see if he received her message, his face is pure disapproval.

  Genny shrugs and turns away. Tourist, she thinks. He’s not used to The City.

  The light changes and she steps off the curb. She’s a full yard into the cross walk before she hears the blast of a horn. When she looks up, the strobes of an SUV’s headlights are bearing down on her. Hypnotize her. For a split second, she can neither think nor act.

  And then an arm slips around her waist and pulls her off her feet.

  The SUV swerves. The guy attached to the arm stumbles backward onto the sidewalk and swears—but his accent makes it sound soft and sweet. The muscles ripple down his arm as he pulls her with him and then drops her on her feet.

  “Not that safe,” he says, which really ruins the moment. She’s not a girl who likes to be saved. In fact, she’s suited more in temperament and DNA to be the one who rescues. And she likes it that way.

  She figures she should say thanks—she was raised by grateful parents. And if nothing else, it’ll build her character. But when she looks up at him, the satisfaction on his face kills it. It makes her point out the obvious,

  “The guy blew through a red light.”

  “And you didn’t look before you crossed,” he says, and this is probably true.

  She was busy, puzzling through her non-reaction to Hunter.

  “Your shirt needs buttoning.”

  The observation snaps in her ears and she doesn’t know if it’s his tone of voice—more disapproval—or her embarrassment that does it.

  She looks down. The top three buttons are loose and the lace edge of her bra is exposed. She feels her blood turn hot and race to the surface of her skin. Her very white, show all her emotions skin. She turns her back to him, cursing Hunter under her breath, and fixes her blouse. By then, the light has changed again, in her favor, and she makes an exaggerated show of looking both ways before she steps into the street.

  His laughter follows Genny. It’s deep and curls slowly through her ears.

  She wonders what country he’s from and if all the people who live there are as irritating.

  For several blocks she hears him behind her, the soft scraping of his shoes on the cement and the crinkling of his plastic bag. She starts to worry that he’s following her, begins assuring herself with crazy logic—like a guy out buying books is no threat to humanity—when he stops at Union to cross with the light. She wants to look over her shoulder but won’t give him the satisfaction of laughing at her again. She picks up her pace and after three blocks turns north, into her Pacific Heights neighborhood.

  She passes several houses, all tall, with small, gated front yards and colorful trim. She climbs the stone steps, pushes the numbers on the keypad entry that will release the door, and steps over the threshold into a ‘radically different world,’ as Hunter calls it. Her mother was born poor and spent the last twenty years making up for it. So the house is big, the floors are covered in marble or aged hardwood, and all the appliances are upgraded annually.

  She recognizes the waste in her mother’s behavior but understands where it comes from. Her mom was seventeen when she wore her first new dress, and she didn’t own it, but was modeling it for Oscar de la Renta in Paris.

  Genny’s mom is a legend. She put super into the term Super Model. She was a founding member of that elite group. Even now, at the age of forty-four, she shoots the occasional magazine cover or puts her face on a memorable product. But mostly, she runs a business. What else, but a clothing line? High end evening and wedding gowns. Celebrities come to her for their Oscar dresses. Once a year Genny accompanies her mother to the Mayor’s Ball and that’s the only time she ever wears anything her mom creates.

  Her father escaped years ago, though he didn’t get far. He bought a penthouse condo with a Bay view just seven blocks from where she lives with her mother. He’s even more famous than Genevieve Senior, if that’s possible. Her father, Ben Vout, is the oldest player in baseball today. He’s only forty, but that’s considered ancient in the world of professional sports. At the end of every season analysts predict that the slugger’s going to retire. Her dad says he’ll know it’s time when he can’t put it out of the park anymore. Yesterday, in a home game, he let one rip that cleared the coliseum and landed in the Bay. She thinks he has another year, maybe two.

  “Honey, is that you?” her mom calls from somewhere upstairs. Probably the theater. It’s her only form of relaxation, old black and white movies. She’s pretty open to genre. One night she could be watching Dracula, the next night Meet Me in St. Louis.

  Genny starts up the stairs. “It’s me,” she calls. She follows the curving staircase and meets her mom on the balcony above. “You’re working out?”

  Her mother is dressed in bright pink lycra, boy-shorts that reveal mile-long legs and a tummy shirt. She hasn’t broken a sweat yet.

  “I’m thinking about it,” she says and plants a kiss on Genny’s cheek. “Your skin is cold,” her mother accuses and steps back so she can prop her hands on her hips. “Why didn’t you take a cab home?”

  “I wanted to walk,” she answers honestly. “And it’s a clear night. No rain. No mist.”

  Her mother purses her lips. Her thin, penciled eyebrows scrunch up over her blue eyes. “It’s not safe, walking home from there,” her mother stresses the word unkindly. She likes Hunter, but not his
economic status. She looks beyond Genny, and comes up empty. “Didn’t Hunter come inside?”

  Hunter doesn’t walk her home. Genny suggested it once and he looked at her like she was crazy, but they just started dating then, and making the transition from friends to more than that was hard.

  It’s still hard. In fact, at this moment, she’s thinking it’s impossible.

  But Genny’s not about to tell her mom that her walks home are solo. Her opinion of Hunter would take a severe nose dive.

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s getting late, and it is a school night,” her mom says agreeably. “Did you do your homework?”

  Genny nods. “All of it.”

  Her mom runs her manicured hand through Genny’s hair. “You’re a good kid,” she says.

  She feels guilt stir in her gut. Her mom always cares and keeping secrets from her is never easy.

  Genny goes for humor and says, “You’re really lucky to have me, you know.”

  “I am. I really scored with you.” Her mom’s voice is warm and genuine, so Genny’s guilt sharpens.

  “Think of all the problems I could have,” she encourages and begins a list, “drugs, high school drop-out, teen pregnancy—“

  Her mom places her hands over her ears and says, “Stop. Stop. You win. Not a better child exists anywhere in the world.”

  Genny smiles. “It’s great being numero uno,” she says and then she slips around her mother and heads to her bedroom. She almost makes it through the door before her mother’s voice stops her.

  “You’ll always be number one,” she promises. “But I haven’t forgotten that you walked home tonight. Through the Tenderloin.” Her mom shudders. “You’re not invincible, Genny, and neither is Hunter,” she says, and her voice is serious now, heavy with worry. “Not again.”

  Chapter Two

  Her mom’s words are still floating around in her brain when she arrives at school the next morning. No, she’s not invincible, but she wishes she was, and sometimes she almost feels that way. Like when she’s free running. She can almost believe she’s flying. Looking down into the alleys, at the little cars and even smaller people, with the wind rippling through her clothes and making her eyes tear, has to be something like flying. Bungee jumping and sky diving will be the closest she’ll ever get to the real thing, and she can’t do either of those until she’s ‘old enough.’