Second to No One

by Palmer, Natalie

  Second to No One

  Copyright © 2013 by Natalie Palmer. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

  The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Tate Publishing, LLC.

  Published by Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC

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  Book design copyright © 2013 by Tate Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Allen Jomoc

  Interior design by Jomel Pepito

  Published in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-62902-953-5

  FICTION / Romance / General

  FICTION / General

  13.06.04

  Chapter 1

  Jess. Just the sound of his name sent a surge of energy over every inch of my skin. Kiss. And not just any kiss, but the kiss. The kiss of all kisses. Did it really even happen? Sometimes I have to wonder. Sometimes if I think about that night, in the rain, in my front yard… if I think about it too much, it starts to feel like a dream. And maybe it was. Not to say that it wasn’t real because it was so very, very real, but what I’m saying is maybe it was too good, too soon. Maybe we weren’t ready for it. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to happen.

  “Hello? Earth to Gemma.”

  I turned toward the sound of my name to see Drew standing on a rock a few yards ahead of me.

  She let out a puff of laughter as she shook her head at me in dismay. “What are you thinking about?”

  I stepped over a jagged rock and glanced at the steep slope to my left. When we started this hike three hours before, Trace had told me it was a challenging one. “Unlike the twelve easy ones you’ve already taken me on this summer?” I had said part in jest and mostly as an accusation. But now, with jelly-like legs and a heaving chest, I was eating my words. This was nothing like the others.

  “Oh, I know what you were thinking about,” Drew continued when I didn’t have the breath to answer. She nodded up the mountain to where Trace and Drew’s date, Sam, were making their way up the hill. “I mean, how could you not be thinking about Trace. He’s perfect.”

  I grabbed my water bottle and let a few drops slip down the back of my parched throat. “I don’t know.” I smacked the top of my water bottle until the spout shut tight. “I just don’t see him that way anymore. We’re just friends.” Which was a strange thing to say since his name had covered the front and back cover of my notebooks for the past two years. But a lot had happened over the past two years. I was a different person—or maybe the same person, just a different version of myself. And Trace was just…Trace.

  “Right.” She rolled her eyes as she hoisted herself up onto a small boulder. “I’ve heard that before.”

  I shook my head at the ground in front of me. “It was different with Jess. When I said that we were just friends, I was always hoping there was something more.” And I was still having a hard time believing that there was.

  It had all happened so fast. One minute we were together, kissing in the rain outside my house, physically incapable of letting go of one another. And then he was gone. And then this thing happened. The thing that always happens. Time. And in our case, so did distance. And I honestly had no idea what we were going to be when he came back, and that terrified me.

  When I stopped again to catch my breath, I turned around to see if we had a view of our houses. But to my dismay, they were still hidden behind miles of overgrown trees. The trail we were hiking was called Siler Bald, which from the top was supposed to have a spectacular view of Franklin. I had been turning around every twenty minutes or so for the past hour hoping to see some glimpse of the town, some glimmer of hope that we were nearing the top. But it was nowhere to be found.

  Since school ended, Trace had taken me on a dozen different hikes ranging from Park Creek to Whiterock Mountain and even the long loop on Standing Indian Mountain, which took us from dusk till dawn to complete. I could definitely say I was in the best shape of my life, but I had to admit, I was getting a little tired of Trace’s undying passion for the outdoors.

  “Does Trace know?” Drew’s words interrupted my thoughts, and I tried to remember what we had been talking about.

  “Know what?”

  “About you and Jess.”

  “He never asked.” I looked up ahead to make sure Trace and Sam were still out of earshot. “And anyway, it’s none of his business.”

  Drew turned around with sharp eyes. “Trace likes you, Gemma.”

  “I know he does, Drew.” I may have been in denial for a while, but I wasn’t stupid. Trace never tried to hide his frustration whenever I insisted on paying for my own dinner or the way I introduced him to people as my good friend. But when Jess and Drew both left for the summer, they left me with no one. Trace showing up at my door the second week of June was a welcomed distraction, and I had been grateful to have him around. “He knows I just want to be friends.” I reassured her. “I think I’ve been pretty clear about that.”

  Drew’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Clear? How? By spending every waking moment with him?”

  I huffed and stepped past Drew, starting up the trail once more. “Don’t give me a speech on the dos and don’ts of leading guys on.” I nodded toward Sam. “How many boyfriends is this for you in the past month? Four?”

  The fire in Drew’s eyes faded out as her mouth turned upward in a guilty grin. “Okay, so I’m in no position to stand on that soapbox. But this is Trace.” She kicked a rock out of the path. “He deserves to know you and Jess kissed.”

  Hearing those words out loud made my heart pound against my chest, and my stomach churned with nausea. Besides Drew, I hadn’t told a soul about what happened between Jess and me because it felt like saying it out loud, and actually believing that it had really happened rapidly increased the chances that he was going to dump me the second he got back to Franklin.

  “Have you talked to him today?”

  A flood of anxiety pushed against my ribs, and I wished silently that Drew would stop asking about Jess. I wanted so badly to be able to say yes, of course. How could we possible go twenty-four hours without hearing each other’s voices? I would have loved to be able to honestly tell her that we talked morning, noon, and night like we had the first week he was gone. But the truth was our phone calls had gone from three times a day to once a day to me falling asleep before he had a chance to call.

  His dad had a job lined up for him when he got to California doing construction. More often than not, the jobs lasted until it was dark, which meant he didn’t have time to call me until after ten o’clock Pacific time or one in the morning my time. It just got harder and harder as the summer wore on, and lately we were lucky if we connected with each other more than once a week. But I wasn’t ready to admit that to Drew nor admit to myself what that might mean for us, so I shrugged and said, “I don’t get good reception in the mountain.” I handed my water bottle to Drew since hers was empty. “You seem to be into Sam though. Is this one going to last until Sunday?”

  Drew took a drink then
shot me a dirty glare, but we both knew why I had said it. Drew had gone through more boyfriends this summer than I hoped to go through by the time I got married. I couldn’t keep track of all the guys she talked about in Charleston when she had been visiting her dad, and I was already losing count of the guys she had dated in Franklin since returning at the beginning of August. It seemed she had a new guy leashed around the neck every week, and by Saturday night, she was sick of them. “It’s just lame how boys think we’re so serious after hanging out for a couple of days. By the end of the week, they already want to come over for Sunday dinner to meet my family. Whatever happened to casual dating?”

  “I think it got trapped in the final episode of Friends,” I said callously. But it was true. It seemed these days that if you even looked at a guy the right way, you were automatically presumed to be soul mates.

  “Anyway,” Drew swallowed hard to catch her breath, “I always have to cut things off before they get hurt.”

  “Well, I’m sure the male population thanks you.”

  Drew stopped for a minute and squinted up at the sun. “So far, none of them have.”

  Despite the fact that Drew was a menace to the dating society, I had to admire the way she could keep herself so emotionally unattached from the whole dramatic affair of relationships. I, on the other hand, was an emotional wreck waiting for Jess to come home. This was the last weekend before school started on Monday. Last I had heard, Jess was supposed to get home on Sunday night. But it had been almost a week since he’d so much as called.

  “You’re worrying over nothing.” I heard Drew say after we had walked a while in silence. She always seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. “Jess still likes you.” She took a drink from her purple water bottle. “And even if he doesn’t, there are so many other fish in the sea.” She nodded in the direction of Trace. “And I can think of one in particular that is just aching to be caught.”

  An hour later (and not a moment too soon), we reached the top. The Internet was right; we could see everything from up there. I spotted my house, and Trace pointed out the baseball park where he had played a lot of his games. We saw the junior high we had just graduated from as well as Franklin High School, where all of us—excluding Sam, who would be a junior at Highlands High School in our neighboring town—would be starting school in a couple of days.

  “It’s weird to think that we’re done with that place,” Drew mused as we all sat on the dirt, looking out over our small little town. “No more Mr. Clyde and his stinky nose breath.” Drew let out an exaggerated sigh.

  “No more dirty looks from Lanette,” I added, squeezing my knees into my chest.

  “Who’s Lanette?” Sam asked.

  “She’s the lunch lady,” Drew answered with a twisted smile. “She loves eating leftover tater tots, and whenever anyone orders them, she gets all bent out of shape.” Drew cocked her head at the memory. “I would get them just to set her off. I’d always throw them away though. They tasted like the freezer.”

  Trace, who was lying on the ground next to me with his head propped up on his backpack lightly slapped Drew’s knee with the back of his hand. “Wow Drew, you’re so bad, stealing tater tots from Lynette, the lunch lady…how do you sleep at night?”

  Drew nudged Trace with her elbow, and I could tell from the look on her face that she liked that he had teased her. I could also tell from a million other things that she still liked him—a lot—and wished more than anything that she was holding hands with him instead of Sam. I couldn’t understand why she was always trying to push him onto me. But whatever the reason, it wasn’t working. I just couldn’t think about him romantically. Not while Jess Tyler was in the world.

  I looked at the clock at eight thirty, then at eight forty-five, then at eight fifty. Jess’s house looked quiet and lifeless. Why hadn’t he called me? Why did I feel so pathetic?

  “Gemma, hon, get away from the window.”

  I jumped at the sound of my mom’s voice and stepped backward toward the kitchen counter. I hadn’t even realized that I was hovering over the sink, watching Jess’s house like a lioness watching her prey.

  Mom was at the table organizing her recipe book and glaring at me over her reading glasses. “The last thing a boy wants is a desperate girl. Here,” she waved an index card in the air, “help me sort through these recipes. That’ll take your mind off him.”

  I scowled at the card. “No, thanks.” Then I slowly made my way passed the Betty Crocker recipe party and moved into the living room where Dad was watching a football game on TV. I moped around the edge of the couch, then collapsed on the cushion next to him. “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey, Gem.” He took a sip from his mug. “No sign of Jess yet?”

  “Nope.” I reached for a couch pillow and set it over my face. “But thanks for rubbing it in.”

  Not much had changed over the summer with Dad’s health. He had just finished his third round of chemo, and his hair was growing back grayer than it had been before. He spent a lot of time on the couch. He was either reading, watching TV, or doing his latest hobby, journal writing. Some days he looked like he was getting better—he almost looked like his old self. But other days he looked tired—like he hadn’t slept all year—and his mouth barely moved when he spoke. Mom spent her days moving around him like a vacuum cleaner gone AWOL. Even when he was sleeping, she was scurrying around trying to make him feel comfortable or on the phone with fancy doctors in Europe trying to find a cure.

  Bridget, on the other hand, left for Yale sometime in the middle of August. She wasn’t at all hesitant to leave, and I’m pretty sure I heard her whoop when she crossed over the state line. I barely noticed that she was gone, though. The only difference that I saw was that there was one less cereal bowl in the sink every morning.

  Thunderous cheers erupted from the television, and the announcer exclaimed, “First down!” I waited for my dad to either yelp with excitement or moan with exasperation, depending on who had made the play. “These guys couldn’t stop a play if their lives depended on it,” he grumbled before coughing into his arm. “What time is Jess supposed to get in?”

  I moved the pillow to my lap, but my eyes stayed glued shut. “I don’t know. He’s probably already home. He probably forgot who I am.”

  “That makes sense,” Dad said as he flipped through the channels with the remote control. “The boy’s been hanging around our house like a stray cat for the past ten years begging for your attention. I can see how three months in California would change that.”

  “I just don’t want to assume anything.”

  “Always a good rule to live by.”

  I took a deep breath and stood up. “I’m not going to just sit here waiting for him.” I rounded the couch and headed for the stairs.

  “So you’re going to go upstairs and wait for him?”

  I ignored my dad’s humor and headed up the staircase. I was sure this was all very entertaining to him, but this was my life. Jess was everything to me, and he hadn’t even told me when he was going to be home. I couldn’t let myself assume that he felt the same way about me now as before he left. Things change. People change. Jess and I weren’t above it.

  I sat down on my bed and unzipped my backpack. I had taken it out of my closet earlier that day to start preparing for school tomorrow. So far I had two pencils, a pen, and a notebook. I grabbed my schedule off my nightstand. I wasn’t about to forget that again. I skimmed over the classes. Chemistry, health education, algebra, honors English, US history. I took a deep breath. What was I getting myself into?

  I could hardly believe that I was starting high school tomorrow. I had dreamt about this day for so long, and now it was here. But I never in a million years could have imagined that I’d be starting high school as Jess’s girlfriend. Because that’s what I was, wasn’t I? It had felt that way for a while. But now I could
n’t be sure. I folded my schedule carefully and slipped it into the front pocket of my backpack. I zipped up the rest of the compartments, then set the bag to the side. Now what? I took a deep breath and picked up my cell phone to see if I had miraculously missed a call. It was blank. I instinctively dialed Drew’s number. It rang three times, and then she answered.

  “You’re not supposed to be calling me right now.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Because you’re supposed to be having a romantic reunion with Jess.”

  “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  “You still haven’t heard from him?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Maybe his battery died.”

  “Six days ago?”

  “It’s been that long?”

  My heart sank. “It’s been that long.”

  I heard her take a deep breath on the other side of the line. “It’s going to be fine.”

  “So they say.”

  “Yeah, but it really will be. What was that?”

  I turned to the loud tap sound at my window, and my heart nearly cracked a rib in my chest. “I think it was a rock against my window.” I bit my lip and tried to stop my knees from shaking. “I think Jess is here!”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t know. I’m so nervous.”

  “Gemma, this is Jess. There’s nothing to be nervous about.”

  “I know. Okay. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “Go talk to him.”

  “Okay.”

  “And call me when he’s gone.”

  “I will.”

  “Hang up the phone now, Gemma.”

  “Okay. Bye.” I hesitantly closed my phone and tiptoed toward my window. Before I could open the curtain, a second rock tapped the glass. I pushed open the curtain and lifted the window. And there he was, sun-bleached and tired and staring up at me with those squinty, blue eyes of his. I forgot how to breathe.

  “I’m looking for a girl,” he said clasping his hands over his mouth. “Dark brown hair, green eyes, really feisty when she gets tired. You know her?”