Note: Check out the audiobook version of this chapter either before or after you read voiced the co-author of this book kaelking12 ! She did an awesome job & picked out some music from Foster The People, Taking Back Sunday, OK Go, and Brand New for this chapter! Happy listening!

https://youtu.be/748NNlB_okI

CHAPTER 1

Elias

If you'd asked me at the start of the summer if I would've sold my left nut to get a girlfriend, I probably would've said yes.

I would've begged, stolen, or sold my dignity down the river just to get a chick to give me the time of day.

But that was before.

Twelve weeks, a new six pack, and a hell of a lot more interest from girls later--a lot's changed.

A couple months ago, I was the poster boy for loser-loner virgins everywhere.

Elias Chubby Chorizo King?

Yeah.

That was me.

I used to be the kind of guy who couldn't talk to a chick much less touch one.

But that was then.

Right now, I have my hands up a junior girl's shirt even though she probably belongs to someone else.

The old me? Never would've done this.

That guy was a good boy.

Not perfect.

Not my brother.

But half-decent.

The old me would've told you he respected lines, boundaries, and relationships and meant every single word.

That was all before the Pantsing incident.

All before Stacey Brenner dashed my hope in good girls to pieces.

But here I am.

New man, new motto.

Doing the one thing I thought I'd never do.

And as wrong and selfish and dangerous as this is—

—I'm not even thinking about stopping.

###

Trish should be at practice, pushing herself past her limits instead of pushing herself against me on her basement couch. With her parents out of the house for the next three hours, she wasted no time skipping her training sesh to work up a sweat with me. 

She's still in her track clothes. The girl wears our school colors well enough to make Mission Bay High's jerseys look sexy, and I'm not usually into sporty chicks. But if the next couple minutes go right, I will be.

"For the record, this doesn't mean I like you, Elias," she says.

She's a better kisser than liar, but two-and-a-half beers ago she truth or dared herself into trouble. She lets her hair down, and it's so dirty blonde beautiful that I stare at her like I'm seeing her for the first time. Really seeing her. But I've been watching Trish for longer than she knows, just waiting for a reason to talk to her, waiting to find out if she's worth getting myself into trouble over. So far, so good.

"Who said anything about anybody liking you? I'm just here for a good time," I say.

Half truth.

"You sure? I don't do clingy guys. Freshman are infamous for that."

I slip my hands inside her waistband and touch her in all the right places. So easy. No more than a minute and this chick's running more than a garden hose powering a Slip n' Slide on a SoCal summer day. And it's all because of yours truly. You're welcome.

"Apparently, so are you," I say.

She whimpers a little and then eases off me till she's just out of reach.

"Careful. There are rules, Elias."

"Aww, fuck the rules. I like a challenge."

She perks up despite herself—eyes sparkling wild blue.

Challenge is a power word for Trish. It's like Pop Rocks for jocks and Trish is a little bit of a track star. Every article about every pole-vaulting competition she's won in the last few months is plastered all over the front of our school gym behind all her trophies. I wonder if our coach would've put so many pictures of Trish in short-shorts if he knew how many guys fantasized about her in the locker room showers.

I wonder if her kinda sorta boyfriend knew how many guys fantasized about his girl, if he'd change his mind about stalling on giving her an official title.

You see, he's where the "rules" come from.

He's why we can't play the way I want to.

And the reason she's been slipping and sliding further away from me.

Trish says she's into him.

That her Mr. Mystery Man swept her off her feet at some party a couple weeks ago and has been "taking it slow" ever since.

Maybe a little too slow, and that's exactly why we're here.

Trish slips out of her jersey and I stop thinking about anything or anyone else.

I pull her close enough to get a little bit drunker on the way she smells, like Starburst and the San Diego shoreline. She tastes even better, but even with the tip of her tongue dancing on my lips, I wonder if this game means anything more for me and her tonight.

We've only kissed so far, outta-this-world-kissed. Okay, that's not entirely true. I've kissed her in a lot of places her "boyfriend" probably wouldn't approve of, but nothing more serious than that. But tonight's serious, as in, take-her-top-off-and-then-some serious, and I'm sober enough to be nervous about it.

I'm good at the easy things. Like knowing how and where to touch a girl to get her going, and how to kiss Trish like she doesn't matter to me—even if she's starting to. But there isn't any way to pretend your way around being a virgin.

Trish thinks that I know what I'm doing. She thinks that everything we've done so far is a lead up to tonight.

But that's the problem with being a liar—eventually people expect you to tell the truth. Trish's phone buzzes in her pocket and completely blows the mood. It's probably Lover Boy. I fight myself not to ask. Asking = curiosity = clingy bullshit. Not a good look.

Trish grabs her phone with one hand and runs the other up my thigh slow enough to drive me a little bit crazy before she checks the screen.

"He texted. What's the excuse of the day?" She asks.

I hate this question. 

Mostly because I'm tired of having to make myself disappear every time he calls. The dude's an invisible cockblock. He blows up her phone right when things get heated and then less than 10 minutes later she sends me packing. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want her to ignore Prince Charming for once—but I'd look like a dick if I asked. But he bothers me. More than he should.

"Dunno, alien abduction?" I say.

She laughs and her breaths fall a little too softly against my skin.

"You can do better," she says.

"How 'bout the truth? Tell him you've already got enough man, right here."

She glares at me and I'm tempted to kiss the annoyance right off her face.

"I don't think he'll like that," she says a little too seriously.

"I don't know, T. He might be into the three-way thing. Kinky types aren't always so obvious."

She ignores my joke, eases off of me a little, and stares over my shoulder at her track photos on the back wall.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

Trish's eyes are miles away like she's out there running. There's only one place she really wants to run to, and it's not to me.

"I'm remembering," she says.

No. Please. Don't give a shit now.

"What?"

I ask, knowing how chicks end things. From what I know about women, you gotta read them backwards. They're always fighting with you about how they don't give two shits when they actually do, so you know it's bad when they actually say they give a shit. It's even worse when they give you these three.

Shit #1 starts with a stare, a bit far off with a mix of emotions, some bitter and maybe sweet, like they're watching the last episode of Gilmore Girls or some shit. And, hey, I only know that because I got a mom who's into that shit, (that's Shit #2 by the way) and it usually ends with some cliché rom com chick flick shit statement like—

"This. It was an adventure."

And that...would be Shit #3. A Trish-given certified and guaranteed shitty ending.

"So we're done?" I ask, trying not to come off as jealous when I absolutely am.

"Kind of. I don't know, I mean, I like hanging out with you, I guess, but it's not like this is going anywhere, Elias. Besides, once school starts—"

"We can keep doing this without anybody knowing. Nobody knows right now."

"And I wanna keep it that way, okay? What I have with—"

I wait for her to slip up, to forget herself and blow his cover so I can at least put a face to the name of the douche who's taking her away from me. But she flattens her lips into a tight line and locks up her secrets somewhere I can't reach them.

"—what I have going on with him right now is good, Elias. He actually makes me want to be a better person and he's—"

Light years better than you.

She doesn't have to say it for me to hear it in her voice. I like her voice, but not when she says things like that. Partly 'cause I know it's true, mainly 'cause it's not the kind of true I was looking for.

"Then why am I here?"

My voice cracks worse than it did when I turned thirteen. Two years later and puberty's still a bitch.

"I already told you—"

"No, you didn't. You didn't tell me anything, Trish, you just walked up to me at a party and stuck your tongue down my throat like you were single."

She backs away from me and slowly folds her arms across her chest but she might as well be half-naked when it comes to the truth.

"I was single. I still am," she says, eyes racing around her sockets the way she runs laps.

"Then stay," I say, and then take her by the arms and pull her back into that dizzy space where we get lost. I press my mouth against hers and she softens in my hands. I want her. All of her. And I kiss her long and slow until she can feel how desperate I am to keep her and whatever this is going.

She starts grinding on me like I'm a mechanical bull, and for a good couple minutes I might as well be.

"I thought—you—said this was done, " I say, but the words are melting between her mouth and mine.

"It is, starting tomorrow."

She grabs my hands, pulls them onto her totally bare chest, and completely changes the game. I just about forget what planet I'm on as she takes the bottom of my ear between her teeth and flips my world upside down.

"You sure you wanna do this?" I ask.

She peels off my surfer tee and flashes me a reckless smile.

"Just this once," she says, and I hope to God she doesn't mean it.

But I never get the chance to find out.

A voice calls out her name from the top of the basement stairs and stops her dead in her tracks.

It's not the way he says her name that kills me.

Or the way she jerks away from me when he says it.

It's the way I immediately recognize his voice.

I'd know it anywhere but I never expected it here.

Trish doesn't have to tell me to disappear for me to grab my clothes and jet across the room towards her basement window. She pulls her shirt back on as I jump up onto her dresser, pull myself through the frame, and climb out onto the dirt of her California dry backyard. My feet are barely in the clear when a pair of lazy footsteps clomp their way down her staircase.

I ease the window shut so he doesn't hear me.

Keep my head low so he doesn't see me.

But I see him.

I watch him sweep her off her feet like she doesn't weigh a thing.

I watch her kiss him the way she was kissing me except this time she doesn't slow down or make excuses. Or ask him to stop.

She lets him peel her out of her clothes.

Lay her down on the couch.

And do the one thing I never could.

She lets him have everything I can't and do everything I want to and it's barely been ten minutes since he walked through the door.

Things heat up and I get up out of the dirt, dust myself off, and force myself to walk away.Cause as much as I've seen, I can't watch my best friend finish what I started. 

###

Thank you guys so much for reading! Feel free to vote, comment, and share if you like what you read! Next update will be up on WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18TH!

#REAL TALK QUESTION OF THE WEEK:

1. Have you ever had a friend snake/steal/talk to a guy you were interested in/dating behind your back? How did you react? How did the situation turn out?

#REALTALK

Jenny: I have! A close friend of mine started seeing a guy I was talking to and when I talked to her about it I said that our friendship was more important than the guy. She didn't and continued to date him for the rest of the summer knowing how I felt.  So yeah, not the best experience. How do you think Elias will handle this?