Varsity Heartbreaker, page 1
Varsity Heartbreaker
Varsity Series Book 1
Ginger Scott
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Preview
Acknowledgments
Also By Ginger Scott
About the Author
Copyright 2020
Ginger Scott, Little Miss Write LLC
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Ginger Scott, Little Miss Write LLC
Photograph by Wander Aguiar Photography
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-952778-00-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-952778-03-2
For Autumn.
You so get me.
Chapter One
It’s quite a thing for a girl to watch her future go up in smoke. I suppose I’m being a little melodramatic, given that it’s my mom who lost her job, not me. And honestly, I hate how dependent my dreams are on her hard work. I’ve never found it fair, but there are a lot of things in my life that I consider unjust but nonetheless are sewn into my fabric. What’s one more?
My mom worked at Tiny Prints Studio in the mall at the edge of Allensville, our town that’s like a pimple on Indianapolis’s forehead. We’re a nice zit, but economically? Full-on parasite. Most of the department stores closed when the huge outlet mall opened off the turnpike a year ago, and the empty spaces taken up by a charter school, pawn shop and thrift store. Other than the few remaining fast food joints, the photography studio was the only original business still operating in the plaza . . . until Tuesday.
Rent on the studio was too much for the couple who owned the business, and retirement was far more inviting than negotiating. They gave a few of the oldest pieces of equipment to my mom, sold the rest, then rode off for warmer temps in some retirement burb near Phoenix. Meanwhile, Kristen Mabee is once again working the wedding circuit, shooting weddings all over the tri-state area so we can stay in this shitty house full of shitty memories of how my shitty dad decided to walk out on us.
And me?
Well, no more Montessori school, for starters. It’s not posh private-school expensive, but it does cost, and public school is nice and free. And anything beyond community college is out of the blueprint too, unless the bowling alley gives me a hundred-dollar-an-hour raise. Not likely. In my immediate future, though, I wish like hell there’s a way I could borrow my mom’s photo tech to touch up the photo on my ID before my first day back at Public. I seriously miss the warm cocoon of the tiny Montessori school I got to go to for junior year.
“June, it’s fine!” My best friend Abby rips the card from my hand and tosses it into her back seat. It’s a mess back there so I’ll be lucky to find it before school starts on Monday.
“I’m cross-eyed.” I sigh, pulling the visor down and flipping on the light for the mirror. Am I always that way or just for this one picture?
“Nobody will ever see it. I promise,” she says.
I flip the visor back up, not convinced that I don’t actually look that way in real life, and flop back into my seat. Six people have already seen it, and the school photocopied it twice for registration. At this rate, my high school ID photo is in line for billboard placement any day now.
“You promise I’m going to know people at this party?” I’m not great with socializing. It was part of the appeal of going to a small school for the last year. The closer we get to the D’Angelo house, the more ill-fitting my T-shirt feels. I swear it shrank in the wash. I don’t buy belly shirts, but I see my flesh when I raise my arms up halfway. And the top of my jeans is folding in on itself. It makes the zipper part bulge like I’m some jock with a huge cup. I squirm in my seat and shimmy the tight black pants down my hips while simultaneously tugging the black and white striped T-shirt toward my waist.
Abby glances at me and laughs.
“You’re being nuts. You look great. And it’s everyone you remember from sophomore year. It’ll be like you never left.” She pulls into a free space at the side of the road about four houses down from the twins’ house. Cars line up both sides of the street, and we can hear the music thumping the moment Abby opens the driver’s side door.
“I don’t really like everyone from sophomore year. And I did leave for a reason.” Perspiration builds at my neck despite the coolness of the late summer air.
“You left because you thought people didn’t like you.” She actually rolls her eyes when she says it, which pisses me off a little. She makes it seem so insignificant. She’s always thought most of it was in my head, but a few things were plainly undeniable. The dog poop left on the hood of my car about a dozen times when it was parked at school was just the tip of the iceberg.
“Abby, someone literally picked my car up and moved it into the middle of the drainage area by the school. Being a dick like that takes a coordinated effort. That’s a bit of a sign.”
“Yeah, I know. But people at this school are just dicks, like, unilaterally. To everyone.” She nods in halfhearted acknowledgement, flipping her own mirror down to touch up the red on her lips. She turns to me and holds out the gloss. I recoil and she shrugs. Abby is pin-up beautiful. Her hair is this caramel color that lightens every summer, and her skin is a rich, cocoa brown. She got curves in eighth grade, and her skin is expensive and flawless. Her mom got her into modeling when she was young, and she’s been landing some big print ads lately. At a thousand dollars a gig, the money in her college account has grown to Ivy League proportions over the years. I’ve always been her alt-friend with near-black hair that I sometimes wear in braids on either side of my head because it’s literally the only hair style I know how to do. My friend has always said she’d trade me her hair and curves in a heartbeat for my green eyes. I wish trades like that were a thing. Done deal. Enjoy the lanky body with knobby knees and size A cups.
“Look, everyone has gotten older,” she begins, flipping her mirror closed and flicking her long-nailed fingertips toward my door handle in a gesture that urges me to get out. My hand grips the handle, but I can’t seem to bring myself to open the door. “You’re living in the past too much. People don’t care about pranks and childish things like grudges or whatever.”
“You mean bullying,” I correct. A grudge would mean I did something wrong, and I would know who I wronged. I’ve never known any of it. It’s just these little things that always came out of nowhere and built up. And yeah, maybe Abby is right—our school is full of immature pranksters. I’ve seen others get hit with the fallout, too. But for me, it wore me down.
“Fine, bullying. All I’m saying, June, is we’re going to be eighteen this year—all of us. This is it, the last moments of unabandoned freedom and youth! We’re supposed to party and stay out late and maybe even—gasp!—fail a class that doesn’t count on our transcripts. And there are so many boys we need to kiss! I know you wanna kiss boys at parties, June.”
I hate that I blush when she teases me. I get out of the car just to escape her conversation, but it only delays the inevitable. She’s going to bring this all back to Lucas Fuller. It always comes back to him.
I’ve been in love with my neighbor since the day he moved in at the start of our sixth-grade year. We were instant friends, though admittedly, my attraction to him was heavily dimples and blue-eye driven at first. Our moms took turns with school carpool duties. We swam together in the same summer league. We wasted away afternoons licking sticky grape-flavored popsicle juice from our arms while we sat in the sun on the roof of the old Buick my dad stored in our back yard. Technically, Lucas Fuller was my first kiss—it was an eighth grade dare in the back of a field trip bus. Our lips were puckered, there was zero tongue, and our eyes were wide open. Even after that awkward kiss, not a single day passed without us either hanging out or texting each other good night. I made my mom drive me two hours away once to watch his freshman football game, and I was always the one yelling the loudest for his home ones.
Mostly—more than anything—Lucas Fuller was my person. I’m shy, painfully so, but never around him. We had a pact that we would never lie, and there would be zero secrets.
Now, that’s all that’s left.
The summer after our freshman year, it all just stopped. Everything—no rides, no glances in my direction, no acknowledgement of my existence. I called and texted and left so many unanswered messages. When I went to his house, nobody opened the door, even when I knew they all were home. My parents divorced around then, and my grandmother moved in because she got
Dragging me out to this party, though? It doesn’t feel much like help. It’s more of the torture variety.
“And would you look at that. It’s a black Nissan pickup truck with . . . oh! FULLER1 license plates!” Abby points in the direction of an oversized tire as if I don’t know it’s Lucas’s truck she’s talking about.
“He’s at every party, Abs. And no, I’m not going to talk to him. It’s not like he doesn’t know where to find me. If he wanted to talk, we would have by now.” I look down at my feet while I push my fists into my pockets and shuffle along the blacktop. After a few steps, I run into my friend’s waiting palms as she grips me by the shoulders and shakes me until I meet her gaze.
“Maybe you should just finally move on and spend tonight talking to someone—hell, anyone—else.” Abby’s eyes plead with mine for a non-verbal agreement that I’ll try to be a normal high school senior for just one night.
“You’re someone else. I talk to you,” I quip. I’m only partly teasing.
Abby shoves off me and walks backward a few steps, giving me a challenging stare before spinning on her heel.
“I meant someone with a penis. And no, before you make another joke, I do not have a secret dick tucked away in my pants.” Her pace picks up, bringing us closer to the front door of the party house. I laugh a little, silently, because her penis joke was funny, but by the time her hand is firmly on the D’Angelos’ doorknob, my amusement has shifted to a need to vomit.
“Ready?” she asks.
“No.” Her mouth twists to say “tough shit,” and with one push, we’re inside.
Competing music blasts from two separate rooms, the hard thump of indie punk trying to drown out rib-shaking hip hop beats. Faces I don’t really recognize nod at Abby then me as we walk through the crowded living room toward the kitchen area. Two girls face each other over a coffee table littered with beer cans and vape pens, yelling about who is disrespecting whom. The overwhelming cacophony ratchets up my urge to run. Abby must sense it because she grabs my hand and tugs me close, keeping me right at her side until we get to the open doorway that leads to the back yard.
“Why is this fun again?” I say close to her ear. I’m still not sure she can hear me.
She bends down and flips open a red cooler filled with freezing water and melting ice. She fishes her hand around, coming up with two beers.
“Here. You’re drinking one,” she says, pulling back the tab then pressing the lip of the can to my mouth as if I’m a baby needing to be fed. I shake my head and step back, taking the can from her hand.
“I don’t like beer.”
“You’ve never tried beer,” she retorts.
Our mini staring competition lasts about two seconds before I give in and take a small sip. Her mouth ticks up with satisfaction, but when she tips her head back to take a drink from her own beer, I spill a little of mine on the rocks and let my mouth sour. Beer is gross.
“Oh, my God, is that—? No. It couldn’t be!” I recognize Tory D’Angelo’s voice without having to turn and face him. His presence motivates me to take another drink of my beer; I suddenly regret pouring so much out.
“June Mabee!” He snakes his hands around my hips as he steps in behind me. I spit out what’s left in my mouth and move away from him with a jerk of my elbow. We aren’t close. In fact, the only real interaction he and I have had was when I let him copy my science quiz answers during freshman science. I hate myself for letting peer pressure work on me. I should have let the asshole fail.
“Aww, maybe Mabee, what’s wrong?” He’s drunk, which amps up his assholeness a little. He’s been teasing me about my last name since junior high. So clever, saying it twice.
“You were right, Abby. Everyone’s grown up so much,” I say, giving my friend an icy glare. Her dry smile puckers on one side but she doesn’t argue with my reasoning. Kinda hard with Tory still hovering around us, breaking all kinds of personal space rules. Most girls let him get away with it because, in terms of good looks? He’s damn near perfection. While he’s smug about it, his twin brother Hayden is nearly oblivious to the power he could have at his fingertips. Bronzed skin, chiseled jawlines, light brown hair that somehow makes them both look like they just got in from a jog along the beach—the D’Angelo boys are Calvin Klein models in the making.
“Don’t you have some freshman to hit on?” Bless Abby’s confidence. One of the best perks of our friendship is her ability to say those things I wish I could.
“Still sore that I wouldn’t let you suck my dick this summer, Abs?” He actually pushes his tongue in his cheek to accentuate his crass reply. What a fool. She’s going to burn him to the ground.
“Isn’t it more like . . .” My friend takes a thin pretzel stick from a bowl on the patio table nearby and pinches it between her thumb and finger, holding it a few inches away from Tory’s face. His eyes haze and his jaw twitches. Even though it’s only the three of us here to witness her rip on him, the joke breaks through and embarrasses him. I wish I could trade her my green eyes for that skill right there.
“Come on, June. Looks like the cool kids are all over there,” my friend says. She purposely ignores the raging bull she leaves standing alone and weaves our hands together to drag me along the deck.
“He’s probably going to remember tonight all wrong and think I’m the one who said all that, you know.” I step on a wooden beam and lift myself to sit on the deck’s guardrail. Abby does the same, but swings one leg over so she straddles it facing me.
“Good. Then you’ll have a reputation of not putting up with shit from douchebags,” she says, pulling her phone from the small purse she’s wearing across her body. She holds it up before I can protest and snaps my photo.
“Why? Why do you always do that? You must have an endless collection of me making dumb-as-hell faces,” I protest. I start to laugh a little, too.
“If it didn’t work on your foul moods so well, I wouldn’t do it.” She takes one more shot before tucking the phone into the zipper pouch of her bag.
That she has hundreds of those pics scratches at me a little. It means I’ve been in a foul mood hundreds of times. I had to come back to Public because we couldn’t afford the Montessori school anymore, so maybe it means I get to reinvent myself a little. Maybe Abby is a little right in saying that we are all getting older—none of us are the same people we were two years ago. I’m not the same. At least, I don’t have to be.
“I’m sorry.” I half shout the words to my friend because the music is still making it hard to hear. I’m probably not going to be able to apologize to her more than this one time, so I have to make sure she hears it.
Her mouth curves slowly and she flits her thick black lashes at me before leaning forward enough to push gently at my shoulder.
“Aww, June. You’re getting all mushy.”
I squeeze my eyes shut in playful shame.
“Apology accepted. I’m not sure what you’re apologizing for, but I’ll save it up and cash it in when I feel like it,” she says.
“Okay.” I laugh, opening my eyes as my friend tips her head back and drinks the rest of her beer. When she’s done, she leans forward again, reaching for my can to test the weight. It’s still nearly half full, even with the portion I dumped, so I give it to her reluctantly.
