Beautiful Tragedy (A Standalone Romance Novel) Read Free

with a grin.
    “You’re hopeless, do you know that?” she asked.
    “I know. Here they come. Please don’t push, okay?”
      “Okay,” she
said, but sounded reluctant. I’d have to keep my eye on this one.
    The guys came back with our drinks, and after more
awkward small talk and Jake scarfing down three more tacos he suddenly said, “Wow,
Megan look at the time, we have to go.”
    Megan, to her credit as my friend, pretended she
didn’t know what he was talking about and said, “Go where?”
    Jake, proving once more why I think we should call him
“Jake McStuffins ” said, “You know, we have
that…thing.” I guess coming up with an actual place they had to be would have
taken too much brain power for him. Megan looked like she didn’t know what to
say, so to save her from being caught between her friend and her…soulmate, I
said, “ It’s okay. I have a physics test tomorrow that
I need to study for.” “Hot-guy Brock” was now giving me a look that I couldn’t
interpret. This one wasn’t amused, but I couldn’t decide what it was exactly.
Finally he said, “You take physics?” Ah…one who can adequately state the obvious. He was no doubt a keeper.
    “Yes,” I said with another sweet smile as I stood up.
“And I really do need to study. It was nice meeting you…” He was standing up
too. Please don’t offer to walk with
me…Please don’t offer to walk with me…
    “How about I walk with you?” Of course, he offered to
walk with me. “You live with Megan in the freshman dorm, right?”
    “Yeah,” I said, “but it’s really not necessary to walk
with me. I’ll be fine.” Much more so than
I will be if you tag along and I have to come up with fifteen more minutes of
stilted conversation.
    “I don’t mind at all,” he said with a smile. He looked
amused again. Maybe he was a masochist?
    “Wait!” It was Jake McStuffins .
I wondered if he had thought of a fake place they were going for their thing.
It was worse, however. “Megan and I forgot to ask you guys about the football
game.”
    “Football?” The hot guy and I both said in unison.
Then we looked at each other and…you guessed it…he looked amused.
    “Yeah, I have four tickets for Saturday’s game. It’s a
big rival game. It’ll be great,” he said.
    “I don’t think so, Jake.” I declined politely. I might
have added that I’d rather have my toenails pulled out with a pair of rusty
pliers if he hadn’t been my friend.
    “Yeah, me neither,” Brock said.
    “Oh, come on guys!” It was Megan now, always on Jake’s
side. I remember in second grade when we became “blood sisters” and promised to
never let a man come between us. She had obviously forgotten that small detail.
“It’ll be fun. You don’t have to like football. It can just be a fun night out
with friends.”
    Not wanting to continue the argument and make them
late for their “thing”, I said that I would think about it. Brock did as well,
and then we were on our way down the awkward brick road towards the dorms. We
hadn’t gone five steps before I suddenly spit out, “So, you’re a music major?”
And I wondered why I amused him so. I guess he wasn’t the only expert at
stating the obvious.
    Amused, of course, he said, “Yeah, how about you?”
    “No, I’m not a music major. They’d never have me,” I
told him. It was an attempt at humor, but I think the arrow fell just short. I
quickly tried to return the conversation towards serious to deflect from my
poor attempt at humor and said, “I’m a liberal arts major…for now. I’m not sure
what I want to be when I grow up,” I said the last with a smile, so he could be
sure it was humor. Then, going from bad comedy to sounding like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, I said, “As long as
it’s something in science.”
    “Wow, smart girl.”
    He didn’t have the amused look now. He actually
looked…impressed? “The hospital here does some great research. This university
is a