Cross the Line (Boston Love Story #2) Read Free

sweet sixteen and, jealous of the totally mature tenth-grade girls wandering around with what, at the time, seemed like Victoria’s Secret model bodies in comparison to my mosquito bites, I went into the bathroom and stuffed the cups of my bikini with enough tissues to keep Kleenex in business for at least the next decade.
    A mistake — the repercussions of which I didn’t even fully realize until one of Parker’s bitchy girlfriends pushed me into the pool, the impact dislodging my stuffing like confetti from a canon. The two minutes I spent floating in the water, makeshift boobies drifting around me like white, translucent jellyfish as I listened to the older girls giggle, were bad enough; the fact that it was Nate who reached in, pulled me out, and wrapped a towel around my shaking shoulders was worse. Mainly because, as soon as my feet hit dry land, the tissue began fusing to my limbs, clumping on my skin like some grade-school paper maché project gone terribly awry.
    Somehow, when I’d imagined Nate seeing my boobs for the first time, I hadn’t reeked of chlorine and they hadn’t been made of paper.
    Oh well. You win some, you lose some.
    (I seem to lose most, actually.)
    And yet, even the pool party wasn’t as abominable as the time in eighth grade, when I asked him to be my date to the Sadie Hawkins dance. He didn’t even bother letting me down easy. He just grinned, ruffled my hair like I was an adorable-but-idiotic golden retriever, and walked away, laughing as though the suggestion was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. His rejection stung, don’t get me wrong, but it was the aftermath that really kicked me in the shins. Without Nate as a date, I had no option other than to ask my friend Lila’s older brother, Duncan, to go with me. He was cute in a clean-cut, average kind of way — not dark or dangerous-looking, like other boys-who-shall-not-be-named, but handsome enough to get my fourteen-year-old heart pumping.
    Duncan was a charmer when he picked me up in his father’s Porsche, smiling as he slipped a corsage on my wrist, driving with one arm thrown across the back of my seat. Just when I was beginning to think things might not turn out so bad… he downed six shots of whiskey in the school parking lot, which left him so incapacitated he couldn’t even slow-dance with me once during the hour I spent leaning against the wall of the Starry-Night-themed reception hall, watching him gyrate questionably against several unsuspecting girls in taffeta.
    When I called Parker to come get me, he — somewhat grudgingly — showed up… with Nate in tow, because apparently the universe thought I hadn’t suffered enough humiliation for one night. Crammed in the backseat next to a moaning Duncan, I listened to Parker and Nate talk about the “hot chicks” they’d had to bail on to pick me up, and prayed to disappear. When Duncan puked in my purse halfway home, I knew my perfect night at the middle-school dance was finally complete.
    Ah, memories.
    I could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture. When it comes to Nate, my life has been one long string of humiliation and horrifyingly bad luck.  Before he disappeared, taking my heart with him, I tried everything to get his attention.
    Okay, not everything . I stopped short of stripping to my skin and climbing into his bed naked because hello , I still have some pride left. (Not much, but enough to know that ambushing him in my birthday suit and demanding that he finally remove my pesky virginity — only to be rejected and dismissed with the same detachment he’d use to send an overcooked steak back to the kitchen — is a blow from which my self-esteem would never recover.)
    But I’ve tried everything else .
    Heated glances. Cold shoulders.
    Sidelong-looks. Full-frontal stares.
    Ignoring him. Adoring him.
    And you know what?
    Not a damn bit of it worked.
    It doesn’t matter what I do — Nate still treats me with the same aloof disinterest he always