The Starter Boyfriend Read Free

had looked on, holding hands, giving me some of life’s perfect moments.
    It turned out the old Maroon and Gold heralded a top-notch business department—exactly what I wanted to study. I’d been working with my guidance counselor to make sure I’d have a competitive package when the time came to apply, and so far, so good. Still, there was a major obstacle blocking my way, and it wasn’t the tuition like I let Phillip think.
    It was my dad.
    “Yeah, it’s way expensive,” I said and blinked a few times as if in shock. “Anyway, see you tomorrow.”
    He lifted a hand in a half-hearted farewell and turned away, a slight limp bringing what looked like a bounce to his linebacker physique.
    Veering toward the back parking lot, I yanked my phone out of my backpack and pressed number two on my speed dial. Felicia Hernandez—Flea—and I had been tight since finding ourselves huddled outside our coach’s closed office door during freshman hell week, both having been summoned, both convinced we were about to get cut. When in fact, Coach had just wanted to get to know us both better. It was amazing how fast panic could bond people.
    I considered her my best friend, and even though I knew I on was shaky ground with a lot of the players for taking a pass on beer and wine coolers and Jell-O shots, I liked to believe she still had my back.
    Flea answered on the first ring. “Courtney!”
    “Hey, babycakes,” I said, using our team’s pet name for each other. Then, making a beeline toward my gecko green VW Beetle, I blurted out the torrid tale of Randy Schiff and his mom.
    “Let me get this straight,” she said after making all kinds of you-have- got -to-be-kidding-me noises. “His mother asked you to be his date?”
    “I know, right?”
    “That’s hilarious! What did you say?”
    “Nothing, really. He basically turned beet red, and I left the room.” I opened the car door, got hit with a blast of trapped Indian summer heat, then made the decision to finish the conversation outside.
    “So possibly, you are Randy’s date?”
    “Definitely not his date.”
    “But it’s over with Jacy?”
    I wasn’t sure which of the coiffed girls at school Jacy was, but could say with absolute certainty that when Randy left Tux Everlasting, his status was single. “Unless they get back together or something.”
    “So he could ask you, Courtney.”
    Rolling my eyes, I leaned against my car. Flea really wasn’t getting how high-soaring, over-the-fence-and-gone these odds were. “If you mean because I’m female and single and go to S.B. High, then yes, he could ask me. But that’s about it.”
    “Still,” she said, making a murmuring noise, “you so have to tell this to the girls tonight.”
    I shuddered like someone had just chucked a cold beer at me. “Tonight?”
    “Don’t tell me you’re working. Or you can’t go because you have to work in the morning. You’re always working, Courtney! Have some fun, too.”
    She was right about the “always working.” The job with Phillip cut me a wide berth of excuses when needed. Problem was, I couldn’t get out of an event I didn’t know was happening. “What do you mean, tonight?”
    She drew a shaky breath. “You—you didn’t hear? Saffron’s party?”
    My throat went thick. Third baseman Saffron Willis was a senior who’d only recently started hanging around with juniors like Flea, Madison and me. She’d claimed to want to intensify team camaraderie for her final softball season, but neither Flea nor I missed the fact that since her boyfriend (now ex) and all his friends had graduated, she was basically friendless. Madison Argo, our third Musketeer since freshman year, took Saffron at face value—but ever since Madison had gotten a boyfriend herself, she didn’t think about much else. (Yeah, she’d become one of those girls.)
    Still, I didn’t have much problem with Madison. It was Saffron who made my teeth grit because she had this tendency to hang on Flea.